Filed underscience fiction
Working with Robert Anton Wilson
There's a very interesting post over at the RAW Illumination blog giving an editor's-eye-view of working with the late, great (and apparently sometimes quite difficult!) Robert Anton Wilson, circa the Illuminatus! trilogy.
via LAShTAL
It looks like the best film of 2010 will be from 1927
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Here's the new trailer from Masters of Cinema for the beautiful restored and reconstructed verison of Fritz Lang's classic of early science-fiction cinema 'Metropolis'. Released theatrically in the UK and Ireland on 10 September 2010, the film will be available later in the year in stunning Blu-ray and DVD box sets. Something to look forward to!
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Do Androids Sleep with Electric Sheep?
'Do Androids Sleep with Electric Sheep: Critical Perspectives on Sexuality and Pornography in Science and Social Fiction' by the monochrom collective is the latest book from the legendary RE/Search publications.
The Mongoliad - Neal Stephenson's experiment in 'post-book publishing and storytelling'
The Mongoliad is an intriguing new venture created by author Neal Stephenson in which he, Greg Bear, Nicole Galland, Mark Teppo and other authors will be telling 'a sort of serialized story' via custom apps on the iPad, iPhone, Kindle and Android.
An alpha version is due to be demoed at the SF App Show on Tuesday 25 May, and there are Facebook pages for both the alpha demo event and for The Mongoliad itself.
More on Metropolis...
There's an interesting article by Chris Fujiwara here about the newly-restored footage and how it changes our understanding of Metropolis.
Restored Metropolis in cinemas, on DVD and Blu-ray later this year
The new extended restoration of Fritz Lang's classic, and way-ahead-of-its-time, film Metropolis was premiered at this year's Berlin International Film Festival to universal acclaim. Later this year, the rest of us can see what all the fuss was about. The film will get a release in UK and Irish cinemas from 10 September, and 'later this year' Masters of Cinema will release special DVD and Blu-ray editions complete with a 56-page book. Full DVD and Blu-ray specifications are not available yet, but keep an eye on METROPOLIS1927.com for more announcements.
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Why is Charlie Stross voting Liberal Democrat?
Fritz Lang's "Metropolis" restoration
To whet your appetite, here's an article by David Bordwell giving some detail and background about this latest restoration.
First "Laptop" Discovered in Flash Gordon Comics | Science Fiction Observer
Probably the earliest depiction of a communication device resembling a laptop has been discovered in an ancient Flash Gordon comics by Mende Petreski of Prilep, Macedonia.
Browsing through his comics collection, Mr. Petreski stumbled upon a panel in Politikin Zabavnik weekly published June 14, 1974, featuring the forces of Ming the Merciless using a device which looks a lot like a laptop to talk to their leader.
This particular comics represents a Serbian translation of an episode drawn around 1937 by Alex Raymond. The title the magazine used is "Ming's Prisoners", while the contents probably covers part of the story "The Outlaws of Mongo" which the Flash Gordon Wiki attributes to Alex Raymond and Don Moore, originally published as Sunday comics from August 15, 1937 – June 5, 1938.The Wiki mentions the spacephone as a "communication device used on Mongo," but makes no mention about the laptop-like apparatus.
The leading Macedonian portal On.net broke the news of this discovery first. It can be of interest to computer science historians and comics lovers.
Since 2004, Checker Book Publishing Group has been republishing the Alex Raymond's Flash Gordon comics in hardcopy edition (seven books in total).
Flash Gordon comics were a major hit in Former Yugoslavia, published by popular magazines such as Politikin Zabavnik and Stripoteka. While the former had a tradition of republishing both classic episodes and reruns, the later usually featured newer installments by Dan Barry.Several scans from this historic episode are available bellow, courtesy of Mr. Mende Petreski.
