Looks like the good old cover art debate has reared its head again, with Rick Kleffel ranting passionately about the need to abandon ’slabs with abs’ and ‘Fabio-alike’ cover art, especially in the fantasy genre, and the always lucid Andrew ‘SFBC’ Wheeler deflating the issue with the perspective of a man who works in publishing - those covers get used because those covers sell books.

You want my opinion on this issue? Well, I don’t really have one. Sure, I can appreciate a good piece of cover art, and I can see when one is cliched and out of kilter with the book’s content. But it’s what’s beneath the cover that really interests me, and if the fiction is good enough I don’t give a damn what’s on the front and back. I’ve never understood this idea that people are embarrassed to be seen reading certain books in public - I’m not saying it doesn’t happen, I’m just saying that I can’t imagine it ever happening to me.

That having been said, I spent my teenage years as an RPG geek who read every spin-off novel he could get his hands on, so maybe I self-medicated against chainmail bras and leather nappies with aversion therapy early on. Then again, those who’ve seen what I look like are probably well aware that the last thing anyone sat opposite me on a train is going to notice about me is the book I’m reading at the time!

Thanks to a merciful let-up in the weather last Sunday, I actually took the camera outdoors. Which means you get a refreshing break from pictures of my computers:

Continue reading “Friday Photo Blogging: the lion and the unicorn”

Like any other denizen of teh intarwebs, I love a legitimate freebie. So I was pretty chuffed to discover (via BoingBoing) that DC Comics are getting wise to viral internet marketing, by releasing the first issues of a number of their best Vertigo titles in free-to-download PDF format.

Continue reading “Free DC Comics PDFs, and something to read them on”

Yours truly went up to the Big Smoke last night, to attend my first BSFA monthly gathering. And a lot of fun it was too.

Continue reading “September BSFA meet - Judith Clute”

Kind of following on from this week’s mega-rant on the state of subgenres, some further thoughts on cultural diversity in entertainment have raised their heads. Continue reading “Dude, where’s my subculture?”

Apologies to regular readers are in order, methinks. Continue reading “Oh, the shame! The shame!”

As the DRM wars heat up, and the rise of peer-to-peer sharing shows little sign of stopping (despite ineffective and draconian litigation against children and people who don’t even own computers), the smarter computer games companies are looking at new ways to monetise their products. Continue reading “Product placement”

Continue reading “Album Review: ‘10,000 Days’ by Tool”

Robots are getting everywhere these days; hell, the government of South Korea reckon every household there will have one by the year 2020. But it’s not just helpful domestic tasks they are being created to accomplish - now lazy graffiti artists can use them to spray with an accuracy of line that a shaky human hand would find hard to achieve.

Continue reading “Use robots to fight the system”

You may think your band make a big evil noise. And maybe they do. But this lot are *real* heavy metal… Continue reading “Musician’s corner: scrap metal music and recording techniques”