I have no shame. I actually said this to a newsagent today. In truth, it wasn't quite as tragic as it sounds, because a) they know me, and b) I'd specifically asked them to order me 30 copies of Issue 18 of The Official Stargate SG1 & Atlantis Magazine in a couple of months ago, when we found out this was the edition the short story Sonny Whitelaw and I wrote, K-T, would be published.

The plan is, you see, for me to sign them, and then, when I see Sonny next, she can sign them too. This way we won't have to duck and hide from the rabid Stargate collectors at Supanova in Melbourne and Brisbane next year, because we'll have something for them, as the books usually go by lunchtime on day 1:)

The story is told from Vala's POV (mostly) and is sort of a companion piece to Roswell. It's got nothing to do with the events of 1947, but, you know how it is. SG1 just can't leave that damn time-machine alone, so they decide go back in time so far they figure they can't do any harm. Famous last words!.

Those of you who are very clever. you will know the "K-T" event is the big meteor that zonked the dinosaurs. For everyone else who didn't know that, well, now you've learned something:)

Finally got around to seeing Elizabeth: The Golden Age on Tuesday night. If you listen to the podcasts every week, you'll know I've been saying I'll see this movie for about three weeks. Now I'm wondering why I bothered.

No, that's not true. It was worth it to see Blanco the Wonder Horse swimming out of the burning Armada. There was no other reason for him to be in the film, mind you, except for the 26 seconds he gets on screen for his heroic jump and the shot of him swimming from underneath, but at least we got to see all of him.

Anyway, here's the review. I gave it 3 stars. 2 for the movie and one for the dog-paddling horse.

Cate Blanchett revisits her role in this follow-up to the 1998 film, Elizabeth, which charted the rise of, arguably, England’s greatest queen. As usual, Cate is spectacular, as are the supporting cast — Clive Owen as Walter Raleigh, Geoffrey Rush (wasted as Walsingham) and yet another Aussie actress, Abbie Cornish, as the queen’s favourite and Raleigh’s love interest, Bess Throckmorton.

 

This film gives the impression that is trying very hard to be Really Important and Very Profound. Instead it comes off as needlessly melodramatic and sometimes downright irritating. Director Shekhar Kapur seems to think the more important the scene, the more the audience benefit by witnessing it through a lattice, a fence, out of focus, or between two columns with half the scene obscured. Apparently, not being able to see something clearly will, of course, help you to know that something of Momentous Import is about to happen.

  

As for historical detail, well, they spelt Elizabeth right in the opening credits. That’s something, I suppose. The 55-year-old Elizabeth looks like she’s been worked on by the Extreme Makeover team, and seems to spend much of the film agonising about her love life (or lack thereof). The French-speaking Mary, Queen of Scots sounds like she’s come straight from a Scottish Housing Estate. They manage to get through the whole Spanish Armada episode in history without mentioning Francis Drake. Bessie Throckmorton (Abbie Cornish) married Raleigh 4 years after the Spanish Armada was defeated and he certainly wasn’t the hero of the battle. In fact, he wasn’t even there. I believe he was in Cornwall or Devon, somewhere, waiting for the attack that never came, because other naval heroes (not Walter Raleigh), actually saved the day.

  

You can’t fault the look of the film, or the performances of the actors. The costumes are fabulous, the feel of the film is quite authentic — no lighting a single candle, which then illuminates a cavernous throne room — and the torture scenes in particular, are stomach-churningly realistic. The tendency of the sun to shine brightly through convenient windows, however, every time Elizabeth pauses for a moment of regal reflection, stretches the friendship a tad. Particulalry when it happens during thunderstorms.

 

The film jumps around a lot between Elizabeth and the forces rallying against her, but this is OK because you know when you’re dealing with the Bad People (i.e. the Spanish and all other Catholics in the realm) because there are subtitles or they’re clutching prayer books and followed by chanting priests. Or they’re wearing red. Or they are followed by chanting priests wearing red. Or red dyers (I kept waiting for there to be a reason the Catholics kept meeting in the dye shop. And why the only colour they ever seemed to dye was red. Still don’t know).

  

The film is wonderful to look at, overly pretentious, melodramatic and ultimately dull. For anybody wanting to see a worthy homage to one of the world’s most brilliant women, well, you can’t. There’s a lattice in the way.

~ Read the rest of the reviews ~

My good friend and co-author, Sonny Whitelaw, was snubbed at a writer's festival recently (where she was an invited guest) by a rather well-known, award winning Australian literary author, (who shall remain nameless). Apparently even breathing the same air as someone who write "speculative fiction" was hazardous to this literary luminary's health. When introduced to Sonny and informed she'd written for Stargate, he turned his back on her and started talking to someone else, without even acknowledging she was standing in front of him. What a pig.

Of course, I may be unfairly maligning this revered author. He may not be a literary snob at all. He might just be an all-round a***hole about everything:)

Anyway, without getting into the whys and the wherefores of  literary snobbery, I think I can confidently claim that most of these award winning ignoramuses have never actually read a fantasy novel, and after seeing the following covers on cracked.com, I can understand why.

Actually, after seeing their list of The Best (Worst) Fantasy & Science Fiction Book Covers, I'm think I'm going to join the other side.

There are 4 pages of these covers, and the comments are hysterical, particularly the ones about "pony porn". I have reproduced a few here, but you really need to go and have a look.

Cringeworthy doesn't even begin to describe them:)

Zeor: "No! Come back! You haven't
seen any of my good pentagrams yet!"

Author, Jack L Chalker: "Hey Bernie,
what' the biggest number there is?"
Editor, Bernie Ciscain: "Ninety trillion.
Why do you ask?"
Jack L Chalker: "No reason."

So tell me, author-who-has-slaved
-over-his-masterpiece-and-wants-to
be-taken-seriously-as -a-writer. What
would you like to see on the cover?

I mentioned recently  that I had been roped in as a Booth Captain at a polling booth during the election, so I thought I'd tell you how my day went...

Slowly... agonisingly slowly, actually. The polling booth they put me one was one of the most insignificant and least frequented polling booths in the whole damn country. We got 414 voters. In 10 hours. You to do math.

So, I had to find a way to entertain myself, which I'm happy to report I managed quite nicely.  There was one great moment when they brought in an old Aborignal elder to vote, who was so frail she could barely walk, but who was a bright as a button, which got us all wondering how much she must have seen over the years. That  reminded someone else of an old traditional man they knew who could remember seeing his first white man when he was a child in the 1930s, and it just happened to be Harold Lasseter. *

But highlights like that were few and far between. And you know how it is when you're bored. You have to make your own fun. So I did.

Fun things to do on a slow day at a polling booth:

• Finish the first pages proofread of The Palace of Impossible Dreams
• Get the socially responsible volunteer minion representing the environmentalists to admit it's too late, we're all doomed anyway, so there's not much point doing anything about global warming. (Even more hysterical when you remember that I drive a hybrid and she was driving an SUV...tee hee)
• Get into a theological discussion with a devout AEC official. Within 30 minutes, have them agreeing that God is the source of all evil in the universe.
• Get the environmentalist - who argues loudly that science is going to save us from climate change - to agree that scientists are the source of all evil in the universe.
• Corrupt the environmentalist so completely that by the end of the day she's standing there holding "How to Vote" cards for the conservatives.

• After making her drive across town to fetch coffee for me and then telling her I'd promised Dace one of Dakota's kittens, get my daughter to agree that, in fact, I am the source of all evil in the universe.

My ultimate evil-overlord triumph, however, had to do with the actual voting. As I stated in my post on Saturday, my clever (if somewhat shallow and cynical) plan, was to encourage people to vote for our guy, because he was the prettiest and the others all looked like serial killers.

Apparently, my tactic worked. On my booth, and only my booth, (because we didn't actually win the seat, you see) our boy polled 62% of the primary vote.

Muwahahahahahaha...

*The fence behind Lasseter's Grave in the picture is the back fence on my house. Seriously.

They will sing about this around campfires. They will compose odes about it, write operas, make a movie, and then a sequel, and a threequel (which will, of coure, be complete and utter crap). They will write songs, they will name ships after me, cyclone, hurricanes and maybe even babies.

My name will held up as shining light in a world gone wild. I will be something to aspire to... a reason to go on in this mad, mad world...

Why? I hear you ask in awe.

Well, I'll tell you...

You see, yesterday, I finally connected my 7 speaker sound system to the DVD and the plasma TV. I (with the help of a friend with skinny arms who could get her hand through the back of the entertainment unit) wired up the pay TV, the free-to-air, the digital stations and the DVD through the amplifier. I have perfect pictures and stereo surround sound on all of it. It is awesome.

And it worked first time we tried it.

It is true. I am legend. :)