books: April 2006 Archives

In one graphic depiction of the events on United 93, the flight that crashed in Pennsylvania, passengers are seen bloodied and battling hijackers wielding knives.

"We've got to stop them! Two planes crashed into the World Trade Center," one passenger says, about to land a punch on a hijacker who has stabbed a passenger in the back with a knife.

[from Reuters]

It was announced back in February, but the news is really just breaking now: In September Hill & Wang will publish a graphic-novel version of the Congressional 9/11 Commission Report. Which is notable in itself, the use of the tools of what had once been considered kid stuff to lay bare the facts of a many-threaded historical event, as Publishers Weekly noted back in February:

BUMPED UP: We have a winner! Click through to see JEAN's winning caption.

In honor of the weird-stuff-from-outer-space vibe of the way-cool, way-gross Slither, which opened today (read my review here), I'm proud to announce the first-ever Geek Philosophy giveaway contest. The winner will receive a four-book set of ooky paranormal aliens-among-us “nonfiction” paperback books:

Lightning struck near the tiny valley town of Livingston, Mont., the other day, frying a radio tower and, for a few long hours, plunging some of its 7,000 residents into an Internet-less world. "I wasn't above having thoughts of God's wrath," says Walter Kirn, one of those residents, a novelist and critic who lives by himself on 500 acres of hay and roving herds of antelope. The laptop sitting on his kitchen table rendered useless, Kirn tried typing into his cellphone, then drove through town, trolling for anybody with an unbroken connection. A segment of his newest novel was set to be published in a matter of hours, and it wasn't even written.

[from the Los Angeles Times]

Oh man, and I thought I was a procrastinator...

Looks like I’m not the only one pissed off at Dave Itzkoff, the new SF reviewer at The New York Times Book Review. Looks like I’ll be reciprocating SF writer John Scalzi’s secret crush on me: he’s got this to say this week about Itzkoff:

I've sat out the Itzkoff thing because I think Itzkoff asked the wrong question, so answering the question would simply result in further error. The question is not why science fiction is so geeky -- really, that's like asking why romance novels are so kissy -- but why SF does only a so-so job at best at trying to convince people who have the equivalent of Star Trek communicators and 17 jukeboxes in their pockets via their cell phones and iPods that science fiction can speak to them. Anders is exactly correct that SF has no need to apologize for being what it is, but it wouldn't hurt for SF from time to time to explain itself a little better to the unintiated, or more accurately, to the people who think they're the uninitiated, even as they live in a science fictional world.

The Anders he refers to is Lou Anders, editorial director of SF imprint Pyr, who said this: