A Far Out Fantastic Site

An attendee in a costume resembling the Spider-Man  villain, Doctor Octopus, at the 2015 Wizard World Comic Con Sacramento. Photo Credit: Steven Rose, Jr. Last week I talked a little about Wizard World Comic Con  and said it wasn’t all comics but other forms of popular media such as movies, television, video games and, to a certain degree even literary fiction. It ran the whole weekend, Friday through Sunday, but I only attended Sunday. But the one day alone still had more than enough to see. Because I wanted to look through the dealers’ room, which covered nearly the entire convention hall of the Sacramento Convention Center, I had to limit myself to three of the 14 panels scheduled for that day. All three were about storytelling to some extent, but I found one particularly helpful to writers such as myself. It was entitled “Where the Synergy of Video Games, Books and Films Collide”. Wizard World Synergy “Where the Synergy” was a panel of artists and writers,...

A Wizard World Comic Con in Manhattan, NY Photo Credit:  © Luigi Novi / Wikimedia Commons I know I said I would have a review of a Philip K. Dick short story for you soon but my writing project schedule has become a little jumbled this past week. I was especially held back when my Internet went out on me yesterday afternoon for no apparent reason. And it came back on, also for no apparent reason, but not until the evening. It was really frustrating, but the most important thing is that it’s back on so I can write and post this entry for you. So I’ll have to hold off the review until a later date because an event I want to tell you about is already going on. It is Wizard World Comic Con and it has returned here to Sacramento. If you are not in the Sacramento area to attend Wizard World, there’s good news. This is a touring comic convention that hits several cities throughout North America so there may be one near you in the upcoming months. If you’re not in t...

Because there have been a lot of things going on this past week in the world of sci fi, fantasy and writing, I thought it would be a great time to do a week in review. Sunday 7 June: Christopher Lee Dies at 93 Years When I heard about this only a few days ago, I was both shocked and sad. Sir Christopher Lee has been one of my favourite actors since childhood. I first found out about him when I was a kid, around six or seven, on a hosted horror movie show called Creature Features . The host, the late Bob Wilkins, talked about Mr. Lee all the time, let alone featured his horror movies, and interviewed him on the show. Lee’s Dracula movies always inspired me in everything horror. He’s one of those actors right up there with Lenard Nimoy (who sadly also died back in February) who you wish were immortal. You even get kind of mad at the fact that death exists when famous actors like him die. Well at least in his movies he’ll be immortal and not just in his Dracula ones, which his hi...

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons I apologise for posting so late. I normally have been posting on a Friday or Saturday, but this past Saturday I had a family event to go to and was there a little longer than I had intended. Earlier last week, I was in bed reading a used copy of the Arabian Nights only to find out a page was missing. It was a missing leaf to be exact; the actual pages were 41 and 42, front and back. It was right in the middle of the story about the fisherman and the genie. I was really mad when I discovered this because I didn’t want to continue until I could replace the missing page. Even though the Arabian Nights is a compilation of stories, they are told within one overarching story. The book begins with the Princess Scheherazade’s tale that she tells to the king in order to hold off her execution. Even though she is the chief story teller in the book, within her stories are other stories told by the characters. So they are stories within stories, li...

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...