Happy birthday to two terrific people,
goodnightlady and
clara_swift! May both of you enjoy a wonderful day today and many more to come!
A couple of notes...
* Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book is due out in the United States on September 30, 2008. Can I wait that long? It will be difficult. Dave McKean has already said it's much stronger than Coraline, and I adore that book.
Gaiman answers the question of the book's target audience here.
* Fyodor Bondarchuk is currently shooting a Russian science fiction epic entitled Inhabited Island. Rumor has it that it boasts one of the biggest budgets of any Russian film to date at $30 million. Release is scheduled for October 2008. The movie is based upon the 1971 novel
Prisoners of Power, a political satire of the Soviet regime written by science fiction legends
Arkady and Boris Strugatsky. I don't know how good the film will be, but if it leads new readers to discover
the Strugatsky brothers, I'll consider it a positive thing.
View the trailer.Visit the official film website. And a quote for the day:
Rule 3: Independent, stubborn thinking is the stock trait of a true evil scientist
A scientist who solicits the opinions of others, listens carefully to their suggestions, and acts on the recommendations wouldn’t seem very evil. Always ignore the advice of even your closest comrades, particularly when they offer sound suggestions like killing a nemesis quickly and verifying his or her death.
- from
Ten Simple Rules for Graduate Students in the Evil Sciences