—The Orphanage (El Orfanato)
–Executive Producer: Guillermo del Toro
–Director: Juan Antonio Bayona
–Screenplay: Sergio G. Sanchez
–5/5 stars 
All posts by Carl V. Anderson
Friday Favorites: Spectrum 14
(cover image by Andrew Jones)
—Spectrum 14 ~edited by Cathy and Arnie Fenner
–published by Underwood Books, 2007
–245 pages
–5/5 stars
Each year as All Hallow’s Eve gives way to the glorious hues of November leaves, editors Cathy and Arnie Fenner and the folks at Underwood Books release a cornucopia of color of their own: Spectrum: The Best in Contemporary Fantastic Art. This past year saw the release of Spectrum 14, arguably the best volume thus far. Each year this amazing volume of fantastic art outdoes itself in quality. There is simply no better annual book of fantastic art on the market and at less than $30 for the hardback (even less for the softcover), this book is a steal for anyone who enjoys a wide variety of fantasy and science fiction art.
By way of review and to tie in with The Sci Fi Experience, I thought I’d share just a few of the hundreds of gorgeous images in this collection. If you click on the following images, they will expand to larger versions to show better detail. You can also click on the highlighted names of the artist to go to their website.
Foundation ~Isaac Asimov
–published 1951
–244 pages, Bantam Books
–(trilogy won Hugo in 1965 for best all-time series)
–5/5 stars
Foundation. Oh how this novel–this series–has haunted me over the years. The Michael Whelan cover of the fourth book in this series, Foundation’s Edge, is one of the earliest books I recall seeing as a young man and becoming lost in the image. Many a time I pulled that book off of my uncle’s bookshelf and stared at it longingly. Something about the book’s description intimidated me, and has all these many years. I read primarily space opera as a kid: action adventure stories set in a futuristic universe. Foundation always seemed like something more, something too grand of scope for me to understand. Through the years as my reading habits evolved and I took on more challenging literature, Foundation has remained a series that in the back of my mind was still intimidating.
Something happened a few years back that began to change my mind. I saw another Michael Whelan image that I liked on a book called Second Foundation (the third in the original trilogy) and just had to have it. Scouring used bookstores and places like ebay finally yielded up a copy. For a year or so I’ve been wanting to read that book just because I like the cover image. But one cannot start with the third book in a series. This year’s emphasis on science fiction and a new goal to read more award-winning science fiction has finally given me the courage to read what is arguably the most well known science fiction series of all time. And it begins with Foundation.
Monday Musings: Ode to the Public Library
“Be a little careful about your library. Do you foresee what you will do with it? Very little to be sure. But the real question is, What it will do with you? You will come here and get books that will open your eyes, and your ears, and your curiosity, and turn you inside out or outside in.”
~Ralph Waldo Emerson
A common theme amongst book bloggers in the year of our Lord, 2008, is the desire to tighten the purse strings in order to part with less of the sweat of our brow on literature. To a man (and woman) we are all guilty of the indulgence of having piles of unread books just waiting for us to discover the treasure hidden therein. And yet throughout 2008 we will all feel, and at times give in to, the temptation to walk into our local bookstore, “just to take a quick look”, and will walk out with not one, but many new books with which to shore up our ever-dwindling stacks.
One method to combat the ease with which one is parted from one’s money in the pursuit of a good story is to visit the local public library.
Eclipse One ~edited by Jonathan Strahan
Eclipse One ~edited by Jonathan Strahan
–Published: 2007
–263 pages
–5/5 stars
There is something special about being present at the beginning of a project, especially when one is a reader and that project is a literary one. I am currently reading several ‘classic’ science fiction authors, some who began their work in my lifetime, and one of the things I think about as I read their work is that I don’t have that special connection of having jumped on the bandwagon right at the beginning. Although it doesn’t change my reading experience and may sound a bit pretentious, I cannot help imagine what it must have been like to read the first Asimov, the first Bradbury, the first Clark or Heinlein, etc. at the time their stories were published. It is a unique experience to be a part of the collective conscious of a group of readers who all discovered something together.
Jonathan Strahan, editor of several notable science fiction and fantasy anthologies has given me that opportunity, the chance to witness the beginning of something special. His goal was to create/edit his own anthology with stories that did not revolve around a central theme–an anthology that harkened back to classic science fiction anthologies, particularly Terry Carr’s Universe, which began in 1971 and continued through 17 volumes. It was out of that desire that Eclipse was born. A fantastic Michael Whelan cover promises speculative fiction worth reading, and much to my great pleasure, Eclipse One makes good on that promise.