tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-176806372008-08-14T11:14:50.804-04:00One Who Webs Weirdlyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09963396965101976175noreply@blogger.comBlogger14125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17680637.post-17452136492032940412007-01-01T20:25:00.000-05:002007-06-20T20:31:33.947-04:00

The Earthling blog will return in fall 2007. In the meantime, our creator guy has been honored with the task of revamping and reinventing Weird Tales, the world's oldest fantasy magazine. Head on over and check it out!

One Who Webs Weirdlyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09963396965101976175noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17680637.post-1144210741080068542006-04-04T23:30:00.000-04:002006-04-07T14:53:04.583-04:00

Carnegie Mellon University's Robot Hall of Fame has announced that its 2006 induction ceremony will be held in June at the RoboBusiness robotics industry convention, just across the Monongohela River from CMU's main campus in Pittsburgh. And once again, the Hall is accepting nominations from the public -- hey, that's us! -- to aid in the judges' process of honoring the most significant real and

One Who Webs Weirdlyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09963396965101976175noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17680637.post-1144435573125397512006-03-20T13:40:00.000-05:002006-04-07T14:51:01.053-04:00

...because today is Earth Day! Woo hoo! Let's hear it for the Blue Planet! All together now: We're Number Three! We're Number Three! Okay, you're confused. Isn't April 22 Earth Day? The answer is: Yes. But today was Earth Day first. Iowa-born peace activist John McConnell first came up with the idea of a day to honor our whole planet in 1969. The concept was simple: to institute the first

One Who Webs Weirdlyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09963396965101976175noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17680637.post-1144206903615327622006-02-23T22:53:00.000-05:002006-04-07T00:22:51.693-04:00

Holly Black's 2004 debut novel, Tithe, riled up readers both pro and con with its story of a moody, foul-mouthed, cigarette-smoking 16-year-old from Philadelphia who learns that she's not really a blond-haired Asian girl with a drunken rock-musician mom, but a green-skinned pixie from the Unseelie Court of the faeries. Fans loved the book for its unflinchingly visceral look at the angst-ridden

One Who Webs Weirdlyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09963396965101976175noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17680637.post-1136831471524837842006-01-09T13:12:00.000-05:002006-04-07T00:34:22.603-04:00

Earthling correspondent and speculative-fiction writer/blogger/editor Matthew Kressel took some time out from his busy schedule over the holidays to dive into a pile of recent releases. What did he find? Everything from a true history of alien conspiracies to novels of dark fantasy and Caribbean deviltry. The Cult of Alien Gods: H.P. Lovecraft and Extraterrestrial Pop Culture, by Jason

One Who Webs Weirdlyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09963396965101976175noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17680637.post-1134065167262361262005-12-08T12:38:00.000-05:002006-04-07T00:26:03.966-04:00

So I'm wandering through Netflix, and I see Slaughterhouse-Five, and I realize that while I've read the book several times, I've never seen the movie. It seems like a good time to do it, as I recently rewatched Donnie Darko, and if there's one story that truly presages Donnie's screwed-up time-travel tripping, it's Billy Pilgrim's life spent "unstuck in time." So I click the Add button. Netflix

the philosopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07177238992738420588noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17680637.post-1133468704752018692005-12-01T14:47:00.000-05:002006-04-07T00:38:11.983-04:00

Alas, the birthplace of civilization continues to produce real-life horror stories. Two days ago, the news media reported that German-born archaeologist Susanne Osthoff had been kidnapped by Iraqi insurgents as a hostage to use against the German government. But aside from the report on Science magazine's website, the American news stories -- which have been more concerned with the roughly

the philosopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07177238992738420588noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17680637.post-1133380747345539842005-11-30T09:36:00.000-05:002006-04-07T00:29:51.616-04:00

Can't stand the artificiality of the modern-day holiday season? Despair not -- there's an alternative, a more relaxed tradition that's coming back into vogue two thousand years after its first heyday. No, not Solstice -- Festivus! The holiday made its modern debut on an episode of Seinfeld, where we saw Frank Costanza plague his son George come wintertime with a twisted celebration involving an

One Who Webs Weirdlyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09963396965101976175noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17680637.post-1133285167190887102005-11-29T11:54:00.000-05:002006-04-07T00:40:41.996-04:00

Reuters is reporting that a newly published letter written decades ago by C.S. Lewis shows that the author wouldn't have approved of Disney's new movie adaptation. Alas, it's a simple-minded snippet of journalism that completely fails to do its job. C.S. Lewis... was "absolutely opposed" to a live action version of his stories... Although Lewis, who died in 1963, said he would have considered

the philosopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07177238992738420588noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17680637.post-1132638663141822902005-11-22T11:30:00.000-05:002006-04-07T00:46:21.333-04:00

It would be oversimplistic, perhaps, to call this season's crop of femme-oriented dark fantasy novels "the daughters of Anne Rice." After all, the four listed below vary significantly in concept, tone, and likely reader age. And yet all of them are written at least in part with one common goal in mind: to excite readers with the thought of otherworldly lovers awaiting in the shadows. Kitty and

One Who Webs Weirdlyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09963396965101976175noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17680637.post-1133384014216887862005-11-19T19:45:00.001-05:002006-04-07T00:44:42.566-04:00

There's a geek convention or three going on somewhere in the U.S. every weekend of the year, and this weekend it's Anime USA, the annual Japanese-cartoon fest in Tysons Corner, Virginia, a strip-mall suburb just outside Washington, D.C. Of course, at the same time, Farscape fans are getting together in California and s.f. literati are lining up for David Brin's autograph in Arizona -- so what

the storytellerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00009420638605468633noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17680637.post-1133291928371421222005-11-10T13:58:00.000-05:002006-04-07T00:51:38.376-04:00

Need some literary stocking stuffers for a geek? Here are six smart-but-breezy reads including something for everyone, from the tormented goth to the comic-book fanboy: Go to Hell: A Heated History of the Underworld, by Chuck Crisafulli & Kyra Thompson (Simon Spotlight, $15.95, paperback) -- Tour the land of the damned with this light-hearted beginner's guide to hell. The authors catalog the

One Who Webs Weirdlyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09963396965101976175noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17680637.post-1132766629285569362005-10-26T16:36:00.000-04:002005-11-23T16:42:48.223-05:00

I really, truly wish I hadn't read these two stories -- the one about the Secret Service having long ago convinced printer manufacturers to build covert document-ID technology into their laser printers, and the one about Japan's phone company building a "videogame" headset that uses electrical impulses to direct your body's physical movements -- within ten minutes of each other. Anyone who says

the philosopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07177238992738420588noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17680637.post-39612235759409936162005-10-21T11:10:00.000-04:002008-08-14T11:11:32.974-04:00

The first time I walked into the Eye of Horus -- Pittsburgh's most prominent occult shop until it closed a few years back -- I quickly began to feel like General Custer decked out in full uniform, popping into a Native American tribal council to ask cheerfully after everyone's health. As four or five pairs of eyes turned suspiciously in my direction, I grew very aware of the fact that I was

One Who Webs Weirdlyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09963396965101976175noreply@blogger.com