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May 20, 2007
a day later » May 21, 2007

Gibson on the Neuromancer movie rumor

Posted by Cory Doctorow, May 20, 2007 6:30 PM |
William Gibson has commented on the latest rumor of a Neuromancer film:
Myself, I'll be willing to entertain the idea that Neuromancer is really "headed for the big screen" when I'm watching it being shot

As the old saying goes, I'll believe it when I see it.

I *do* believe, though, that Peter Weir will not be going forward with Pattern Recognition. That is one utterly solid little factoid of film news, alas.

I no longer get very wrought up over the liminals, myself, except to be annoyed by people who seem to assume that feature films are the ultimate stage of novelistic creation, thereby relegating the book to the status of dull gray chrysalis.

It's that last graf that got me between the eyes. Books, by and large, don't make very good movies (how many great film adaptations of novels can you think of that were true to the original that were worth seeing? How many total, utter disappointments can you recall?) Yet people who meet novelists inevitably ask, "anything of yours been made into a movie yet?" Link
 
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Help write a reply to Mark Helprin's call for infinite copyright

Posted by Cory Doctorow, May 20, 2007 5:07 PM |
SF novelist Mark Helprin (author of "A Winter's Tale") has a silly little editorial in the NYT this weekend advocating copyright without end (though I don't see him volunteering to hunt town Shakespeare's descendants in order to pay them every time he quotes the Bard). It's not much of an essay -- as Avram Grumer points out, it mostly rehashes arguments Mark Twain advanced 101 years ago.

Nevertheless, an editorial in the Times calls for a rebuttal, and that's why Larry Lessig has put up a wiki page for the collective authorship of a thoroughgoing rebuttal to Halprin's piece. There have been dozens of edits so far, and they've written a very good piece. You folks can go help make it better. Link

 
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Audio from science Fiction panel with Cory, Kage Baker, John Scalzi, Harry Turtledove

Posted by Cory Doctorow, May 20, 2007 4:51 PM |
On April 28, I did a panel at the LA Times Festival of Books with Kage Baker, John Scalzi and Harry Turtledove, called "Science Fiction: The Road From Here to There." The LA Times just provided us with the audio for this panel on CD and I've secured the permission of my co-panelists to rip the disc and put the audio up on the Internet Archive as an MP3, licensed Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike. Enjoy! MP3 Link
 
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FreeCulture's annual summit, Harvard, May 26

Posted by Cory Doctorow, May 20, 2007 4:15 PM |
Fred sez,

FreeCulture.org's annual national conference is coming up! Students from around the world are coming to meet up and organize for another year of copyfighting on campus. If you've ever been interested in starting or joining a Free Culture chapter, this is the perfect opportunity to meet everyone involved in our international student movement to reform copyright and promote technology, creativity, and innovation.

This year the conference will be at Harvard Law School -- home of the famous Berkman Center. The conference will run from 11am to 7:30pm in Austin Hall on May 26th. We have a lot of great speakers and people coming in, including representatives from the Free Software Foundation, One Laptop per Child, WFMU, DJ/Rupture, WikiEducator, Creative Commons, Science Commons, the Institute for Infinitely Small Things, Freedomdefined.org, Binary Freedom, and more.

Check out the link for more information and RSVP via facebook or e-mail. See you on Saturday!

Link (Thanks, Fred!)
 
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Pulp covers turned into 3D sculptures

Posted by Cory Doctorow, May 20, 2007 8:57 AM |
Minnesota photographer Thomas Allen cuts illustrations from the covers and interior pages of pulp novels and kids' books, turns them into 3D scenes and photographs them.

As a director would stage actors, Allen stages his cut-outs in ways that create humor, tension, mystery, and drama. A boxer fights his own shadow in Spar, and in Bookend a gunfighter stands over his recently fallen opponent. Although the characters are freed from the closed pages of books, the books themselves still remain present in each photograph. A ship sails across the curved pages of a dictionary-sized book in Swell. In Cover, a gunman finds safety behind the spine of a book. And in Recover, a worn paperback acts as a life raft to three weathered shipwreck survivors.
Link (via IZ Reloaded)
 
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Pyongyang in an alternate reality

Posted by Cory Doctorow, May 20, 2007 8:50 AM |

Iz Reloaded sez, "Fiction Pyongyang, curated by Joseph Grima together with Stefano Boeri and Armin Linke, is a video-portrait of Pyongyang, North Korea. The video shows Pyongyang as a glamorous modern city, with beautiful lights, huge billboard ads and nuclear weapons existing side by side. The enormous triangular building you see in the video is the Ryugyong Hotel. Back in 1987, the North Korean government decided to build the hotel as a 'cold war' response to a South Korean company's completion of the Westin Stamford Hotel in Singapore. The Ryugyong Hotel was never completed due to lack of foreign investment. If it was, it would have been the world's tallest hotel." Link (Thanks, IZ Reloaded!)
 
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Capt. Hook - kids' novel about the origin of evil

Posted by Cory Doctorow, May 20, 2007 6:39 AM |
I just finished "Capt. Hook: The Adventures of a Notorious Youth" by JV Hart (who wrote the screenplays for Hook and Muppet Treasure Island) and illustrated by Brett Helquist (who illustrated the Lemony Snicket books) -- and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Capt. Hook tells the story of the boyhood of Jas. Matthew, the bastard son of an important English lord. "King" Jas. is sent to Eton, where he encounters the savage Arthur L Darling, a sadistic Colleger (scholarship student) who takes an immediate dislike to our hero. King Jas isn't cowed, though: instead, he bravely bears the beatings and other depredations heaped on him by Darling and his thugs, rallying Oppdians (tuition-paid students).

So high is their spirit that they score a once-in-a-century goal in the Wall Game, a savage sport that usually ends up in stalemate. In so doing, he wins the heart of a visiting Sultana, and he pursues her despite the Queen's injunction against her mixing with a bastard suitor.

His misadventures land him on a ship bound for Africa, signed on for seven years' service as a cabin-boy, and here we see the beginnings of his nautical adventures.

The book is written in an arch, semi-Victorian style (I was reminded favorably of Phillip Pullman's Dark Materials books and Joan Aiken's Wolves Chronicles), with plenty of savage action, cursing and bravado, derring-do, revenge and complex evil.

I found it a little overlong, but not nearly so much as, say, Wicked, another villain's point-of-view book, which was so incredibly long and dull in the middle that I barely finished it.

Hook appears to be the first in a series of books, and I'm certain I'll pick up the sequels. This is a great book to give to the impressionable, bright kids in your life. It has just the right mix of philosophy and adventure to inspire young people to question the world around them and the stories they're raised with. Link, Link to official book site

 
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Banner ads work subliminally

Posted by Cory Doctorow, May 20, 2007 6:20 AM |
A study in the Journal of Consumer Research suggests that although web-readers may not click through the banner ads on the pages we browse, we do submilinally register the products advertised there. What's more, the subliminal impression we gather is positive:
To test this, they asked students to read a multipage essay under the assumption that they'd be answering questions on the essay's content. Instead, the students were ultimately quizzed about a fictitious brand of camera, Pretec, that had appeared in banner ads on the pages that contained the essay. Different pools of students were exposed to Pretec ads zero, five, or 20 times.

Afterwards, when asked about their negative feelings towards the brand, the number of exposures made absolutely no difference. In contrast, those students asked about their positive feelings towards the brand saw those feelings increase in a linear fashion based on the number of exposures. In fact, the authors noted that the positive vibes still appeared to be going up after 20 exposures, leading them to wonder where this effect might start leveling off.

Link (via Digg)
 
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Objectophiles who harbor passionate sexual love for buildings and steam-engines

Posted by Cory Doctorow, May 20, 2007 6:16 AM |
Der Spiegel has an article on the theories of Volkmar Sigusch, a German researcher whose studies of "neo-sexuality" have led him to assemble case-studies of men and women who fall in deep, passionate, sexual love with objects, from the Berlin Wall and the Twin Towers to a toy steam engine.
Back in 1979, Eklöf tied the knot with the Berlin Wall and legally changed her name to mark the occasion ("Mauer" means "Wall" in German). Ever since she was eight years old, Sandy K. was hopelessly in love with New York's Twin Towers. Neither of these two monumental lovers were known for being particularly talkative. Nor did they seem to be blessed with qualities of seduction. But to their admirers, the buildings were male, sexy and extremely desirable.

For 25-year-old Sandy, the attraction to things is so overpowering, she confesses: "When it comes to love, I am only attracted to objects. I couldn't imagine a love affair with a human being."

Link (via Making Light)

(Photo thumbnail taken from a larger image by Anne Schönharting/Ostkreuz)

 
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DMCA Karaoke: Y-M-C-A for copyfighters

Posted by Cory Doctorow, May 20, 2007 6:06 AM |
Jim sez, "TradeMark (aka Mark Gunderson), possibly best known for his work with Evolution Control Committee and the legal kefuffle surrounding Rocked By Rape, has released 'DMCA Karaoke,' a YouTube video taking on the DMCA."

This looks like it's been around for a while, but it's definitely worth a look. Link (Thanks, Jim)

Update: Lachlan sez, "There's a higher quality version of the DMCA Karaoke video than the one on YouTube, which makes the lyrics a lot easier to read."

 
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May 20, 2007
a day later » May 21, 2007