Here’s some A/B comparison testing. Here’s Planet Cell covering Slowdive’s cover of Syd Barrett’s “Golden Hair”:
It’s pretty good…up until the end, when it becomes a sort of strident mess.
By contrast, this live version of Slowdive doing the piece themselves at the Best Kept Secret festival (which I’ve posted here before) just takes it to an entirely new level at the end, all the parts of the band meshing together for a soaring climax.
For those who still haven’t backed the new Mystery Science Theater 3000, they just roared past their $5.5 million goal to make 12 episodes and they still have (as of this writing) 13 hours left to go.
I previously covered The Gizmoplex, but here are few of the more interesting tidbits about Season 13 that have been revealed since the campaign launch:
If you haven’t backed the Kickstarter yet, now would be a good time…
Two more Borderlands Little Books:
Here’s an item I picked up a while back that I’ve only just gotten around to blogging about:
(Moorcock, Michael) Cawthorn, James. The Stormbringer Sessions. Jayde Designs/Savoy Books, 2021. First edition hardback, an oversized graphic novel format. #30 of 100 numbered copies, a Fine copy in a Fine dust jacket and a Fine slipcase, with a sheet replicating the cover art laid in. A graphic novel reprinting Cawthorn’s rough sketch’s for Michael Moorcock’s Elric: The Book of Stormbringer, a much more complete and elaborate graphic novel adaptation of the concluding Elric book than the version published by Savoy Books in 1976. At £100 plus transatlantic shipping, it’s a pricey item, but with such a small limitation (with only an additional 100 trade copies) for a Moorcock item, I thought it was better to snap it up when I could (and indeed, all copies are now sold out).
The scan chops off the very bottom of the cover, because that was all that would fit on my scanner.
The slipcase is embossed with a red foil version of Moorcock’s eight-arrowed chaos symbol:
Picked up another signed Sturgeon first:
Sturgeon, Theodore. Without Sorcery. Prime Press, 1948. First edition hardback, a Near Fine copy with slight bumping at head, heel and points and a tickmark and circled “A+” next to “Maturity” on the title page, in a Very Good+ dust jacket with edgewear and crinkling at head, heel and points, rubbing along edges one thin streak of discoloration to spine (not affecting any text), slight haze rubbing to front cover, and age darkening and dust staining to white rear cover, signed by Sturgeon. Sturgeon’s first short story collection (and first “real” book). Diskin, Theodore Sturgeon: A Primary and Secondary Bibliography, A54. Currey, page 473 (state B, trade issue). Chalker/Owings, page 352. Kemp, The Anthem Series, page 129. Bleiler, Checklist (1978), page 189 (not in the 1948 edition). Locke, Anatomy of Wonder, page 208. Barron, Anatomy of Wonder 4, 3-173. Bought for $50 off eBay.
And here’s the conclusion of our (sorta) Godzilla Week on Futuramen, The Honest Trailer for Godzilla vs. Kong:
Hopefully more book geeking starting tomorrow.
So back at the beginning of 2020, I found out that there was a Godzilla in Hell comic book miniseries, for which a different professional artist painted every page of an issue, and that Bob Eggleton did the paintings for issue #2. I like Godzilla, I liked the idea, and I like Bob’s work, so I contacted him to see if any of the paintings were available. Some were.
So I bought one for what I think is an extremely modest sum for an artist of Bob’s stature.
Then it took me another year to buy, assemble, and frame the work. (Framing art is freaking expensive.) But I think the end result is quite nice:
I don’t have a lot of original art because I spend so much on books. But it’s nice to be able to afford the occasional piece…
Echodrone has a new album, Resurgence out. I bounced off the first tracks I heard off it, but this one I like:
As you can tell, I liked Godzilla vs. Kong, but I can’t deny that there are a few, ahem, scientific implausibilities in the film, and Screen Rants Pitch Meeting guy digs into those with gusto:
Of course, remember what franchise we’re talking about. Compared to “He must have programmed himself to get big!” (Jet Jaguar in Godzilla vs. Megalon), Godzilla vs. Kong‘s leaps in plausibility are mere hopscotch…
Some nine years ago, I published this post on Andrew Ferguson’s NYRSF piece on unpublished R. A. Lafferty works. These included:
I also knew about the unpublished “In a Green Tree” novels:
(A project fifth volume, In the Akrokeraunian Mountains 1978-1990, was evidently started but never completed.)
I was also aware of the third and fourth volumes in the Coscuin Chronicles series:
However, this wiki (evidently created by Ferguson) includes still more novels I haven’t heard about before:
Not listed there, and only listed on a couple of dubious webpages, so I have my doubts as to whether it actually exists, is The Giant Ratchet of Sumatra (with Sharon Scott). There is a reference to a first chapter manuscript in the University of Tulsa archives, but I see no sign that it had ever been completed.
Excluding the dubious and unfinished, by my count that’s fourteen unpublished Lafferty novels…