The 2010 Friday Favorites continue with another Saturday edition, courtesy of a forgotten computer power cord and an all-day work conference. This post serves as both a celebration of art and a book review as I finally was able to sit down last week to slobber over this Christmas gift from my wife, Flesk Publications‘ latest release, Mark Schultz: Various Drawings Volume 4.
The tag line for this book reads: “A collection of images for those who enjoy process as well as result”, and this book delivers on that promise every bit as successfully as the three previous volumes.
A couple of really big films came out over the Christmas holidays, and over the course of the last three weeks I have managed to get out to the theater to see both of them. Both films won Golden Globes this past weekend, and I seem to be posting like mad lately, so it made some sense to me to go ahead and do a couple of brief film reviews Double Feature style. I would love to know your thoughts/feelings about these two films. Each in their stead have things that recommend them and each have generated very vocal and understandable reasons not to see them. In the course of their respective reviews I will attempt to touch on them. The order of the poster images and the review order were chosen simply in the order that I saw each film. I watched Sherlock Holmes over the week between Christmas and New Years and watched Avatar this past Thursday evening.
The Deathworld trilogy is a series of novels written by Harry Harrison in the 1960’s featuring gambler turned world-beater, Jason dinAlt. My first foray into the series was in 2006 when I read books one and two. I really wish that I had reviewed them at the time, especially because this is an entertaining science fiction adventure series by one of my favorite SF authors. The Deathworld books, particularly the first one, have been mentioned on several websites as a possible inspiration for James Cameron’s Avatar, and while I do not necessarily see a plagiaristic correlation between the two, I do consider Deathworld an example of how fantastic Avatar could have been if it only had a good story to accompany its visuals.
Deathworld 3 reminded me even more of the film, in a slightly different manner. After a three year absence, it was a distinct pleasure to return to Jason’s world.
There is something about the first time. The first day of school, that first time sitting behind the wheel, your first kiss…firsts–good or bad, monumental or inconsequential–carry with them the potential for something memorable. Over the past few years I have had the pleasure of reading stories short and long from some of science fiction’s most notable authors, stories that first saw print in one of the magazines of the day. Frequently that magazine was Galaxy. Thanks to the generosity and enthusiasm of my friend Jerry, I had the pleasure of my first experience reading directly from the source. Jerry knows of my growing passion for the classics and my fondness for short stories, and he just knew that I had to read To Avenge Man by Lester Del Rey.
Each and every fall I await the release of the latest issue of Spectrum with fevered anticipation, for each and every year it is a delight to read. This year’s annual perusal with my friend Jeff was delayed due to ordering issues, but this past Wednesday we sat down to savor our first read-through. It most certainly will not be my last (a fact proven by my having read through it again since Wednesday!)
As I have in past years, I wanted to show you a tiny sampling of the massive art selection offered on the pages of Spectrum.
