Results tagged “list”

Zombies are everywhere. They’re in our movies, in books (where they’ve even begun eating their way into classic public domain literature), in our Comic-Con wishlists, and now they’re attempting to hitch a ride cross-country.

Or, they’re at least looking to nosh some cross-country traveler’s brains.

Well, we’re not going to let that happen…to at least one of you. And that one person is: Bobby M. Congratulations, Bobby! We’ve shipped you the audio editions of Max Brooks’ Zombie Survival Guide (to help you survive any zombie-infested trip) and World War Z, a star-studded full-cast audio treatment that will serve as a reminder of why zombie preparedness is so important. It’s also fun for Halloween and camping trips!

But don’t let that dissuade you from making a trip. We asked everyone to list three household items that they would bring on a trip to prepare them for crossing paths with hordes of the undead. Your answers ranged from deadly (a .357 with hollow points), to menacing (gardening equipment), to practical (Neosporin), to insane (a rubber duckie).

We’ve run through your items and broken them down by household category, making it easier to pack in case you have to leave in a hurry. We want each and every one of you to make it to Comic-Con this year as alive as possible. With that in mind, your recommended household items are as follows:

Though the name is Comic-Con, it’s about much more than just comics. It’s about the science fiction and fantasy genres, television shows and big budget movies give sneak peeks, and stars from all over the media spectrum find a way to make an appearance. So what began as a really cool gathering for Comics has evolved into more of a pop culture convention that adheres to a few genres.

One of the more interesting additions to Comic-Con International is the CCI Independent Film Festival. The film festival offers you the opportunity to view many, many hours of quality original films, most of them short films. In fact, it’s getting to the point where you could conceivably show up just for the film festival.

With that in mind, I culled through the offerings and attempted to pick out one film per category per day that sounded like it might stand above the rest. Naturally, our actual mileage may vary, but these films struck a chord. So if you are going and aren’t sure what you want to see, why not take my guide into consideration.

Finally, before we jump in I’d just like to point out that this was incredibly difficult to pull off. There are many, many fantastic-sounding films on the docket, so please understand I’m not trying to throw any of them under the bus. In a few cases, I picked more than one film per category. Once because they both sounded too good to pass up and once because that particular category dominates the whole day and boiling one day down to one film seemed silly.

And with that said, let’s get on with the show…

Carrying on from Saturday’s post, I give you the rest of my top sci fi thriller movies…

Calling Sunshine an environmental disaster film in space doesn’t quite do it justice. It’s a film about consequences, scientific difficulties, and disaster.

Among the troubles faced by the crew are maneuvering the space ship through space (it isn’t as easy as Star Wars and Star Trek would have us believe…also not nearly as much fun), solar radiation, and decisions about rescue ops vs. greater-good ops (so to speak). The crew of the Icarus are on a journey to the sun, well, to near the sun anyway in an attempt to reinvigorate the dying star and secure a future for humanity on Earth. Along the way they pick up a distress signal from another ship and make the decision to alter course, rescue those aboard and whatever else might be on the stranded ship worth salvaging. As this puts their original mission in a bit of jeopardy, it is not a popular move will all of the crew. As it turns out, it not only puts Earth in serious peril, but also the crew of the Icarus, as they have added a serial killer to their ranks as a result of the rendezvous. And while that might sound as if that sort of storyline has been done to death, Sunshine keeps things tense and the outcome of the mission is constantly in doubt.

All that is fine and makes for a great movie, but what I really love about Sunshine, and why I think all you true science fiction fans out there should make it a point to see this film, is how far the makers of this film went to attempt to use credible science, or credible scientific speculation, in the story. And that’s something I think any fan of this genre should support. Though the rest of the story makes from some pretty tasty icing on this cake.

I was wandering around my Netflix queue and all the recommendations that they had for me, when this topic came to mind: how many Science Fiction Thrillers are there? And of those, how many would I actually recommend? And so I committed fingers to the keyboard and produced the list below.

Just a quick word, I say Thrillers, but I originally wanted to say horror. Finding honest-to-goodness science fiction horror can be a chore. Finding good science fiction horror can be even harder. Many of the movies on these lists (I’d peg at least 7 of them) are actual sci fi horror. With a few of them, the horror might be a little weak, but the feeling of suspense and dread are strong enough that I wanted to keep them here. So I went with calling this a sci fi thriller list.

Call ‘em whatever you want, but if you like you like your science fiction with a dark tint and foreboding atmosphere, then you should find a few goodies below. More to follow tomorrow.

Enjoy (I sure did)!

Cube is the natural evolution of the haunted house story into the science fiction realm. A group of strangers awaken in a square room, having been abducted seemingly at random from their lives. The room moves at regular intervals, but they don’t know where. On every side is a portal that leads to another room of equal dimensions and inscribed on each side of the portal doors is a mathematical sequence that determines whether or not the rooms are safe.

Safe? Oh yes, because most of these other cubed rooms will kill you. Save for those few safe rooms, each is booby-trapped with new and inventive ways eliminate any one who steps inside. The problem is that the strangers don’t realize any of this, they have to figure it out as they go while trying desperately to escape.

It would have been easy to sit back and let the body count take care of the movie, but Cube doesn’t rest on those laurels, slowly but surely the characters become paranoid and stressed and eventually being working against each other. And the ending? Well, you’ll just have to see for yourself.

Oh, a word of warning, there were two other Cube movies made after this one: Cube: Hyperspace and Cube Zero. Avoid these. Oh, they’re horrific, all right…but in a totally different sense of the word. You’ve been warned.

Perhaps I should qualify that statement before a vast moan arises from the ranks of aspiring Del Rey authors. To be precise, it’s not that we’re publishing too many books; if pressed to delete some from the 2009 list I’d have a very hard time complying. But I’ve just spent all week writing what seemed like eight hundred and ninety-seven TIs for the fall ‘09 titles and am utterly exhausted.

What’s a TI? It stands for Title Information sheet, and it is the most important document an editor will ever create for his or her book—yea, even more important than the contract request or the editorial revision letter.

Its primary users are the sales force. The TIs provide our reps core information on each title in one succinct document, which they will refer to again and again as they make sales calls on booksellers and other accounts. Under the heading Keynote, for example, we give them a one-line description of the book. Under Positioning Statement we tell them how the book fits into the Del Rey list and try to give a sense of its relative importance within the season. And under Key Selling Points we give them reasons that they can pass along to their customers as to why this book will sell.

Aspiring authors can catch an editor’s eye by thinking in these terms.

[more after the jump]