{"id":905,"date":"2009-09-24T17:16:11","date_gmt":"2009-09-24T21:16:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mpomy.com\/?p=905"},"modified":"2009-09-24T20:39:34","modified_gmt":"2009-09-25T00:39:34","slug":"its-a-reading-frenzy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/mpomy.com\/?p=905","title":{"rendered":"It&#8217;s a READING frenzy!!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>After having (finally) finished <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jlake.com\/\">Jay Lake<\/a>&#8216;s stunning new book, &#8216;<a href=\"http:\/\/whatever.scalzi.com\/2009\/06\/11\/the-big-idea-jay-lake\/\">Green<\/a>&#8216;, I&#8217;m all charged up to do some serious reading.  \u00a0Em is out of town for the next two nights, so it will just be me and the four-letters.  \u00a0Right away, there a ton of decent-looking selections close at hand.<\/p>\n<p>Firstly, I have to give a special shout to John Scalzi&#8217;s &#8216;<a href=\"http:\/\/whatever.scalzi.com\/category\/big-idea\/\">Big Idea<\/a>&#8216; project.  On his ancient blog &#8216;<a href=\"http:\/\/whatever.scalzi.com\/\">Whatever<\/a>&#8216; he&#8217;s been highlighting a veritable cornocopia of tasty sci-fi, fantasy and more.  I would never have heard of &#8216;Green&#8217; or &#8216;<a href=\"http:\/\/whatever.scalzi.com\/2009\/04\/09\/the-big-idea-robert-j-sawyer\/\">W.W.W Wake<\/a>&#8216; if it hadn&#8217;t been for Scalzi.  And, as of today he&#8217;s now featuring &#8216;The Big Idea&#8217; on <a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/scalzi\">his Twitter feed, so check it out<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The next novel I&#8217;m reading comes right off that list and tells the story of a Louisiana detective who uses demons to help her solve crimes.  I&#8217;m not completely sold on the premise of the appropriately titled &#8216;<a href=\"http:\/\/whatever.scalzi.com\/2009\/06\/23\/the-big-idea-diana-rowland\/\">Mark of the Demon<\/a>&#8216;, but it&#8217;s a good choice for Halloween and the reviews are very positive so far.  \u00a0Plus, Scalzi hasn&#8217;t really steered me wrong yet.<\/p>\n<p>In a piece of conceptual continuity, a great mystery writer whom I enjoy is taking up a great all-time graphic novel character.  <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ianrankin.net\/\">Ian Rankin<\/a> of Rebus fame has written a nice fat graphic novel in the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.insanerantings.com\/hell\/\">John Constantine<\/a> series for Vertigo called &#8216;<a href=\"http:\/\/i680.photobucket.com\/albums\/vv170\/bartonfink13\/img\/Dark_Entries_000.jpg\">Dark Entries<\/a>&#8216;.  As if that weren&#8217;t enough to get me on board (it is), the story puts Constantine, paranormal investigator, in the midst of a reality TV show &#8211; Brilliant!<\/p>\n<p>In addition to those items, I&#8217;ve picked up &#8216;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.richardkadrey.com\/sandman.html\">Sandman Slim&#8217; by Richard Kadrey<\/a> for after &#8216;Mark of the Demon&#8217;. \u00a0I think this is an urban fantasy about revenge from beyond the grave. \u00a0Again, it seems to fit in nicely with the theme I&#8217;ve got going.<\/p>\n<p>In the realm of shorter works, the incredible <a href=\"http:\/\/aliettedebodard.com\/\">Aliette de Boddard<\/a> has just published a short story over at Orson Scott Card&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.intergalacticmedicineshow.com\/cgi-bin\/mag.cgi?do=content&amp;article=home\">Intergalactic Medicine Show<\/a>. \u00a0This site takes the traditional sci-fi fiction journal and puts it online. \u00a0I paid about $2.50 for the September issue and I get de Boddard&#8217;s On Horizon&#8217;s Shores, which is the featured work, and a number of other tasty looking goodies. \u00a0It&#8217;s actually a novelette (as opposed to short story) and after just reading the first few paragraphs, I know it&#8217;s going to be great.<\/p>\n<p>The other shorter work I&#8217;m excited to look at is a crazy-looking new wave script from 1980 that was linked on <a href=\"http:\/\/io9.com\/\">io9<\/a> today. \u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/io9.com\/5367004\/is-the-tourist-the-greatest-scifi-movie-never-made\/gallery\/\">The Tourist<\/a> would probably have made a great movie if it hadn&#8217;t been for infighting and development hell. \u00a0In present day (well, 1980, anyway) Manhattan, there are aliens living among us, in disguise. \u00a0In real life they look like amazingly icky <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hrgiger.com\/frame.htm\">H.R. Giger<\/a> creatures, because he was brought in (following the groundbreaking success of Alien) to do the concept art. \u00a0There&#8217;s a link that lets you download the script and I&#8217;m hoping for something partway between Cronenberg and <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Hunger\">The Hunger<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After having (finally) finished Jay Lake&#8216;s stunning new book, &#8216;Green&#8216;, I&#8217;m all charged up to do some serious reading. \u00a0Em is out of town for the next two nights, so it will just be me and the four-letters. \u00a0Right away, &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/mpomy.com\/?p=905\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[50,12,264,206],"tags":[848,1484,846,850,857,855,856,849,854,349,332,853,845,847,843,265,852,844,851,1492],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/mpomy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/905"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/mpomy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/mpomy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mpomy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mpomy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=905"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/mpomy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/905\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":907,"href":"http:\/\/mpomy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/905\/revisions\/907"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/mpomy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=905"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mpomy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=905"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mpomy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=905"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}