J. Michael Straczynski has quitely woken up the Babylon 5 fan base with – wait for it, wait for it – a call to arms to show Warner Bros. that there’s interest in Babylon 5 – remastering the existing material for the future, and perhaps doing something new with it down the road – by using the hashtag #FreeBabylon5 on Twitter and Facebook.
This is an excellent idea on so many fronts.
Just one of those things I had to exorcise from my brain.… Read more
I’m confirmed as a panelist at Konsplosion, this September in Fort Smith, Arkansas. The scheduling here is a bit tricky: I’ve been committed to this year’s OVGE since… well… last year’s OVGE. This year’s OVGE is the tenth anniversary show, the tables are already reserved, and I can’t really not go.
So the trick here is this: Konsplosion runs September 20th through 22nd. I will do three panels – probably back to back! – on the 22nd: Doctor Who 50th Anniversary, Brit Sci-Fi that isn’t Doctor Who, and the Early History of Video Games. I will have my books and DVDs there to sell/sign between panels. (The books and DVDs will also be available at OVGE the day before.)
I will not have a table at Konsplosion, but my good friends at the Facebook group River Valley Time Lords will have one. Basically, if you’re anywhere in the western half of Arkansas and you like time traveling police boxes, you probably need to be joining that group rightaboutnowish. Big Things are being planned in this area. This area needs cool geeky stuff, and I’m proud to have even a small hand in helping to make some of that stuff happen.
Anyway, that’s the update. Stay tuned!… Read more
Thanks to all who have bought the unofficial Doctor Who Storybundle thus far – the feedback’s been great so far.
If you like my occasional Whovian musings, also check out my fellow authors’ sites (and their other books):
See what I said about good company? And quite a few mentions on the web:
Thanks to everyone who has partaken so far – spread the word, there are only 12 days and change left! Do it in the name of peace and sanity and affordable ebooks!
Also: please remember to write reviews on sites such as Amazon and Goodreads, not only of my books but the others you read in the Who Storybundle. As I said in an earlier post, for those of us trying to hit escape velocity, break out of the orbit of our old lives and become full-time writers, you’re writing our new resumes when you review our books. If nobody reviews a book, it kinda looks like no one’s read it either.
Holding out for a physical copy? Hit me up at Glitchcon in two weeks, I’m always happy to sign ’em.… Read more
Exciting news: VWORP!1 is back in ebook form as part of the Unofficial Doctor Who Storybundle from Storybundle.com.
The official press release is after the jump. … Read more
This has been bugging me a bit. Everyone is going on about this trailer, and don’t get me wrong, it’s dizzying and eye-popping and all that.
WOW… scary, right? I totally cringe when the shuttle takes a hit. But now I know what’s been bothering me. What is it? … Read more
After the collections of Star Trek and Star Wars music, this was pretty much inevitable, wasn’t it? This collection includes musical tributes to the world’s longest-running sci-fi series, taking in themes from both the classic and new series. In fact, it’s not unusual to hear themes from both ends of the spectrum within the same track. And as always, it’s lovingly turned into NES-style chipmusic – a real trip back in time. What if there had been an awesome 8-bit Doctor Who game, and this was the music from it? … Read more
To be fair, this is not a franchise that’s short on awesome video game music, but with this release, Kasatochi rolls the tape back a bit and beeps up the music of the three movies of the original trilogy, with an emphasis on the first one. Yes, there will be a prequel trilogy album; no, I’m not sure exactly when just yet.
Go grab it from the dedicated Kasatochi page; you can see the track listing after the jump. … Read more
The past week or so has been interesting in the world of Doctor Who fandom. Honestly, I’ve almost forgotten that we’re supposed to be taking bets on who replaces Matt Smith at this point. On the off-chance that you’re not really a Doctor Who fan yourself… well, first off, what on Earth are you doing at this web site, which is fairly dripping with Doctor Who?
But, beyond that, all you really need to know is this: during the 1960s, Doctor Who was produced in black & white on video, and the series was made almost year-round to the tune of one 25-minute episode per week. The videotapes were transferred to a more universal medium – film – and sold abroad, often dubbed into the local language. From various points in Europe to the Middle East and beyond, these films were “bicycled” from broadcaster to broadcaster, a practice that was still in force as recently as my early years in the TV biz (I distinctly remember that, at the station where I worked in the early ’90s, episodes of Mama’s Family were bicycled from station to station; no, I don’t know why either).
And then, in the late ’60s, staring down the barrel of an impending change of video format with little reasonable expectation that programs recorded in the older, lower-resolution format could ever be exploited commercially, and knowing that yet a further new format would be introduced in due course (namely, color television), the British Broadcasting Corporation issued internal instructions to its videotape archive: get rid of these old shows. Get rid of everything that isn’t of obvious historic value (such as footage of the Queen’s coronation). In the BBC’s view, there was no point in wasting all of that valuable space to preserve programming which had no commercial future.
If only they’d known. … Read more
So I’ve been listening to the recently remastered, reissued and expanded version of the soundtrack of the Star Trek: The Next Generation two-parter The Best Of Both Worlds lately. Wonderful stuff. The original 1991 release of that soundtrack was one of the first compact discs I ever bought, even though I didn’t have a CD player at the time. What I did have was two worn-out cassettes I’d bought (because I was listening to it that much), and a job at a radio station that afforded me access to a CD player and a cassette deck that would allow me to make as many tape copies as I needed (so I could wear them out too).
In listening to the reissue, with its crisper sound, I was struck by how, if ever there was a point in ST:TNG’s normally staid musical landscape (though not by the composers’ choice) where they needed to break out of the producer-imposed box and use some blaster beam, this was it. So I tried a few subtle amendments to a few key points in the soundtrack from part one. (During the infamous cliffhanger music, however, I was a bit less than subtle. There’s nothing about that cue that’s subtle.)
Listen and enjoy!
[audio:https://www.thelogbook.com/earl/podcast/beamofbothworlds.mp3]
If you’ve been following my other music project at all, you’re in for a treat next week. Not only will the next Kasatochi release land with a resounding digitized thud on Monday, but it will be joined by a similar effort from Rhindle The Red, so you’ll be getting twice the hits-to-bits treatment that you would get on a typical Monday. (Let’s face it – Mondays suck so hard, it’s not a bad idea to call for backup.)
In both cases, both Kasatochi and Rhindle will be embarking on an interesting experiment: each release will turn an entire classic album into chiptunes, from the first track to the last, in 
the original running order. Suffice to say, if you like either of the groups in question, you’ll probably get at least a chuckle out of this. Further full-album chiptune conversions are also in the works, though how many more depends on how well these go down. Be here Monday – chances are, you already know the track listings! … Read more
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