Promo Bits: Game of Thrones (Season Three)

The news that Game of Thrones is "in production" is nothing new.  That doesn't mean this little video from HBO isn't exciting!

Enjoy!

Now the most important question of the day:
How much are you looking forward to Season Three?

Published: "In the Shadows of the Empire of Coal" in Stupefying Stories 1.11!

Guess what?  My coalpunk short story, "In the Shadows of the Empire of Coal," was recently published in Issue 1.11 of Bruce Bethke's Stupefying Stories!  I'm super excited about it (duh) and how you'll all snatch up a copy ($1.99 on Kindle or Nook -- iTunes links pending still).

If you really love me, you'll buy a copy and write a review.

Excuse me while I go squee in the corner!

Support Triumph Over Tragedy: An Anthology for Storm Sandy Survivors!

I just donated, and you should too.  Need I say more?

Fine.  I will.

Triumph Over Tragedy is an SF/F anthology containing short stories from Elizabeth Bear, Robert Silverberg, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Tobias Buckell, Alex Bledsoe, Timothy Zahn, Philip Athans, and about two-dozen other folks.  In other words, there is a lot of freaking stuff in this book from a lot of freaking great folks.

The best part is that all the proceeds go to the Red Cross to help victims of Sandy.  R. T. Kaelin (the editor) is trying to raise $10,000.  They're at $1,234, with 27 days to go (that number will probably change by tomorrow).

So go donate.  December is the month of giving.  Some folks need $50 more than I do.

Pixar Feature Films (from the worst to the best) -- A List That Will Get Me Killed

No long introductions necessary.  The following are all of Pixar's feature films in order from favorite to least favorite.  I've grouped the films into degrees of "great" for a specific reason:  almost all of Pixar's films are good by any measure.

Note:  I have left Brave off the list because I have no seen it yet.  I cannot possibly judge a film I have not seen, now can I?  I'll edit this list in the future.

Here goes:

Airport Shuffle -- Or, Hey, Airports in X-Files are Weird Places

I've been re-watching X-Files lately and it dawned on me how strange the world looked back then. For example, in one of the 1st season episodes ("E.B.E."), Scully walks right into an airport terminal and purchases two tickets (one with her credit card and one with cash). The desk lady says to her "You can catch your plane right over there," pointing to the actual gate at which Scully would board her plane.

Think about that for a moment. When was the last time you could do that in an airport? Granted, some of you are older than I am, so you have better memories of the pre-9/11 world. I, however, didn't do a lot of flying pre-2001 because I was a) not quite an adult yet, and b) not financially well off (by that I mean my mother didn't have a lot of money, as we spent part of my youth on welfare

Adventures in Teaching: The Dystopia Lit. Syllabus Reading List

My "The Dystopian Tradition and American Anxiety" syllabus is finalized and submitted to the English department for approval.  Good news, no?  In the meantime, I'd like to share the reading list for this course, just so everyone can see what I've assigned for these poor little undergrads to read.  There are still a few gaps, which I will mention at the end.  If you have any suggestions for historically relevant essays and the like to fill those gaps, please let me know in the comments.

Here it is:

Where Have I Been?

Readers of this blog, or folks randomly appearing on the home page, will notice that my last post was on Oct. 8th.  That's a long time not to post so much as an update.  Surely I must have a good reason, right?

Actually, I do.  The last month has been one of the heaviest work periods of the semester, in part because October is the month of midterms.  Since I am a teacher, that means I've been grading papers for the past three weeks.  My grading pile only recently dropped below 100 papers (excepting in-class writing, which doesn't take as much time as essays and response papers).

But that's not all I've been up to.  This semester is also the last time I will ever take a graduate-level course, which means I made the conscious choice to ask for the one course I knew would load me with a lot of reading and writing work (this professor happens to be on my committee).  Throw in podcasting duties, personal life nonsense, the paper on the film adaptation of Cloud Atlas I have been working on, and other miscellaneous stuff like voting, etc. and you'll have a good idea why blogging has taken a side track for the time being.  In all honesty, I am probably working close to 80 hours a week, on average, which includes prepping for seminar, prepping lectures for five classes, grading papers for five classes, and so on and so forth.  Let it never be said that we teacher people don't work our asses off.

That said, I am not quitting.  Quite the contrary.  November is a considerably lighter month, since there are numerous holidays and the like here in the States.  I just wanted everyone to know that I didn't disappear into the night.

On that note, how is everyone doing?