Science Fiction and Reptiles: A Very Strange Email, Updates, and a Question

(There are two sections for this post.  The first is about SF and reptiles and the second is on updates about what I'm up to and a question that I'd appreciate answers for.)

I. Science Fiction and Reptiles
I'm hazarding a guess that the following email is a joke, since the author's name is Warren Peece (i.e. War and Peace).  The content, however, is interesting enough to approach.

Here's the email:

Is it my imagination or are there a lot of lizard stories out there?
I just read a really creepy and sexy piece, but insightful and funny,
where the protagonist goes from starting out as comet and ends up
reptilian!
Pretty terrific - it's called "Modern Malice"
Just curoius,
Warren

I've never heard of the story referenced in the email, but there have been a few lizard-related
stories out there in the last few years (well, some of them were dinosaur stories, but so be it).  Plus, one of the top science fiction shows at the present moment is about lizard people invading Earth--V, in case you didn't know.

The thing that gets me about the email is that it isn't the usual kind of spam that I received in my inbox.  This particular email is remarkably cogent, and only seems to be selling me something that is poorly defined (the story mentioned).

So, the question I have is this:  what stories have you read lately about lizards or other reptilian creatures?  Let me know in the comments!  Maybe there's a trend going on that nobody realizes is there.

II. Updates and Things
I've had some issues writing things for this blog (let alone for anything else) lately.  There are three reasons for this:

1. School
   The semester is practically over, but I have a 25-page paper left to write and 30 papers to grade (that's about 220 pages of stuff to mark).
2. Lack of Inspiration
   I have some ideas, but I'll talk about those in #3.  My problem has been in finding things that haven't been talked about elsewhere or that aren't too simple/boring/old/uninteresting.  Hopefully it's just the winter season at work.
3. Biting More Than I Can Chew
   At least four things I'm working on right now require more research and thought than I originally hoped.  As a result, they're not ready, and probably won't be until next week.  I don't know if anyone else has ever felt like this about what they're doing, but it is sort of frustrating when you start on a project that you think will be done in a few hours, and realize that actually you need to spend another week thinking about it before you can get it in good shape.

That said, I do have some things lined up.  I'm going to talk about the recently released Japanese live-action adaptation of Space Battleship Yamato (a.k.a. Star Blazers to U.S. audiences), followed by a discussion of live-action anime adaptations and why films like Transformers and upcoming adaptations seem to work so well.

I'm also starting to consider submitting some of my articles to places like Strange Horizons and other magazines.  Why?  Because if I'm going to be a critic and an academic, I might as well start getting myself out there.  That doesn't mean the quality of work posted here will lapse, but it does mean that some things may be sent to magazines first to see if they'll bite.  Either way, content will keep appearing here.

That said, I do have a question for anyone willing to answer it:  which content do you most enjoy on this blog, and which content do you least enjoy?  Honesty is appreciated.

Alright, I'm out.  See you all tomorrow with something other than random complaining!

Related Posts by Categories

Widget by Hoctro | Jack Book