Linkstorm: Not so much

Dunno how to start this one but...OMG! Enjoying this sci-fi and fantasy book flowchart from SF SIGNAL. Although it's been out there for a real while, the quirks still solves my indecisive episodes when looking through my shelves and ebook library.

See full size of the A Guide to Navigating NPR's Top 100 Science Fiction and Fantasy Books, here.

And yeah, kinda forgot to post here. Not saying I'm gonna start something regular now though, a post maybe now and then. Anyway, I'm currently reading Zoo by James Patterson - kinda interesting but the writing throws me off at times.

Enough of the banter, wouldn't want any trouble here. Also, I put a James Dashner spree on hold for my summer book list that I have to catch up with, real fast. Later.

All the reasons

Because MIBF, that's why. I, along with some friends, be going this Wednesday. Freaking out...freaking out! :)

*Apologies, this post unfortunately got past the mecha-metroid, fibre-filter electrobarriers. 

GRRM GRIND

I'll just post the pictures, they don't need any words to upset you as they did to me. Dear Lord.

While not short with the greens coming in with shiploads of book sales/royalties and other writing fees, among other moneymaking thingamajigs, George, rather his publishers, came and went to republish the literary egg that in time would hatch the biggest fantasy empire since Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. 

The Ice Dragon is dressed as a children's book (err juvenile fiction, as if it changes anything), while hiding inside the typical gritty desolation hand-in-hand with imaginative graphic present in ASOIAF. Already quite unlikely to its aspect genre, the book just got more edgier than that of the 2007 re-drawing. We have on our hand is a Salvatorean-Warcrafty mix that could easily have been bred by Peter Jackson and HBO.

It's awesome, really. Even the unused illustrations are breathtaking. But if you've read it before, then most probably you're having mixed feelings, and not for the better.

Amping up the grit and losing all the fairy tale flavor that it exudes. I don't know if I should feel sad or happy, but if history runs true, then I'd be both. You want to retain the original, yet you want that badass frexing dragon right there.

Well, it doesn't matter if they change the art or whatever, I'll still go back to the warm, homey comfort in Yvonne's drawings.

Let's go to Martin's procrastinating now. For sure we won't get the whole Westeros and the Know World's fill from ASIOAF, even with the Game of Thrones tv series and short stories combined. And Martin came up with a solution in the academic glory of The World of Ice and Fire.

It is a compendium of facts and entries on the previously only mentioned, better yet implied, historical and geographical mysteries in the canon. A sample entry can be seen on Martin's official website that downright destroyed the whole AC/BC dating system we have been using hitherto. Oh, the wiki's sure to rave.

These are just some for you to add to that growing GRRM altar you have at home. Well until you see these.

A seven times godsdamned pop-up book. It unfolds to a fucken' paper construct map-spread of Westeros and some of Essos, well minus the unseen parts in the tv series. So dumbed down to the people who thinks Dany's name is Khaleesi, sumptuous wife to the horsedude, it's called Game of Thrones: A Pop-up Guide to Westeros.

Speaking of maps. We also have The Lands of Ice and Fire, ten maps of the known world, even showing areas in Essos, Sothoryos and Ulthos that are still unmentioned in the books.

Also. George won't write a GoT episode on the upcoming Season 5. Sources say that he chose not to in order to focus on finishing the last books of this century's epic.

Oh please, oh please...

I'm actually kinda "prohibited" from posting in any of my blogs, probably coz of some work backlogs that mysteriously stacked up. I had no idea. But I'll tell you a better idea, THE 35th MANILA INTERNATIONAL BOOK FAIR! YEAAAAAAAAAAH!!!

RANT STARTS HERE

Also known as MIBF, it's one of the biggest and most popular in the handful of book fairs in the country, I know, so sad. Anyway, it's technically the first (and quite depressingly so, also the last) book fair I've been to, that being at age four. My parents did not buy me books, even though I specifically pointed at some Harry Potters at the time. Ended up going home with a huge dinosaur jigsaw puzzle and some rubber dinosaur figures. Not that bad, quite a fair trade really, but imagine if I've started reading back then. Things would've been different, well up to a degree maybe.

I would've been weirder, more secluded, and much and much more condescending than I am perfectly quite able to right now. Probably have a substantially greater amount of books that's obvious. Don't know I just feel like I've started late on reading or some of my other interests than what is considered necessary or normal. I became a bibliophile at 12, but reading other media like encyclopedias and stuff came earlier at three or four.

No, I didn't read alone at three, I got my parents or siblings read me the words and letters. Four however, I already started with school, so I was quite able to read some of the simpler parts, though indefinitely still can't pronounce Archaeopteryx at the time. In short, I just think it was a missed opportunity, but I don't blame anybody, not me nor my parents.

And this is one of the things I love musing, if it didn't happen then, it sure is horrendously straining my bookshelves now. I guess things just work their way around no matter how you try to stop or suppress them.

RANT ENDS

Among other things, MIBF is one of the greater points in my Subsidiary Bucket List (I have plenty of lists). Being quite far from the metro and being too lazy to go there and more than always being broke, things came topping one after the other, just like my articles. Hehehe.

Linkstorm: Allegory of Category

I've been writing a lot lately. Not that unusual, but I often go on a week to months long hiatuses - not having written a single word for any material. Going back, recently I've started sending articles to a local newspaper and just a few days ago let's just say I received some good news in turn.

Writing bi-weekly seems like a pretty good deal, much more since I'm also writing for the campus paper among a lot of other things. Anyway, I'm currently working on (hopefully for good this time) another story (I have more than 20 "drafts" and plots in stock as of the moment). And naturally, I get stumped on some areas staring at the bleak face of futility. 

That's when I load the cheat guns.

*For readers, the following lines are open for debate, and are deemed unhealthy by the dualistic personality and instability of the writer, he's a dumbass*

So, where do I go for some insights and walkthroughs? Yeah there's such a thing as walkthroughs in writing my sweet summer child, where'dya think your favorite YA novels come from? From your fave authors in their ethereal detachment? Nah, there's factories of books out there, not the publishing kind, the building sized mass writing floors kind. But this is not about that, I'm a conspiracist by nature and in my defense, I do love the my books have it be they are or they are not as genuinely written by someone or some group of people

WARNING! Beware. If you go to any of these sites, I will not be liable for your getting trapped in the mountains of tabbed pages with no horizon in sight. Proceed at your own risk.

INTERMEDIATE LEVEL
Symptoms: Finished with your spick-and-span introductory character POV and went to make a tomato cheese melt while contemplating how the book will end with your character killing the Nemean Quadra-Cerberus army.

Fantasy Faction is one of the best sites to find one of a kind bits on how to look at and what to look for fantasy and science fiction literature. And it's not just that, as what it says in the description, the site provides "fantasy book news, reviews and community for fans of modern fantasy".

The Candy: This site presents lots of comprehensive articles on almost all the basics and fundamentals in fantasy literature, both on knowing how to write and what to read.

                

        

DUMBASS LEVEL

Symptoms: Just published a steampunk ninja cats novel and wondering if steampunk wizard antelopes are the next big thing.

TV Tropes has an uncomfortable penchant for lampshades, so that should be good. But really, this site is the father of all twentieth century divorces, just right there with Cracked (another cyber vacuum). On its home page one can read "...the tricks of the trade for writing fiction", of which is basically what "tropes" are.

The Candy: Category. Character. Power. Problem. Technique. Plot. Direction. End. Money. Fame. Trope.

I will be posting a Dish before the week ends, hopefully I get to catch up also on my reading because I'm binge reading some mangas as of the moment. Later.

The Dish #1

So what's currently hot, aside from me that is. Anyway let's skip over that part, here we have some of my latest reads, and I must tell you that they are wonderful. Not that you won't find that out for yourself.

“Too much change is as destructive as too little. Only at the edge of chaos can complex systems flourish.” 

Really unexpected, but this turned out to be a more philosophical and horribly existential read than a dinosaur packed blood fountain. Don't get me wrong, because it also is, and we have Crichton to thank. 

It reminded me of my first Crichton experience, Congo, a tasteful, tasteful concoction of a hearty plate of gore mixed with an unrelenting sense of futility and urgency. Although here and there, one can see a semblance, if not a pattern, but it really doesn't matter since Crichton went and delivered. 

Like a fresh breeze, The Lost World related a unique view on extinction and the groundwork of life in its entirety. No, it's not a faith-inducing work, well not necessarily. Rather it speaks of interdependence and adaptation of communally aware species shadowed with human sentiment. But what do I know, read it yourself. 

I mean, read it now. Well after reading the rest of the post.

  “By the same token, if you use your mind and ponder well what I am telling you, you will realize that in not being everywhere, that is, in all those fascinating places, you are nearly nowhere at all.”

I did not read the whole book though, well not yet, but the one story I picked from another Lem masterpiece did not disappoint. Automatthew's Friend was truly remarkable. A short story of decent length, bordering from a Poe to a Lovecraft, it tells of an automaton (read: robot) who has an almost microscopic computer-robot friend, Alfred, that he has with him all the time. It's actually inside his metallic ear cavities. And it talks, is smart, can only be heard by Automatthew or whomever happens to have it lodged in their ear.

Less of the sci-fi babble, I am telling you, I have never read a story so depicting human emotion and posture. Finding himself in a very unbecoming situation, Automatthew was overcome with a fluctuating view of reality that is more than enhanced as well as insinuated by Alfred. I can't even begin to talk about how Lem talked about realities and existence. Just this, the what is real for one is not exactly what exists for another.

 Have this in not more than 15 or so pages and with a temperamental robot, what a great deal. But in all seriousness, I implore you to join me in every waking moment in being preoccupied from all events because of this little bugger.

  

As of the moment I'm reading Waiting For Godot, a play by Samuel Beckett. Among other things.

I'm shy and I don't like sappy things, yes this is my first post. Shut up.