SCAAALLLZZZIIIII!

John Scalzi made a stop in Scottsdale on his whirlwind book tour tonight at the Poisoned Pen book store. He's got two weeks left and if he's coming to your town, try to make an effort to catch him. He's a fun guy in person and if you've been reading his Whatever blog, you have a good idea of what to expect.

There was a pretty decent turnout for John, with it being a Monday night and it not getting listed much in the papers. Most of the fans there were familiar with his work and his online activities. He talked about the Old Man's War series of books, including the new book, The Last Colony and how it took three tries to get the book going. He talked a bit about The Android's Dream, and how he worked up the first chapter, essentially a fart joke. He's currently working on the sequel book in that series. He's also planning to do some more experimental stuff that will likely be published by Subterranean Press, much like The Sagan Diary.

Look for a report from John on the appearance on his tour diary.

Lee

Its IPSTD Day!

Today is International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Day where all of the webscabs out there are making available work for free.

What is IPSTD? In short, it is the response from science fiction and fantasy writers to a rant by Howard V. Hendrix about how all of the webscabs and Pixel-Stained technopeasants were causing other writers to lose work.

John Scalzi has his entry here along with links to other sites about all the stuff being made available free today. Jo Walton, who started up the whole thing, is keeping track of the various works on her livejournal. There is also an IPSTD Livejournal community as well.

For more background, and some of the comments, check out these posts on John Scalzi's website chronicling the events:

The iniital post by Hendrix

John's Response

Scalzi Reporting Jo's Announcement

Jo's announcement on her livejournal.

If anything, this shows that science fiction and fantasy writers can get organized if they have a common goal or a target (see the Wikipedia entry on Travis Tea or visit the official Travis Tea web site.) Suprisingly, I don't yet see a Wikipedia entry on ITSPD, but there is some about the controversy on the Howard Hendrix entry (including a link to a very special edition of Michael Stackpole's The Secrets Podcast.

Bart's Not For Me...

I got invited by a friend to do an advanced movie screening tonight and after spending about an hour in line, signing all sorts of forms saying I won't go online and tell people all about the movie or take clandestine videos of it and sell them on Ebay. However, as the line kept getting longer and longer, it became apparent they had way more people accepting their offer than they could fit in the theatre.

Since my friend was already up in front and inside the theatre by the time I got close to the door, their person doing a last minute screening looked at me oddly and asked if I had anyone with me, which I didn't. Seeing as I was over the target age group for the movie, I was told I was not going to be allowed to see the movie and offered a free ticket to see one of the other movies the theatre was showing. Most of which I didn't really care to see or had already seen. Oh well, at least the theatre reimbursed me for my parking fee.

The movie, it turns out, was the Simpsons movie, with about 80& of the animation done. If you see a post on Ain't It Cool News about the movie, you'll know the spy is violating all the forms he signed. Since I didn't actually get in to see the movie, I can't really say anything about it other than if you aren't 39 and under, they really don't care if you see the movie or what your opinion of it is.

So, if you sign up for The Screening Exchange, be warned that if you aren't part of their target audience, you'd better have someone with you who is or you won't get in.

Lee

Catching Up a Bit

It's been pretty hectic the last week or so, culminating in last weekend's Arizona Book Festival with a good number of our local authors as well as Jim Butcher. Jim also did a signing at the Poisoned Pen which had a good turnout on Sunday. If you're in the area, both Poisoned Pen and the Chandler Borders should have signed copies of White Night available and you can also do mail order from The Poisoned Pen if you aren't local to the Phoenix area.

Jim's novel debuted on USA Today's book list at #17 this past week and we've heard that next week's New York Times will have the book debut at #5! It hadn't really sunk in with Jim yet this past weekend, but he's definitely at a pretty good high point right now. All we need now is for SciFi to announce they've picked up The Dresden Files for a second season!

In other book news, today is the debut of John Scalzi's The Last Colony as well as the long-awaited release of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Children of Hurin. All are available at your local bookstores or available via the Magrathea Amazon Marketplace. A few hundred lucky people in New York will get copies of the Tolkien book with bookplates signed by Christopher Tolkien and artist Alan Lee. John Scalzi is heading out on a book tour later this week where you can see him in person and get your books signed.

Lee

SFTV Roundup

SFTV Schedules
First of all, the SFTV Schedules are mostly updated. Click on the links to the right to get the latest schedule information. The email version should go out in the next day or two.

Dresden Files Moves Back, Jim Butcher on Tour
The final two episodes of The Dresden Files on SciFi on April 8th & April 15th will air an hour later, at 10 pm ET/PT, preceded by a repeat episode from earlier in the season. This week's episode, What About Bob?, has been very well received. You can catch it on Friday on SciFi at 5 pm ET/PT. Dresden Files creator Jim Butcher is currently on a book tour, including a stop in Phoenix next weekend for the Arizona Book Festival and a signing at the Poisoned Pen. I've helped line up a bunch of our Arizona authors for the book festival as well. Visit the CASFS book festival page for the full details.

Galactica Keeping a Secret Wasn't Easy
The surprise at the end of the third season finale of Battlestar Galactica involved a lot of subterfuge. Over at the Los Angeles Times they've got an article about what everyone went through trying to keep it a suprise (trying to be appropriately vague for those of you who haven't watched it yet).

BBC America Revamps with Torchwood and more
New president of BBC America Worldwide, Garth Ancier, announced that the BBC America channel will start focusing more on contemporary British TV, dropping older shows like Benny Hill and adding current teen soap Hollyoaks as well as Doctor Who spinoff Torchwood. They will be making each night a theme night with Supernatural Saturdays being their genre showcase. Expect to see the second (and final) seasons of Hex, Afterlife, and Life on Mars this summer with Torchwood, the second season of Doctor Who, and Steven "Hugo" Moffat's Jekyll later in the year. Full details can be found at the cable360.net site in their BBC America Upfront article.