WEIMAR WORLD SERVICE

Buy Me on eBay ... Apparently

2012-01-26T16:14:00.000-08:00

I actually rather enjoy finding eBay sellers who use my Starlog Project (aka the Starlog Internet Archive Project) as their descriptive text for issues of Starlog they're listing for sale. I'm pleased that the Starlog Project basically has become the go-to source for information on back issues of the late Starlog magazine.

The only annoying thing is that some of the sellers don't give credit to me or link to the Project. So I was pleased to stumble across this seller, who links prominently to my blog series. Thank you. (Then again, s/he accidentally listed the item for sale as being "Starlog Internet Archive Project: Starlog #9, October 1977: Logan's Run Spotli" which is being a little too literal and not literal enough. Thanks for the link; but people, of course, won't be buying the Starlog Internet Archive; they'll just be buying that issue of the magazine s/he has for sale. But whatever.)

And buy it you should (said Yoda). Hey, $1.99 and free shipping? It's a deal.

POW! Right to the Moon

2012-01-26T07:15:00.000-08:00

I wasn't sure it would happen, but I actually agree with the Grinch on something. Presidential candidate and GOP bad boy Newt Gingrich is promising to establish a permanent settlement on the moon, if he becomes president.

I don't agree with him about the president part; that would be a disaster of Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire proportions. But we should be on the moon, and we should have a space transportation system that works. And, yeah, I might even agree with him on the statehood thing.

My preference is for privatized space (see my article on Virgin Galactic in my free digital Galaxis magazine from last summer), but we should be out there. And yes, we should be talking about permanent colonization of the moon and other appropriate places in the solar system – and not just when we're shilling for votes of NASA workers.

Merkel: Decision Time for Europe

2012-01-25T18:53:00.000-08:00

German Chancellor Angela Merkel (my favorite conservative) continues to be, well, conservative, in the classic sense. She's reluctant to move from a solid course; she's not influenced by of-the-moment emotion. And she's being rock-solid clear: Europe's not getting out of this mess unless it seriously deals with its problems, focuses on growth, and curbs its spending appetite. She's right.

I saw The Iron Lady last week, and I thought it was pretty well done, albeit a very incomplete picture of the Thatcher agenda and the Thatcher years. But one thing that always bothered me about Margaret Thatcher was her willingness to appear cold and unfeeling toward the losers in British society.

Merkel is a conservative, but she's also the daughter of a Protestant Christian pastor. She is, like Thatcher, a scientist, though with better grades. And when she brought the free-market Free Democrats into her government after her reelection, she also curbed their more radical tendencies. She wasn't going to be the chancellor to cold-heartedly release the poor into a world of no help.

The press has treated her throughout this Euro mess as an obstacle. I won't pretend that she's done everything correctly, but she has been correct: The quick solutions (bail out Greece and Italy and Portugal and Ireland and Spain at any cost) would be expensive failures if those countries don't deal with their endemic corruption and uncompetitiveness.

She's right.

Does This LOOK Like a Rubblish Bin?

2012-01-22T17:19:00.000-08:00

I hadn't been intending to make this an ongoing feature of this blog, but nonetheless: Spotted in the restroom of the truly great Shanghai Dumpling King in San Francisco. The food was super delicious, the service great, my lunch companions wonderful. Bathroom signage, not so much.

Apparently, you must find some other place for your rubblish.

Ain't Coordinatin'

2012-01-19T06:49:00.000-08:00

The Super PAC formerly informally known as Stephen Colbert's Super PAC but that is now not run by him nor coordinating with him though it is being run by his pal Jon Stewart who says he's not coordinating because that would be wrong (are you following all of this), has issued a TV advertisement against Stephen Colbert.

Fangoria Goes All Corman-ish on Us

2012-01-17T11:44:00.000-08:00

Fangoria magazine, fresh off winning "Magazine of the Year" from This Is Horror, sports a (mostly) black-and-white cover to herald a major Roger Corman interview.

The New San Francisco Examiner: The Paper with No Voice

2012-01-10T08:29:00.000-08:00

At the end of November 2011, The San Francisco Examiner was sold by its right-wing owner to another publisher, Black Press Group, which publishes many other papers, including the Honolulu Star-Advertiser. The question many of us in San Francisco (at least those of us who pay attention to real media) was whether the new owners would continue the populist hard-right opinion pages of the previous owner or if they would moderate it somewhat.

Today on my way to work, I picked up a copy, reasoning that the publishers have had enough time to make at least their initial changes in editorial policy. The Examiner is a free daily, filled with color, and in many ways it is nicely designed. It's thin – only 20 pages today – but then again it's a free paper with no newsstand or subscription revenue and this is a time of economic strain. But it still should have an editorial section, a page at least, and I was startled to see that it had none. Nor do I see anyone on the page two senior staff listing with a title of editorials editor or opinion pages editor or any such title.

There simply is no opinion section, not even a half-page. No letters to the editor, no editorial columnists, no op-ed columnists, no unsigned editorials. In short, it's a paper without a voice.

Opinion pages can appear in many forms, and they've been done in many ways. (Those of us from the Midwest remember hearing about the Chicago Tribune running editorial cartoons on the front page years earlier.) The paper can be conservative, liberal, moderate, radical, populist, erudite, a mishmash of all of those. But it should be something.

A well-done opinion section can be fun for an editor to put together and an absorbing (and yes, sometimes entertaining) experience for the reader. That The Examiner's new owners are depriving their staff and readers of this section is sad enough.

But the real shame of it is that San Francisco could use a well-done editorial voice, one that isn't lamely leftist and certainly one that isn't populist right-wing. (I still remember picking up a copy of The Examiner a few years ago and being confronted by at least two full pages of opinion pieces attacking ACORN – a tilt-at-windmills cause that only the far right ever cared about.) The city rather dearly needs an intelligent voice that can dissent from the prevailing political culture here and introduce new ideas and give criticism that has a chance of being heard. The venting-type right-wing silliness of The Examiner's previous incarnation had the dual problem of being too right-wing for even the conservatives in San Francisco while also being easily ignored because it echoed the worst of the fire-breathing populist conservatism that has taken over the Republican Party nationally.

Give San Francisco a daily voice that can be moderate or conservative, but particularly one that is smart enough to get itself heard with well-reasoned arguments, that listens to its opponents, and that can engage the attention and loyalty of that huge swath of San Franciscans who repeatedly reject the far-left at the mayoral ballot box every four years.

That would be a rewarding business move, because I think there are a lot of readers and advertisers who are looking for such a publication (and it's one of the reasons monthlies such as Northside San Francisco are growing aggressively). (Point to note: I am a columnist for Northside).

It would also be a rewarding move from the perspective of a newspaper really serving its community. It's one thing to tell people what they want to hear; it's another to tell them what they might not want to hear but that can help them be better citizens.

It's what newspapers at their best do. It's what The San Francisco Examiner isn't doing right now.

Just Downloaded Perry Rhodan Neo Book 1

2012-01-06T21:42:00.000-08:00

I just bought the digital edition (for my Nook desktop software) of the first book in the reboot of the Perry Rhodan franchise. It's the German-language edition; I don't know if it will ever be translated into English.

But if you want an English-language explanation about what's happening to this oldest of science fiction franchises, and to find out why the editors are simultaneously keeping the original series going while restarting the franchise in a different timeframe, see page 36 of my free digital science fiction/science magazine, Galaxis, below:

Open publication - Free publishing - More comics

So, Uh, What Should You Do With It?

2012-01-06T21:34:00.000-08:00

Seen in the bathroom of an otherwise excellent Korean restaurant in San Francisco this evening:

2012 Predictions: My Latest Northside San Francisco Column

2012-01-06T08:35:00.000-08:00

Here is my column in the January 2012 edition of Northside San Francisco magazine, available online and in print across San Francisco.

Common KnowledgeSurprise Me in 2012
By John Zipperer

A few decades ago The Commonwealth Club began each year by hosting a local psychic, who would make predictions about world events in the year ahead. For example, psychic Barbara Mousalam’s forecast for 1984 included the prediction that Soviet leader Yuri Andropov “will pull some dramatic antics during the first part of 1984, but he will settle down.” True enough; he died in early 1984 and settled down permanently.

For 1985 Mousalam predicted further change ...

Read the entire column

Which Leader is Kim Jong-un?

2011-12-21T18:52:00.000-08:00

Kim Jong-un's grandfather, who founded the ratty North Korean hermit kingdom, was known as the Great Leader. His father was known as the Dear Leader. And now, The Daily Beast asks what Kim Jong-un should be called. I'm thinking "The Not-Yet-Dead Leader" is a good one, or "The He Hasn't Killed All of the Citizens Yet Leader" might still be available.

One reader thinks (and I'm still not sure if he/she was joking or sadly serious) that Kim Jong-il shouldn't be mocked in death, because he meant well. Frankly, if anyone ever meant ill, it would be someone like Kim Jong-il, who starved to death millions of his countrymen and helped fuel the nuclear weapons race. But perhaps we can all come together, crazy letter writer and me and you, and help the impoverished and incredibly weird nation of North Korea come up with a new name for Kim Jong-un.

Frank Conniff and Keith Olbermann on Kim Jong-il

2011-12-20T08:03:00.000-08:00

It's time for more fun with the late Kim Jong-il, which is fine, because he wasn't much fun when he was alive.

North Korea's Kim Jong-Il Is Dead

2011-12-18T19:09:00.000-08:00

One's mind fills with nasty things to say about North Korea's undearly departed dictatorial godhead, Kim Jong-Il. The fanatical leader has died, according to that country's media.

The first response, of course, is "Good." He was someone who led a country that made its citizens so miserable, so imprisoned, so intellectually impoverished, that his death likely can only improve things. There's always that old commentator's chestnut: Who knows what comes next; it could be worse. And that is true, unfortunately.

But for now, I'll stick with "good."

Christopher Hitchens, Givin' 'Em Hell in Hell

2011-12-16T08:53:00.000-08:00

Having watched writer/critic/polemicist Christopher Hitchens on many a talk show, having read a number of his take-downs (sometimes beautifully constructed, sometimes overkill), I was a little apprehensive a couple years ago when I was preparing to interview him. Hitchens was coming back to The Commonwealth Club of California, where I work as VP of editorial and media, and I had arranged to interview him privately for about 30 minutes before his speech. The interview was slated for my column in Northside San Francisco.

I shouldn't have worried; the event organizer, Kara Iwahashi, told me Hitchens is, in fact, very sweet and easy to work with, easy to speak with. So it would have been a fun and interesting interview, had it taken place.

But it was not to be. Just a day or two before his arrival, he canceled his book tour (including our appearance), and announced that he had been diagnosed with cancer. We certainly hoped to get him back on our stage when he was well enough to do so, but we never got the opportunity. Christopher Hitchens died today, 62 years old.

Give 'em hell, wherever you are.

Chock Full of the Nineties: The Starlog Project, Starlog #198, January 1994

2011-12-13T08:41:00.000-08:00

If there is one consistent complaint that is lodged against Starlog in the 1990s, it is that the magazine focused too much on chasing every detail of every science fiction TV show and movie (and occasionally books), while ignoring the fan experience and other aspects of the science fiction universe. The magazine had been strongest in that regard in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when multiple columnists and the magazine’s then-co-publisher made sure the magazine spoke to the heart of science fiction fans.

Times change, of course, and one of the biggest changes from the early 1980s to the early 1990s is the tremendous growth of SF TV programs. With new television networks needing popular products – er, programs – to push, and with Star Trek: The Next Generation having established the viability of syndication for genre TV, the 1990s would see a never-ending succession of programs. We got everything from Trek spinoffs to non-Trek Roddenberry creations to entirely new efforts. That meant that Starlog had to cover this ongoing onslaught of SF TV, whether it was good, bad, or in between.

But something else changed between the early 1980s and the early 1990s. What was once a 68-page magazine was now a 92-pager, and that meant that the magazine could have easily found space to slot in the occasional space science story or scientist interview, or run competitions that called for reader creativity, or any number of other things. The Fan Network pages, which by the mid-1990s had for years been just compilations of fan clubs and convention listings, was originally created to feature articles about creative fans, their experiences, their lives. As former managing editor Carr D’Angelo told me, the editors were under pressure from the publisher to find these interesting fan-based stories, but that task was easier said than done; it even resulted at least once in a story being published about something that had been reported years earlier in the magazine.

Even in the mid-1990s, however, Starlog still produced the occasional article outside of its usual SF TV coverage. This issue, that article is F. Colin Kingston’s guide to auctions, where fans can buy science fiction memorabilia (such as a $1,500 Cylon fighter model from the original Battlestar Galactica). Get out the credit card.

Starlog #198
92 pages (including covers)
Cover price: $4.95

Odd classified ad of the month: “GIANT WOMEN GROW HUGE in adult books, fantasies! Must state you’re over 21, & sign. $1, long SASE …”

The rundown: The cover is a mishmash of items, apparently none of them strong enough to command the cover by themselves; meanwhile, the work of artist James Bama makes one of many appearances in Starlog publications and is the sole featured illustration on the contents page. In David McDonnell’s Medialog column, the big tease begins, with rumors that a fourth Indiana Jones film is already being written (something that wouldn’t come to fruition for a decade, of course); furthermore, “George Lucas reports that the next three Star Wars films … will probably be shot simultaneously sometime before 1997.” Or maybe not. And in Gamelog, Michael McAvennie reviews Legend Entertainment’s Gateway II: Homeworld, Steve Jackson Games’ Hacker II: The Dark Side, and more.

The Communications section includes Mike Fisher’s Creature Profile of Gamera (misspelled Gammera), plus letters about the need to read, and the requisite debates over the finer points of Star Trek. Booklog reviews Christmas Forever, Tears of Time, Dealing in Futures, Alien Secrets, Heart Readers, The Hidden Realms, Fossil, The Wolf of Winter, Satellite Night Special, Godspeed, and Moving Mars. In his Videolog column, David Hutchison reveals that there’s a new home video release of the Star Wars films called Star Wars Trilogy: The Definitive Collection, which of course stayed definitive until the next collection. The Fan Network includes Marc Bernadin’s list of fan clubs, publications, and conventions. And in his From the Bridge column, the ever-social Kerry O’Quinn travels the country alone.

In a Startling Starlog Stories faux-pulp layout, Michael J. Wollf (and illustrator George Kochell) examine shows that deal with, um, brains, including a certain infamous Star Trek episode. Tom Weaver interviews Lost in Space actress June Lockhart, revealing – among other things – that she once worked at religious magazine Guideposts to gain experience in the publishing business. Today she’d just blog. Bill Warren profiles genre stalwart Ted Raimi, who was starring in seaQuest DSV at the time. And Will Murray interviews artist James Bama, who painted years of Doc Savage paperback covers, as well as some SF-themed works.

Actress Lindsay Frost (Monolith, Dead Heat, etc.) is interviewed by Pat Jankiewicz, revealing that the first money she earned on stage was “about a madam who ran a whorehouse.” So, no Star Wars, then. Craig W. Chrissinger checks in with Mike W. Barr about the new Star Trek: Deep Space Nine comic book. Rod Taylor and Alan Young reminisce about working with the great George Pal, in an article by Bill Warren. Much is made of the iconic time machine from the same-titled Pal film, and much also is made of Bob Burns, the man who ended up buying and restoring the machine. And Steve Eramo contributes his first article to Starlog, an interview with Doctor Who actor Jackie Lane, who discusses portraying Dodo Chaplet to William Hartnell’s Doctor.

F. Colin Kingston explores the hot commodities on sale on the SF memorabilia auction circuit, and he includes a how-to-bid sidebar (in those admittedly pre-eBay days). Tom Weaver interviews Michael Fox, who discusses acting in The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, Conquest of Space, Young Frankenstein, Twilight Zone episodes, and more. And in one of the odder or more creative (take your pick) ways for editor David McDonnell to get out of writing his editorial column, the final four pages of the magazine are taken up with imitation trading cards, featuring photos and facts about various Starlog correspondents. It is, at least, an interesting way to put faces to names we’ve been seeing in print for years. It’s also where we learn that Mike McAvennie once “caught 38 quarters after placing them on my elbow.” Talented group, this.

“I used to be made fun of a lot. There was one kid, who will remain nameless, that I’ll never forget. He used to come up to me and say, ‘Raimi, you’re a geek! Hyuk, hyuk!’ Every day he would pop my books and they would go sliding down the hallway. I thought, I have to do something at school. I’m not a jock, so I chose acting; it was natural, it was the only thing I could really do.”
–Ted Raimi, actor, interviewed by Bill Warren: “The Young Ted Raimi”

For more, click on Starlog Internet Archive Project below or visit the Starlog Project's permanent site.

My Latest Northside Column: Where to Go, What to Do and Eat Near the Bay Area

2011-12-09T08:33:00.001-08:00

For my latest Common Knowledge column in Northside San Francisco, I talked to Bay Gourmet leader Cathy Curtis about cool places to go, the best foods to eat, neat things to do in the Bay Area hinterlands.

COMMON KNOWLEDGE
The Bay Area Fun Belt
By John Zipperer

After the fall of the Soviet Union, a new Russian term came into vogue: “the near afar.” It referred to those newly independent countries bordering the Russian Federation, at once close by and yet more distant than before because they were no longer part of the same empire.

In the Bay Area, our “near afar” is a stunning belt of hills, wine country, farms, and small towns that girdles our metropolis, and getting there is quite easy. Knowing how to make the most of your time there can be a challenge, so I turned to an expert. When Cathy Curtis is not busy with her duties as the owner of Curtis Financial Planning, she volunteers at The Commonwealth Club as chair of our Bay Gourmet Forum, and she also leads groups of travelers on day trips and slightly longer visits to exciting destinations in the near afar. I asked Curtis to share with Northside San Francisco readers some tips for finding great local getaways.

Read the entire column

When she's not busy giving financial planning advice, Cathy Curtis enjoys showing people how to enjoy the finer features of the world. Photo by Beth Byrne.

Hillary Clinton on Gay Rights (Video)

2011-12-06T16:37:00.001-08:00

She shows she's lost none of her strengths since her landmark speech in China on women's rights in the 1990s. "Gay rights are human rights, and human rights are gay rights."

Below, video of U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton at the U.N. today. It made Rick Perry flip out; he claimed Obama was proving himself to be further out of step with the American people; but this is just one more topic on which Perry is wrong. Americans – even young evangelicals – are increasingly with Obama and Clinton (and many Republicans) who don't want to discriminate against gays and lesbians.

Dealing with Consultants

2011-12-06T08:47:00.001-08:00

For reasons I don't need to go into here, I've been thinking a lot about organizations that bring in outside consultants to evaluate things and offer recommendations. It reminded me of an Internet Whirl column I'd written for Internet World (yes, the column name was a pun) magazine a decade ago, so I share that column with you.

Internet Whirl
Grin and Bear It
The Upside of Letting an Outsider Tell You What You Already Knew
By John Zipperer
(06/15/01) An e-business consultant was recently in our conference room, commiserating about the challenges he faced helping companies get from point A to B in their Internet plans. He remarked that though he is often mistaken for one, he is no magic fountain of secret knowledge. In fact, he said, “Often, I’m telling them to do what they already know needs to be done.” It may sound like an unnecessary waste of money for a company, but it often proves to be a very necessary reassurance.

This is a lesson I learned firsthand while working on a project to Web-enable a former employer’s database. We had legacy software specially designed for our type of organization, but it hadn’t been designed to work with Windows NT—which we didn’t know when we started the project—causing us a great deal of trouble when we went live. Only after months of struggle did we get the software maker to admit their software was the problem. It was your typical e-business nightmare: The database was too slow; it often crashed; it didn’t have enough search functions for our customers.

There were other problems, too. We had a number of broadcast e-mail lists I administered, which pulled their addresses out of the same legacy database. Except that the filters for the broadcast e-mail software often failed; people couldn’t get subscribed easily and often got unsubscribed because the system overwrote new lists of subscribers with older lists. Those were the lucky ones. We also heard from more vocal customers who had not subscribed but nonetheless were receiving the e-mail, which in such circumstances translates into spam.

The technical problems weren’t monumental. We knew what we needed to do—upgrade various software programs, bring in a new technical consultant with expertise in our broadcast e-mail system, establish a position of chief architect for all of our technology efforts, and eventually, switch server platforms.We ended up doing all these things, but only after a second trial by fire. The first trial had been handling problems and dealing with customer complaints. The second trial was implementing the new system despite losing the confidence our customers and board members once had in us.

We had to go through a long political charade before we could get the necessary changes made.The board’s solution was to bring in an outside consultant who would do a review of our technology use, needs, and future growth. A local firm was hired to conduct interviews. We worked with them, and then waited anxiously for their report. It essentially restated what we had said all along—what needed fixing, what staffing changes were necessary, and what future investments had to be made to get the company where it wanted to be.

Well, it wasn’t all stuff we’d been saying all along. On one page of the report was a particularly annoying chart that purported to show how our company would fall behind the technology curve if we didn’t keep investing and upgrading. It was an amateurish chart: it indicated no quantities of time or money, just some curved lines, our company’s name, and a description with a dire warning about our future if we failed to heed the report’s recommendations.That graphic was, to me, the final insult of an insulting process. Yet it was swallowed whole by the board, for the sole reason that it had been prepared by highly paid outside experts.

It was galling, but also a lesson in the value of refraining from asserting the need to be recognized for having been correct all along. What the consultants provided (for a few thousands of dollars) was a comforting aura of expertise that our board needed in order to accept our recommendations and accept a new working arrangement with us. In short, it gave them ammunition with which to answer potential critics.Politics is a messy thing, and it ain’t just in Washington. But if one can manage to set aside one’s distaste for it, the bigger picture will unfold.

For us, there was a happy ending; the political games served to get us to where we needed to be all along. Frustrating as it was, it was the right thing to do, because it allowed everyone involved to eventually buy into the plan. But all it required of us in-house folks in the end was a little patience and humility. To reach our goal, that wasn’t too much to ask.

The Star Wars Holiday Special Goes Glee

2011-12-06T06:47:00.001-08:00

From

The 1978 TV one-shot program featuring Bea Arthur, Wookie Life Day, Harvey Korman, an animated Boba Fett, and way too much singing, is being resurrected. It will be the basis of an upcoming holiday episode of Glee, reports Britain's SFX magazine.

Sort of a Muppets Meet The Carol Burnett Show, the Star Wars Holiday Special aired on CBS in 1978 and is generally an unloved – and oft-mocked – part of the Star Wars universe. It only snagged one magazine cover at the time (Starlog #19, above), despite the Star Wars fever raging in the young country at the time. Directed by Steven Binder and written by five writers, including Bruce Vilanch, the show was a hodgepodge of cameos by the stars of the original Star Wars film and new characters trying gamely to make a kiddie-friendly show.

It remains to be seen if Glee will treat it as aging cheese that has become good again or as a source for mocking.

Pew! Pew! Pew! Zzzzaaap!

2011-12-05T18:22:00.001-08:00

Why post this? Because I like to think I live in a world – er, universe – in which spacemen can have laser battles with robotic warriors in orbit. That's why. Is that a crime?

Pelosi Whets Our Appetite for Newt Gingrich Candidacy

2011-12-05T07:15:00.001-08:00

Read the above short note that was posted on Talking Points Memo. Anyone who thought the Democrats were worried about a "smart" Republican like Gingrich becoming the Republican nominee for president simply doesn't know what they're talking about.

And Pelosi does know what she's talking about. But she waved off pleas for details: “When the time’s right.”

Just give us a 15-minute warning before that press conference, so we have time to make popcorn and open up a few cold sodas.

Print Is the New AM Radio

2011-12-01T14:08:00.001-08:00

Folio: reports that a regional magazine publisher in North Carolina is starting a new print newspaper. He has spotted the problems that have occurred with the decline (that's a nicer word that collapse) of daily newspapers, and he is concerned that citizens are not getting good information on the workings of their communities and the world. So he is creating a new weekly newspaper that will serve his audiences.

It is counterintuitive only if you aren't paying attention to media and business. Big daily newspapers have basically imploded under the weight of high costs that were no longer supported by massive print classified advertising. Readership has also shrunk, but the newspaper's problems today are primarily advertising revenue-based, not readership based. So daily newspapers have tried to reinvent themselves over and over again, with a lot of wasted money and a lot of amnesia about why people want to read newspapers in the first place (and therefore why advertisers would want to pay to reach those readers in print).

AM radio was once written off as a has-been, overtaken by the superior FM stations. But then talk radio (and particularly the conservative kind) saw an opportunity, and AM radio became hot again.

I see a similar coming opportunity as big publishers lose the ability to publish magazines that drop from something like 900,000 circ to 450,000 or 250,000. Those lower numbers can't support the corporate infrastructure and massive debt loads carried by the big publishers, especially the public ones. But that leaves lots of burgeoning opportunities for smaller publishers (existing and new ones) to step in and successfully publish magazines in many niches at 100,000 to 500,000 circ. I remember pitching a science/science-fiction magazine to a small publisher fifteen years ago when Bob Guccione canceled Omni magazine, which had fallen from more than 1 million circ in the early 1980s to around 600,000 by the mid-1990s. Guccione couldn't make a 600,000-circulation Omni work; many others could have been profitably thrilled with such a number, or even half of it.

That small publisher didn't bite, and I think he lost a good opportunity.

SF Movie News Video (beta)

2011-11-30T14:29:00.001-08:00

Galaxis SF Movie News Dec. 2011
by: jzipperer

Readers of this blog know that I created a free digital science & science-fiction magazine called Galaxis, which can be read or downloaded from the issuu website.

Today, I present a new experiment, to be followed by more (and much better, I assure you) such videos as I learn the XtraNormal text-to-movie system. Above, my Galaxis news staffer reads the quarterly science-fiction movie news.

Like I say, it's a beta test; the timing is off, and there is much more that can be done with additional speakers, facial expressions, movements, and pauses. But I still think it's a fun experiment. And, again, it will get better...

Architectural TV: Chicago Temple (First United Methodist Church) on WTTW Tonight

2011-11-29T15:27:00.001-08:00

One of the treats of living in Chicago during the 1990s was that I got to be surrounded by some stunning architecture. From the bridges to the parks to the monumental museums, there was inspiring work all around.

I was a member of the First United Methodist Church during my time in that city, and I've told people since then that that church ruined me for other churches. If I don't explain, they might get the wrong idea, thinking that the church was a bad influence or terrible experience. In fact, between the friendly, diverse congregation and the wonderful pastors (led by the incomparable and now-retired Dr. Eugene H. Winkler – still the best preacher I've ever had the pleasure of hearing), First Church simply set the bar too high for any other church to meet, as far as I'm concerned.

Today, I certainly wouldn't pass a litmus test for believers, but if I lived in Chicago, I'd still be a member of this wonderful church. It is located in a historic skyscraper in the heart of the Loop (if you've seen Blues Brothers, the church is briefly visible at the very end in a scene of various police cars converging on City Hall) and is an architectural marvel. The building itself is called the Chicago Temple (which leads some people to assume the congregation is Jewish, then they get confused with the Methodist Church bit) and it is the oldest congregation of any faith in Chicago. It's even in the Guinness Book of World Records as the tallest church in the world.

Sorry. I could go on and on, because I have too many great memories of my time at the Chicago Temple. The memories were spurred by a Facebook post by the Temple that the building will be featured tonight (November 29) at 7:30 pm Central time on Chicago station WTTW. Below is a short video excerpt that will give you a taste of the WTTW program and of the building.

(If the video below doesn't work, you can see it on WTTW's website.)

iPhone4 vs. HTC Evo

2011-11-29T09:00:00.001-08:00

I do love Apple and Google, and I refuse to take sides. But as a confirmed Mac user (at work and at home) with a much-loved Android phone from T-Mobile, I found this video to be hilarious. (Warning: If you're offended by off-color language, this video might not be for you.)

Confused Market

2011-11-28T09:27:00.001-08:00

Below, courtesy of my Google homepage gadgets, are screenshots of the current (as of this writing) stock index numbers and headlines from the Financial Times.

Stocks are up dramatically so far this morning. But the headlines sure as hell don't tell us why. Moody's is crying about eurozone debt. Okay, we can discount what the crediting agencies say; they're not the most trustworthy source of financial estimates (despite the fact that, um, they're supposed to be so). But the OECD "highlights eurozone contagion risk" and those darn banks have to "scramble to plug capital deficits (which usually leads to immediately reduced lending, thus hurting expansion).

Yet stock indices are up a lot. The one headline that would seem related is "Equities rally on hopes for eurozone," but what artificial substances are people ingesting to have hopes for the eurozone if Moody's and the OECD are both telling people to run for the hills?

It could mean nothing more than that the sell-off in recent weeks was overdone, so this is a correction to that overcorrection. Also, the fears that the eurozone problems were now affecting even super-triple-A Germany's economy could have evaporated upon further review (because Germany's economy is so strong and its credit so sound, it was offering extremely low returns, so its recent "failed" bond sale doesn't necessarily mean people feared that even Germany couldn't sustain its debt – it could have just meant that there are other places with better yields right now; that would actually be good news, because it would indicate a slightly increased appetite for risk).

No, the boost to Wall Street is likely due to reports of a possible new initiative by EU countries to tackle their debt problems. Initial sketchy reports are that it would combine the German tough-love approach with the French money-shoveling approach. Markets love that stuff, apparently.

But we've seen any number of new initiatives that are launched by Europe's leaders and, no matter how sound the initiatives are, quickly deflated by market fears. So I won't hold out hope that this is a long-term sustainable rally.

If you're more optimistic than I am, then also remember that America's ticking time bomb of municipal, state, and federal debts and unfunded obligations (of many tens of trillions of dollars) is still out there, as is the largely ignored big debts of China's cities and regions.

Happy post-Thanksgiving!

Star Wars Loves People, People Loves Star Wars

2011-11-28T08:44:00.001-08:00

This is the holiday season, so I thought it was high time to present a retrospective of People magazine covers featuring Star Wars. People has changed quite a bit since those days; nowadays, if Kim Kardashian isn't wearing a stormtrooper uniform, it isn't going on the cover of People.

So here they are, in no particular order. Enjoy.

The Lawsuit of the Beast

2011-11-18T13:36:00.001-08:00

All he had to do was drop a crate on his foot on day 665. Instead, he sued.

So he's devout, but not very imaginative. And not willing to really suffer for his faith.

Star Trek Viewing Star Wars

2011-11-17T07:14:00.001-08:00

Because you've always wondered what Deanna Troi would say about Han Solo, right?

Everyone's a Corporation ... I Mean, a Person

2011-11-06T17:05:00.000-08:00

Interesting: The conservative state of Mississippi will vote to officially declare that a person is a person from conception. Will that mean that any time I can conceive of a corporation, it will be illegal to destroy it? I think I've just found a way to ensure that my business plan is finally funded ...

After 43 Years, Star Trek Episode "Patterns of Force" to Air in Germany

2011-11-04T19:02:00.000-07:00

"Don't mention the war," was the warning from Fawlty Towers. It appears that Star Trek didn't get the message, and it paid for it for more than four decades.

German public broadcaster ZDFneo is going to air the original Star Trek episode "Patterns of Force" for the very first time, nearly 43 years after it aired in the United States, according to a report on The Local, an English-language German news website. Though the episode did air on German pay TV in the mid-1990s, this is the first time it'll air on public TV.

The episode, written by John Meredyth Lucas, is an extremely unsubtle homage to World War II and a certain rotten little German regime run by Nazi fanatics. Whatever art might have been in the episode is probably drained away by the heavy-handed bluntness; as The Local notes, it involves a war between two planets, one of them named Zeon, whose partisans are called "Zeonist pigs."

Okay, so not all science fiction is finely honed cultural critique. Sometimes the critique is slathered on with a ping-pong paddle.

Nonetheless, the German broadcaster apparently decided that the Huns – oops, one war too far back – could stand a little thinly veiled attack on a German government that was soundly blasted into smithereens 66 years ago.

One wonders what they would think about Starship Troopers ...

Northside San Francisco: Reviewing Henning Mankell's Latest

2011-10-26T09:14:00.000-07:00

My book review also appeared in the latest issue of Northside San Francisco.

BOOK REVIEW
The Last of Kurt Wallander
The Troubled Man, by Henning Mankell
By John Zipperer

For a country that is rich and at peace, Sweden sure does have a bad case of Scandinavian gloom.When Britain produces world-famous popular literature, it is from people like J.K. Rowling and Terry Pratchett who write about worlds of fantasy, wonder and hope. But nearby Sweden’s contribution to the global best-seller market is the edgy mystery thriller, with isolated heroes and heroines solving brutal crimes against the backdrop of social and political decay.
Read the entire article

Northside San Francisco: Oh, Give Me a Home

2011-10-26T09:10:00.000-07:00

My latest column from Northside San Francisco magazine:

COMMON KNOWLEDGE COLUMN
Oh, Give Me a Home
By John Zipperer

In the midst of a tough fight for the GOP nomination, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney recently decided to tear down and replace his 3,009-square-foot beachside home in La Jolla, Calif., with an 11,062-square-foot property. It might be less of an attempt to tell the American people “I’m one of you” and more to let them know “I might hire you to paint my garage.” This led Vanity Fair to run a list of things that would fit inside Romney’s new house, including “the Diane Von Furstenburg flagship store in New York’s meatpacking district” or “the world’s largest whale.”
Read the entire article

Bank of America Home Loans president Barbara Desoer says the recovery is slow but real. Photo by Ed Ritger.

Question for Obi Wan

2011-10-22T15:15:00.000-07:00

So, wait: There were only a million people on the entire planet of Alderaan, or only a million of them bothered to cry out?

Pro Bowl Packer (and Former Neighbor) Gale Gillingham, RIP

2011-10-21T09:10:00.000-07:00

I was sorry to see the news today of the passing of former Green Bay Packers player Gale Gillingham. It's a name that many of you – even recent Packers fans – might not remember, but I've always known it; during the NFL season back in the early 1970s, his family lived in the same apartment complex as we did on Green Bay's west side. We played with his kids, and I remember that his family was very nice. My condolences to the Gillinghams.

In the Spirit

2011-10-19T12:59:00.000-07:00

Here's a photo of the Halloween season checkout counter at Fog City News in downtown San Francisco. Okay, the copy of Cricket doesn't help anything, but Fangoria sets the tone.

Bet You Didn't Know This Much about Battlestar Galactica

2011-10-10T18:53:00.000-07:00

... before I told you:

Open publication - Free publishing - More comics

Bad Lip Reading's Latest

2011-10-07T08:59:00.000-07:00

Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann as you've never seen her before, or perhaps like you've always seen her:

Steve Jobs, RIP

2011-10-05T16:48:00.000-07:00

The Apple website homepage says it all:

Farewell to a business and technology genius.

They'll Be Burning This Issue of Monocle All Across Silicon Valley

2011-10-04T12:58:00.000-07:00

What?!? Old media isn't a waste of time? It can still be profitable? The all-new-media-all-the-time crowd is going to fall off their skateboards when they see this issue of Monocle – assuming they see this issue of Monocle. The cover story announces "Newspapers booming, book sales up, record shops opening: Monocle charts the media trend that's e-free, profitable, and going global," and "confirmation that old-school media models are fit and healthy, and how the American media stuffed itself."

Well, the American media stuffed itself by listening to a bunch of trend-following lemmings who didn't take the time to figure out why people actually read magazines, consume long-form journalism, pay for content, expect quality.

It is appropriate that this story is appearing in Monocle, a magazine (and company) that truly thinks differently and has been successful by stressing quality and content.

Taiwan Video on GOP Primary Audiences

2011-09-25T16:55:00.001-07:00

And You Thought I Was Dreaming: Is the Magazine's Savior Already on the Market?

2011-09-23T10:39:00.000-07:00

My sister, who works in the book business, let me know about the above video. The video's intended for publishing industry people who might buy the machine, but I post it here because it represents an exciting advance in print-on-demand and on-the-spot retailing. It is being pitched as a way for book publishers to keep their backlist available to customers without having to risk printing and distributing thousands of copies.

Readers of this blog know that my focus is more on the magazine business, and I think this could be similarly helpful for publishers of current magazines.

As I wrote a few years ago, I don't think the magazine business model has collapsed; it's the magazine distribution market that's collapsed. Retailers are carrying many fewer titles, fewer distributors even exist, and newsstand publishers still have to print untold copies of each issue that will never be sold but will instead end up in the shredders after they sit unsold on a magazine rack for a week or month. The cost of those over-print quantities is of course added to what customers pay for the copies they do buy. Therefore, I predicted that the salvation of the hard-copy print magazine will come from continued advances in personal printer technology, so that one day you can download and print out a fully bound, high quality magazine that's identical to one you would have picked up at the possibly non-existent newsstand or retailer. And those still-existing retailers could have such printers in their stores, where they print and sell copies as they need them.

If the magazine that this Espresso Book Machine can produce can be sold at a reasonable price, it could not only help all of us domestic publishers, but it could spawn hundreds of new publishers, and it could make it possible for a small magazine retailer to sell far more magazine titles than they can normally stock on their shelves; they could sell publications from all around the world, current copies and back issues.

There's probably still more development to go before this could be utilized for magazines (after all, photo-heavy magazines would require different paper, inks, and resolution than an all-text book interior), but magazine publishers and editors and advertisers and designers and writers and readers should start clamoring for it now.

Time to Blame Helmut Kohl for Europe's Problems?

2011-09-21T09:22:00.000-07:00

The German parliament in Berlin.

Recently, former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl took to task current Chancellor Angela Merkel for her handling of the European debt crisis. "She's destroying my Europe," Der Spiegel quotes him as complaining.

Kohl later disowned some of the comments he'd made and clarified, "It is true that I -- like many people -- am worried about the development in Europe and of the euro. I also see it as urgently necessary that the supposed euro crisis isn't regarded and discussed as a structural crisis of the euro per se, but as what it is: The result of homemade mistakes and challenges for both sides -- Europe and the national states."

The British press in particular likes to display great impatience with the way the fiscally responsible states (led by Germany, but also including smaller northern European nations) have dealt with the – there's no kind way to put it – disastrously fiscally irresponsible states. (One of the more intelligent articles of this type ran in the Financial Times.) The answer seems to be that the responsible states should just take on the burdens created by the irresponsible ones, without forcing the bad apples to rectify the structural problems that led to this disaster in the first place. I think Merkel has been slow and, yes, unimaginative, but she has also been largely correct: She has staked her reputation and political future on saving the eurozone, but she is also dedicated to forcing Greece, Italy, and others to learn to live like adult countries and not like teenagers who've just scored their parents' credit card for the weekend.

But we are still left with the ungenerous conclusion that Kohl himself should shoulder much of the blame. He, with France's then-President Francois Mitterand, cooked up the euro scheme as a way of mollifying European nations (France among them) that were worried about German reunification. It wasn't all a matter of that, because the European Union had been growing and solidifying for years, extending a zone of prosperity and law across a continent that had been destroyed countless times by conflict. So a common currency was a likely development at some point. But it's early introduction was intended to tie Germany closely enough to its neighbors that it theoretically would not go off marauding through the neighborhood again.

As such, it wasn't a bad idea. An unnecessary one, perhaps; there is absolutely zero appetite in Germany for fighting wars. But still, an understandable idea nonetheless.

What is not understandable is how Mitterand and Kohl, two veteran politicians who supposedly learned from the mistakes of the past, could concoct a system that is structurally illogical. Economic union without some sort of political union to enforce it is a recipe for disaster. This disaster, in fact. It could lead to large countries forcing their policies down the throats of smaller countries, which is what Merkel is being accused of doing by trying to get the poor performers to reform their economies and politics to make themselves competitive; or it could lead to poor countries overspending and expecting the rich countries to bail them out, which is the situation that has happened and that Merkel is trying to rectify.

Merkel is trying to clean up the mess that Kohl created.

If the euro was the first price Kohl and Germany paid to get reunification, then Greece, Ireland, and Italy have just presented the official invoice.

Tim Burton’s Nightmare: The Starlog Project, Starlog #197, December 1993

2011-09-16T19:04:00.000-07:00

According to Wikipedia, director Tim Burton’s mother ran a “cat-themed gift shop.” We can all resist the temptation to declare that the feline connection explains Burton’s weirdness; for that matter, I write many of these Starlog Project reports with my cat Charlie camped out next to my computer. So you will have to look elsewhere to explain Burton’s unique style and outlook.

And whether you like his work or not, I think it is difficult to argue that he didn't make a number of standout films in his career, starting with Pee Wee’s Big Adventure, his breakout Beetlejuice, his Batman reboot, and many others. When one heard that Burton was preparing another film, one almost started playing guessing games: What would be the angle? What would be weird about it (I mean, it’s Batman, right? Cape, tights, crazy villains – how could you possibly do that differently than past productions? Oh...)? Again, whether or not you liked his final film, it did have his vision stamped on it, and he managed to break out of a lot of the writing and styling straightjackets of so much big-budgeted Hollywood output of the 1980s and early 1990s.

Well, he did it again with The Nightmare Before Christmas, which Starlog gives the cover feature treatment this issue. Actually, Burton created and produced this film, which was directed by Henry Selick. This stop-motion holiday film not only revived a dormant puppetry art form but twisted the usual holiday expectations around and around until you didn’t know what to expect and you just reveled in being shown something new and innovative.

Oh, and we should note that the mayor’s car in Nightmare has a cat-shaped ornament that wails when its tale is pulled. Or so says Wikipedia.

Starlog #197
92 pages (including covers)
Cover price: $4.95

This issue, Starlog announces its newest spinoff publication, the odd-duck Starlog Platinum Edition. It was a neat basic idea: Devote each entire issue to one topic; the first issue is devoted to writers, including a tales-from-the-front article by Starlog’s new assistant editor, Marc Bernadin (who would eventually become the magazine’s managing editor, and is today a comics writer). Anyway, the Platinum concept either wasn’t a success or the editors grew bored with it; after all, the first issue is devoted to writers, the second to actors, and third to “makers of science fiction,” and there aren’t that many more single-issue topics you can use when your topics are that broad. So the single-topic idea was soon dropped, and with issue #6, Starlog Platinum Edition was relaunched and renamed Starlog Science Fiction Explorer. This new incarnation was nicely done, in my opinion, with some very nice designs and interesting articles. But as editor David McDonnell wrote a decade later, Explorer was really just “more Starlog” and wasn’t different enough from its mother magazine to make it on its own. It died with issue #11.

But enough of Platinums and Explorers. What about Starlog #197?

The rundown: On the cover is Jack Skellington as the Santa who’d really frighten the kids at the mall; a different fantasy image – a painting by Michael Whelan – is featured on the contents page. In his Medialog column, David McDonnell tells us that The Invaders is returning to the TV screen with a new series, allegedly as a Fox show. Michael McAvennie’s Gamelog column reviews Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, Dragon Strike, and other games. The Communications section includes Mike Fisher’s Wolf Man Creature Profile, plus some interesting letters about sex roles in Star Trek: The Next Generation. David Hutchison’s Videolog column notes the release of a bunch of additional Next Generation cassettes, plus a nonfiction turn by Patrick Stewart as narrator of The Planets. And Booklog reviews A Night in the Lonesome October, Chanur’s Legacy, Berserker Kill, Crossover, Empire Builders, Empire of the Eagle, The Sharp End, The Dream Machines, Winds of Fury, White Queen, Healer, The Hammer and the Cross, and Sam Gunn, Unlimited.

Over the years, Creature from the Black Lagoon got a lot of love from Starlog, often in the form of interviews by Tom Weaver of its stars. This issue the mag goes back to the well once again, only this time writer Pat Jankiewicz steps up and provides an interview with Harry Essex, Creature’s screenwriter. Essex also talks about some of his other projects, including It Came From Outer Space and even I Dream of Jeannie. Marc Shapiro examines a less-exhalted piece of science-fiction cinema in an interview with actor Wesley Snipes, who talkes about his role in Demolition Man. Veteran fantasy artist Michael Whelan is profiled by managing editor Maureen McTigue. And actor Robert Burke chats with Kim Howard Johnson about Burke’s role as “This Year’s RoboCop.”

Dan Yakir writes the cover story, “‘Twas the Night Before Halloween,” about the Nightmare Before Christmas. Director Henry Selick notes that “I’m personally very influenced by both Dr. Seuss and a lot of Eastern European animation. When I was a kid, I used to see the films of German animator Lotte Reininger, who actually did the world’s first animated feature, The Adventures of Prince Ahmed: It was all black cutout figures, silhouettes. This is the same kind of background Tim Burton came from.” That, and cats.

Meanwhile, Joe Nazzaro talks to actor Peter Davison about his place in Doctor Who history. Bill Warren interviews teen actor Jonathan Brandis, who probably didn’t make Wil Wheaton happy when he said, “Wesley Crusher?! Oh, no, no, no, no. I rarely ever save the seaQuest.” Of course, he later notes that “I’m a big fan of Wil Wheaton’s stuff – he’s a good actor.” Peter Bloch-Hansen chats with actor Famke Janssen about her role in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “The Perfect Mate.” Marc Shapiro talks to actor Bruce Campbell about his move from films to his new Fox TV series The Adventures of Brisco County Jr. and notes, “I’m used to getting away with murder. It’s interesting now to be in a world where I have to abide by certain restrictions.”

The Fan Network pages include the usual SF clubs and publications directory, the convention calendar, and a gaggle of comics. Kerry O’Quinn’s From the Bridge column looks at efforts to find planets outside our solar system – something that would become much more common a decade and a half later. Pat Jankiewicz visits the set of Monolith. And editor David McDonnell uses his Liner Notes column to present one of his look-at-all-the-new-mags-we’re-selling-today previews. The amazing thing is that most of them were edited by McDonnell, who was simultaneously running Starlog, Starlog Platinum Edition/Explorer, Star Trek: The Next Generation licensed magazine, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine licensed magazine, and Comics Scene. And I’m probably leaving some off that list. It’s pretty impressive when you consider just how much of the magazine rack in the TV/movie section of the time were products of that overworked editor.

“Of course, everybody [pities the Creature.] I do many of my movies that way. In another movie I did, He Walked By Night, Dick Basehart is roaming the streets, gets stopped by a policeman, so he kills the cop. I made everybody love the cop killer by doing strange things. It was kind of a game, ‘I can make you love this man!’ ‘No, you can’t, he’s a killer!’ I made him a loner, he has an animal – a cat – and he’s stealing milk for this cat. Then, he does a surgical thing where he tries to take a bullet out of himself. He spends five minutes trying to dig out that bullet. The audience beings to feel that pain and wants him to get away!”–Harry Essex, screenwriter, interviewed by Pat Jankiewicz: “Bard of the Black Lagoon”

For more, click on Starlog Internet Archive Project below or visit the Starlog Project's permanent site

Borussia Dortmund and Zeit Magazin: This Week's Cool Magazine Cover

2011-09-16T14:31:00.000-07:00

In this week's look at random but well-done magazine covers, I present these three handsome gentlemen on the cover of Germany's Zeit Magazin.

Revenge of the Jedi Kittens

2011-09-15T07:09:00.000-07:00

More light-saber cat fights, courtesy of FinalCutKing:

Complete Contents of Galaxis October 2011 Issue

2011-09-14T13:04:00.000-07:00

Now that several hundred people have already sampled the second issue of Galaxis, my digital magazine devoted to "The Worlds of Science & Science Fiction," it's time to share the entire contents with you.

FEATURES

The Great Starship Challenge (help NASA and DARPA plan an interstellar spacecraft)
Battlestar Galactica: The Complete Episode Guide (to the reimagined series)
The Old German Future (a look at forgotten German science fiction)
Prometheus Unbound (a critical examination of the free-for-all attempts to publicize secrets about Ridley Scott's new film)
Bunky's Odd Friends (Lyle Lahey's 1970s comic strip rediscovered)
Perry Rhodan Starts Over (rebooting the German SF series)
Trips to the Moon (possibly the very first SF story ever written)
Saturn's Secrets (photo guide to the ringed planet)

DEPARTMENTS

Viewscreen (when politics and SF meet)
Launch Tube (short news about Schwarzenegger and the next Terminator, remembering Martin H. Greenberg, Star Trek updates, and more)
Worldly Things (these are a few of our favorite things)
Webbed (websites of interest)
Compendium (event listings – exhibits, conventions, space launches, lectures, and much more)
Mail (reader reaction)
Reviewscreen (reviews of The Magician King, The Windup Girl, The Host, the summer's superhero onslaught, and more)
Plus, of course, a look at the next issue.

All of that is in one colorful 60-page magazine, which I've designed for people who love science fiction and science, and particularly for people looking for something a little different, a little deeper, than they get from other magazines in the field. Won't you join us?

Remember, you can read or download a free digital copy of Galaxis from here, or you can purchase a print-on-demand copy here.

The Slings and Arrows of Outrageous Copyediting

2011-09-14T09:13:00.000-07:00

As often is the case when I write a post about magazine covers, this is apropos of nothing particularly significant.

This morning I found online the above cover of a 1992 issue of Omni magazine. I immediately figured I should order a copy, because it features an article on Mystery Science Theater 3000, one of the great TV shows of all time. Except ... Omni mistitles MST3K on the cover text: "Laughing at the Future with Mystery Science 3000."

It would not be the last time that MST3K was incorrectly identified on a genre magazine cover. Four years later, Starlog would announce the MST3K motion picture by shouting on its cover, "Joel, Tom Servo & Crow make a movie!" Which would have been great, except that creator and host Joel Hodgson had left the show some time earlier and it was his successor, Michael J. Nelson, who made a movie with the help of his robot friends.

Chinese "UFO" Videos

2011-09-13T08:23:00.000-07:00

So either China has been recognized even by aliens as the new alpha nation worth visiting, or digital videography has achieved widespread popularity in Guangzhou

We'll probably learn soon enough that this was all just a publicity stunt for an upcoming Chinese science fiction movie.

My Interview with Immigration Attorney Lavi Soloway

2011-09-09T16:09:00.000-07:00

Lavi Soloway (photo by Klaus Enrique Photography)

There have been some momentous developments in the nation's immigration laws lately. After journalist Jose Antonio Vargas spoke at The Commonwealth Club (where I work) about his life as an undocumented immigrant, I talked with well-known immigration attorney Lavi Soloway about what it all means and where it might be heading.

Read it on The Commonwealth Club of California's blog

2011-09-09T08:19:00.000-07:00

I think I'm going to have to buy this issue.

10 Years Later, Still Fresh

2011-09-09T06:51:00.000-07:00

As we head into the 10th anniversary weekend of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, I offer up some memories that I've posted here before:

Remembering 9/11 in New York City

I can only imagine what this time of the year is like for the people who lost loved ones in those plane hijackings and the destruction of the office towers and part of the Pentagon. My connection to it is merely one of my memory starting with walking to work in Manhattan. The offices for Internet World magazine were located just a couple blocks north of Union Square, which means that if one went to a north-south street, one could count on seeing the twin towers. Read the entire post

Galaxis #2 Now Available on MagCloud Print-on-Demand

2011-09-08T08:20:00.001-07:00

Galaxis: Galaxis

New! Complete episode guide to the new Battlestar Galactica series, plus a look at the lost worlds of German science fiction, a Cassini visit to Saturn, Perry Rhodan starts over, Bunky comics, SF from the Roman empire, reviews of The Magician King, and so much more!

Galaxis Issue Two – Now Available

2011-09-07T07:18:00.000-07:00

Open publication - Free publishing - More comics

The free digital edition is available at issuu.com.

Looking at Wookies: This Week in Cool Magazine Covers

2011-09-01T11:33:00.000-07:00

Apropos of nothing whatsoever, I serve up for you today two covers that feature the same cool photo of Chewbacca from The Empire Strikes Back.

The Fantastic Films cover on the left is the September 1980 issue, one of approximately 4 zillion Empire-themed covers that FF published. (Hey, you go with what sells newsstand copies; no argument there.) The cover on the right was actually not an external cover; it was inside the July 1980 issue of competitor Starlog, serving as the intro page to its special anniversary section.

Though I take second place to no one when it comes to over-the-top Starlog appreciation, I have to give first-place honors here to the Fantastic Films cover. It's colors are better, and even the piling on of endless cover text works in the manner they did it. Either way, we need more Wookies on magazing covers.

Click on the image to biggie-size it.

T-Mobile Still on the Block for a Purchaser?

2011-08-31T08:52:00.000-07:00

So if AT&T can't take over T-Mobile, who benefits (other than Sprint's lobbyists, who probably earned themselves big bonus checks)?

As a T-Mobile customer who dreaded having to put up with AT&T's infamously bad customer service but who very much looked forward to getting an iPhone with the new combo company, I'm obviously split.

T-Mobile has justly famous customer service; I still rave to people about the polite, helpful, friendly customer service reps I dealt with a year and a half ago when I switched my phones with the service. Customer service is something of a telltale sign of corporate intelligence, to me; companies – especially large public companies – tend to treat the front-line customer service staff as expendable, and they pay them poorly. That has always struck me as ridiculous and self-defeating; I likely will never talk to or correspond with the CEO of T-Mobile or Comcast, so their exorbitant salaries improve my service not one bit. But I will talk to and correspond with their customer service reps from time to time, and those are the interactions that determine whether or not I stay with the company and continue to help pump in enough money to overpay the C-suite employees.

And despite whatever the corporate honchos would surely tell us during and after the merger (probably crap like, "We will never cut customer service quality" or "Customer service and excellent customer care are always our top priority" or "We'd rather shoot our grandmother into the sun on a rocket than hurt customer service,"), customer service is exactly one of the places they'd look to get rid of "redundancies" and "excess spending."

iPhone should come to T-Mobile eventually anyway (hopefully before my latest HTC smartphone dies), so if all other things remain normal, I will be a happy customer. But it seems that Deutsche Telekom AG has been looking to unload T-Mobile for some time, so it's probably going to be sold to somebody at some point. And I don't want an iPhone with terrible customer service or coverage. If I wanted that, I'd have switched to AT&T a long time ago.

Watch and wait.

ST:TMP, TESB, Black Hole – Yes, 1980 Was a Magical Time

2011-08-31T07:30:00.000-07:00

This was a special issue of Germany's Cinema magazine from 1980. If focused on the big science fiction films of the time, including the current Empire Strikes Back and the very recent Star Trek: The Motion Picture and The Black Hole.

Germany's Philipp Lahm and the Gay Soccer Player Question

2011-08-30T10:19:00.000-07:00

Germany's national team captain Philipp Lahm is getting a lot of flack these days for his new book, which includes criticism of teammates and competitors. He's backed off on some of that, reportedly, but today the hullaballoo is all about Lahm's comments that gay football players should stay in the closet and not publicly disclose their sexuality, lest they become the target of intense public scorn.

It's accepted as scriptural truth by many on the Left that every gay public figure should be public about their sexuality, because the more people see that gays and lesbians are all around the world, the more quickly prejudice will fall. I frankly tend to agree with that, and in fact I think that's what is causing the steady erosion in anti-gay prejudice here in the United States – more and more people are simply seeing that their neighbor, daughter, police officer, etc., is gay and they're realizing that it doesn't really matter, certainly not in a negative way. But I am also sympathetic to people in the public eye who fear that it would ruin their careers. You know what, it would for many of them. For every Neil Patrick Harris, there's one or more Rupert Everetts, whose advice is strikingly similar to Philipp Lahm's.

Gay-baiting in professional sports is pretty deep-rooted. Even in relatively tolerant Germany, it still makes headlines when the gay issue is brought up. The agent of Michael Ballack, the previous team captain, ridiculously accused the team's failure to win the World Cup on the presence of, in effect, a gay mafia on the team. The public reaction (at least reported in the German media that I was following) is indicative of a good trent; it seemed to treat Ballack's agent as the ridiculous figure he is and was generally supportive of the idea of gay footballers. After all, Germany has an openly gay foreign minister (Guido Westerwelle) in its conservative-liberal coalition government.

But Westerwelle's been known to be gay for some time, and his career isn't in danger, unless he doesn't improve Germany's shaky foreign policy performance. There are a number of popular gay politicians in Germany, including Berlin's mayor, Klaus Wowereit. A young person trying to ensure that they have a career is facing a different constituency, if you will; football fans are fans of the players in a much more personal way than voters are fans of the politicians. And thus Lahm felt it necessary to let his readers know that he himself is not one of the gay players on the national team: "First, I am not a homosexual. I am not married to my wife Claudia for appearances and I do not have a friend in Cologne with whom I really live," Lahm wrote in his book, A Subtle Difference, according to The Local.

I wouldn't be too hard on Lahm, whether he's straight or gay. He's not a raving anti-homosexual. Those people are on U.S. sports teams and running for the U.S. president, they're not popular German football players. Furthermore, Lahm's is not the only voice on this issue; his teammate Mario Gomez has given gay players the opposite advice: Come out, it'll be fine.

More and more, Gomez will be proven correct and Lahm incorrect, but that's just because the public is increasingly tolerant of homosexuality and uninterested in making it a heated topic. So I do hope that gay German soccer players will publicly disclose their sexuality, but I definitely respect the decision of any who decline to do so. Assuming they're not crusading against gay rights while they're in the closet, of course.

Microbes Turn Newspaper into Biofuels

2011-08-30T07:08:00.000-07:00

So – HAH! – the print media does have a business model, after all.

It's just, um, not what they expected it to be.

Happy 262nd Birthday, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

2011-08-28T09:40:00.000-07:00

Today is the birthday of the German writer Johann von Goethe. He is 262 years old today, or he would be if he hadn't died in 1832.

Remembered most for his work Faust (which has been staged, filmed, and otherwise adapted countless times), Goethe produced a number of works in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, and was, frankly, a giant of Weimar classicism.

Anyway, this blog frequently concerns itself with broad matters Weimar, so it is appropriate that we send very posthumous birthday greetings to the great von Goethe.

France 24 News Site at a Loss for Words

2011-08-26T08:50:00.000-07:00

And you can count how many words they are at a loss for, in the text crawl box that has no headline other than the instructions to the headline writer. Oops.

la tragédie!

As We Approach Second Issue of Galaxis, A Look Back at Issue One!

2011-08-24T16:19:00.000-07:00

I've finished writing the last articles for the second issue of Galaxis: The Magazine of Science & Science Fiction. I figure it'll be ready to be digitally "published" and available on schedule, in about two and a half weeks of final production and editing.

So, in the meantime, if you haven't already seen the previous issue of the magazine, here's your chance. You can click on the image below and see the magazine full-screen on your computer. You can also save a copy to your computer or device, and you can print out any or all pages. It's all free.

The first issue features an exclusive interview with physicist Michio Kaku, shorter Q&As with Michael Medved, Mary Doria Russell, and others; plus SF reviews, industry news, an overview of David Gerrold's Star Hunt novels including comments by the author, NASA photos, a look back at the heyday of science fiction movie magazines, and much more. So take a look, send a letter to the editor, and get prepared for the second (and even bigger and better) issue in early September!

UPDATE: Issue #2 of Galaxis is here.

Open publication - Free publishing - More futurism

Cover Issues: Batman & Robin on German & English Starlogs

2011-08-23T13:16:00.000-07:00

This post is really just for magazine geeks like me, though Batman geeks might also enjoy it. Below are three magazine covers.

The English-language Starlog #239 from June 1997 features the stars of Batman & Robin.

The same basic cover is used on the German edition of Starlog, though it was released as a special edition ("Starlog feiert Batman & Robin" – "Starlog celebrates Batman & Robin") in Germany. The German Starlogs were put together by the New York headquarters of Starlog Group, with the involvement of some German language translators and consultants.

And, finally, there's a special one-shot English-language Starlog Presents Batman & Other Comics Heroes magazine that utilizes a different cover photo but clearly the designers were enamored of the lettering used on the German magazine title.

All of this plus $3 will get you a cup of coffee, of course, but it's fun to contemplate magazine designs sometimes. Again, for geeks.

Filmfax #45: Your Weekend Cool Magazine Cover

2011-08-20T18:00:00.001-07:00

It's Buster Crabbe and the original film Flash Gordon. Enjoy.

NMA Animation's Pox on BART & Anonymous

2011-08-18T15:14:00.000-07:00

Cover News: Fangoria Does Its First-Ever Split Run

2011-08-18T11:51:00.000-07:00

For the first time in its 9,000-year history (something like that, at least), horror film magazine Fangoria has produced a split run of its next issue, #307, due out in September. See the two covers below.

This'll give buyers a chance to vote, in essence, on the widened "lifestyle" content in Fangoria, including the greater presence of music. Which will be more popular: Music or classic Howling?

Kill Da Wabbit, Indeed

2011-08-16T11:22:00.000-07:00

I'm in the process of editing a speech Hans Rudolf Vaget gave at The Commonwealth Club about the controversies surrounding German composer Richard Wagner. Women, money, anti-semitism, Hitler. Fascinating article. The speech will appear in a special digital edition of the Club's magazine, The Commonwealth, this fall.

And yes, I kept thinking, "Kill da Wabbit!" One of the best cartoons ever.

Watch it on YouTube. Better yet, buy the video.

The Murdoch Touch: My Latest Northside SF Column

2011-08-15T08:56:00.000-07:00

My Common Knowledge column in the latest issue of Northside San Francisco magazine:

COMMON KNOWLEDGE

Les Hinton (photo by Sonya Abrams)

The Murdoch Touch

By John Zipperer

People like me, who grew up not only in newspaper-reading households but also in families of newspaper editors, almost instinctively mourn the death of any paper. Even weak papers or politically obnoxious papers still earn our respect when they expire.

But I don’t think many people outside Britain mourned the News of the World when owner Rupert Murdoch’s son, James, announced in July that the U.K. paper would abruptly cease publication. The paper was sacrificed in the wake of a massive and ongoing scandal that has engulfed Murdoch’s media empire, the rest of the British news media, and Britain’s leaders – who have for decades looked for the support of Murdoch’s conservative papers.

read the complete article

Google+ Reviewed – and Liked

2011-08-15T08:50:00.000-07:00

My latest article in Northside San Francisco magazine:

TECH TALK

It's All Over, Zuckerberg

By John Zipperer

Something funny happened on the way to Facebook accumulating almost as many users as McDonald’s has sold hamburgers. People began to regard Facebook with all of the wariness they usually reserve for the IRS or an angry dentist.

read the complete article

Google Buys Motorola Mobility: It's All about the Patents

2011-08-15T08:43:00.000-07:00

Don't spend too much time trying to figure out how a cloud software giant like Google is going to use a hardware manufacturer. The purchase ain't about the hardware. It's all about the patents, and Google's need to undo the screwup it made in the recent auction of wireless patents.

I told friends at the time that Google would find someway to mitigate the damage, and it's nice when events bear me out.

Give Me a Sign

2011-08-14T13:14:00.000-07:00

Real sign seen off Ocean Avenue in San Francisco.

Um, if you're a psychic, shouldn't you have at least one spirit from the netherworld who can correct your spelling?

J-Pop Summit San Francisco

2011-08-13T18:27:00.000-07:00

While passing through a street fair in San Francisco's Japantown this afternoon, I picked up a flyer reproduced here. It announces the J-Pop Summit Festival, which will be held in Japantown on August 27 and 28, 2011.

The back of the flyer shows some of the events and offerings of the event. So if you're in the Bay Area and looking for your J-pop fix, you know where to be in late August.

So then Are Bert and Ernie Ex-Gay?

2011-08-12T10:02:00.000-07:00

Responding to an online attempt to have Bert and Ernie get married, now that it's legal in New York, Sesame Street let it be known that Bert and Ernie are not gay. The couple – er, uh, roommates "remain puppets, and do not have a sexual orientation." Tell that to Tinky Winky.

Bert and Ernie have long been the targets of claims about their sexuality, so it's a surprise to hear that they have none. None. Perhaps they spent their summer recess at Marcus Bachmann's "clinic."

But Batman and Robin are still gay, right?

London Burns: Chaos Isn't As Fun As We Thought It Would Be

2011-08-12T09:33:00.000-07:00

Readers and viewers of science fiction are familiar with stories of post-apocalyptic societies. Government authority is either non-existent or it has been reduced to some authoritarian remnant as a sliver of society tries to hold on. On the streets and in the countryside, gangs alternately destroy anyone who gets in their way and they try to defend their turf. For the good person stuck in such a place, it is hell.

Of course, in the movies and books that use such scenarios, it's hell, but exciting hell. Exhilarating. A test of brawn against brawn, with an occasional use of brain. These stories are places we can go to experience what we have not, thank goodness, had to experience in our own lives.

We have been lucky. History is full – full – of such times, pretty much everywhere in the world, where there is a breakdown in order and local gangs and warlords take over. In such situations, there is no room for brains, caution, and grace. In such situations – think of Baghdad during the botched U.S. reconstruction or Somalia today – the strong survive and the weaker ones get raped, pillaged, and/or killed. Here and there, we get a taste of other such stories in real life, even in places where the government isn't discredited and authoritarian and the situation is not post-apocalyptic. Here in the United States, we still get murder and mayhem following electric outages or unpopular courtroom rulings.

In the United Kingdom this past week, there were four days of rioting allegedly sparked by the police killing of an armed (though non-shooting) man. People have died, including most recently a 68-year-old man who tried to get some of the rioters to stop setting afire a trash bin near his apartment building. More than a million people watched the YouTube video of the innocent Malaysian kid (bleeding profusely from a broken jaw given to him when the gangs beat him up) who was "helped" to his feet by rioters, who then robbed him.

The news programs, chat shows, political scream fests, blogs, and internet forums have been filled with people trotting out excuses for the rioters. Even when they include the caveat that "I'm not defending them" or "I'm not offering excuses," they are offering excuses.

The BBC quoted the state-run Chinese newspaper China Daily: "The riots offer food for thought not just for the UK but also for other developed countries. They were the outburst and explosion of a society that has been suffering in silence and which had reached the tipping point... Those who are taking to the streets are people who have nothing to lose."

And you know what? I don't buy it. I'm not exactly on the side of the right-wingers who are saying it's all a criminal matter, but frankly I think it mostly is. It is mostly people taking advantage of the absence of law and order by running rampant and spreading chaos. With the exception of China Daily and some others, what I'm mostly hearing is a lot of comfortable white Westerners parrot the ideological line that poor people are rioting because they they're poor and have no future.

Having grown up in the United States without money, at times in HUD housing, almost always in hand-me-downs, I simply think that's not true. Even if you take away the ridiculous notion that we'd have rioted in little ol' Green Bay, Wisconsin, you're still left with the fact that in no way would my parents, schools, city government, friends, or church have condoned crime as a response to not having what I wanted or needed. Yes, people have it worse off than I did, but when we are talking about the allegedly rioting poor in the UK, we have to acknowledge that there are billions of people who are worse off than they are. Usually unspoken in this political claim, but I think it's there so I'll go ahead and criticize it anyway, is the implicit allowance of crime as a response to joblessness or poverty.

I was particularly amused when some commentator, speaking after seeing a video of hooded youths rampaging through a UK city center, said something about poverty-stricken people of color having no other outlet for their rage. Of course, even with their hoods, we got enough glimpses of the youths to see that none of them looked "of color," unless we have now expanded that politically loaded term to include pink.

The desire to grant lenience to roving street thugs who burn, loot, assault, and kill is rooted in a political ideology that is in search of evidence.

Yes, I do think there is a bit of the economic explanation that is at work in these types of things. Maybe as an initial spark, or even in the initial reluctance by authorities to crack down too hard lest they be accused of overreaching. But I do not think it's the majority of the reason a small portion of people take to murder and pillaging. That requires a certain mindset that says that violence is in any way acceptable as a response; it requires parents who don't parent, schools that don't school, churches and other religious organizations that are afraid to teach, and governments that don't lead or protect. It doesn't require, but it certainly does benefit from, a reflex reaction from many people to blame the police and defend the rioters when rioters riot.

We hear the same weak logic with regard to terrorists. The story goes: Young Muslims are reacting to a lack of hope and possibilities, so they become terrorists. Last year, Ayaan Hirsi Ali was asked about that, and her reply (and remember, she is someone who has had Islamist death threats against her for years) was: "I have a problem with that. If we find it acceptable – if we even remotely entertain the idea – that if you lose your job, that there is one way to express your misery and that is by killing other people, we are really going down."

.

The Perry Rhodan Reading Project: Get Caught Up

2011-08-11T13:56:00.000-07:00

While researching an article on Germany's long-running space opera Perry Rhodan for the next issue of my magazine Galaxis (due out in early September), I discovered The Perry Rhodan Reading Project, a very engaging and interesting blog written by Kent G. Hare. He's a professor of early European history at a university in Louisiana, and he has been reading through the Rhodan series issue by issue, starting from the beginning.

Perry Rhodan, for those of you who don't know, has produced literally thousands of books, magazines, audio books, comics, and more since it premiered in 1961.

Hare's blog is his story-by-story chronicle of the plots and his reactions to each book. He also takes the occasional detour, for example with his review of the much-derided 1967 European film version of Perry Rhodan. And it's all illustrated with some great covers of the Rhodan books and magazines.

Check out The Perry Rhodan Reading Project for more.

Stock Market Tumbles Again

2011-08-10T09:04:00.000-07:00

Days like this make me glad that I am too poor to have a bunch of investments in the stock market. (And no, the above Apple dashboard gadget does not display my portfolio; merely stocks and indices of interest.)

So do we still want to put our all-critical Social Security retirement money into the stock market?

Oh, and just in the time it took me to write the above two paragraphs, the Dow dropped another 20 points.

Defy the Ban: Send a Student a Copy of Slaughterhouse Five

2011-08-09T08:39:00.000-07:00

The recent move by a Republic, Missouri, school board to ban Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.'s anti-war classic Slaughterhouse Five is not occurring without consequence. The Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library is offering to send up to 150 copies of the book to students in the high school who were going to read the book before it was banned.

The Library says, "We think it’s important for everyone to have their First Amendment rights. We’re not telling you to like the book… we just want you to read it and decide for yourself." Students can apply for the free books online at the Library's web site.

Perhaps the most disturbing thing about this move by the school board is that it was done at the behest of a Missouri University professor. He reportedly objected to the book's profanity, sexual content, and perceived insults to Christianity. The school board, never one to second-guess a learned professor, agreed to ban the book with reasoning that, with one or two word substitutions, could have come from North Korean censors: The book offenses include creating "false conceptions of American history and government or that teach principles contrary to Biblical morality and truth."

Yes, Biblical morality is being used by a public school system to ban one of the most celebrated books of the past century.

You can help the Library underwrite the cost of this effort by donating to the cause. And maybe buying a copy of the book yourself, and be sure to pass it along to a young person after you're finished reading it.

Pack Up the Bags, Honey, We're Going to Jupiter!

2011-08-05T09:11:00.000-07:00

At Cape Canaveral Air Force Station's Space Launch Complex 41, a crane is lowered over the nose of the Atlas payload container enclosing the Juno spacecraft. Photo by NASA/Cory Huston

This morning, NASA is scheduled to launch its Juno spacecraft on a journey to explore the largest planet in our solar system, Jupiter. Able to look into the planet's cloudy covering, Juno might be able to learn the secrets of the gas giant. NASA says that, "The answer might confirm theories about how the solar system formed, or it may change everything we thought we knew." No danger of oversel there!

Juno won't arrive at Jupiter until August of 2016, so don't sit at your computer waiting for the Jupiter pictures. (Actually, you should sit at your computer awaiting NASA news, but in the meantime, while Juno is wending its way to Jupiter, check out the Cassini-Huygens mission reports.) By the time Juno finally arrives at Jupiter (presumably wheezing from the effort of running the entire distance), it will survey Jupiter and its moons for a year to draw up a map of its magnetic field. One of the results hoped for is the answer to whether there is a solid core underneath Jupiter's swirling clouds.

"If we could start to understand the role that Jupiter played and how the planet formed and how that eventually governed the creation of the other planets and the Earth and maybe even life itself," the mission's principal investigator, Scott Bolton, told NASA, "then we know a little bit about how to look for other Earth-like planets, maybe orbiting other stars and how common those might be and the roles that those giant planets that we see orbiting the other stars play."

I'm somewhat mentally focused on the gas giants these days, because I've been working on a pictorial spread featuring Cassini's cool Saturn visit, which will appear in the second issue of Galaxis, my free digital science & science fiction magazine. Something else to keep you busy until August 2016.

NASA's Cassini spacecraft took this true-color simulated image of Jupiter in 2000. Jupiter's little moon Europa is casting the shadow on the planet. Photo by NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

Why Couldn't the New Spider-Man Be Asian?

2011-08-04T13:43:00.000-07:00

NMA World wonders where the Asian superheroes are, in the wake of the announcement that a new Marvel Spider-Man would be part black and part Latino.

Of course, as the immortal KevJumba points out, Hollywood doesn't even want to have Asians play Asian characters:

Laugh It Up, Fuzzball

2011-08-02T19:06:00.000-07:00

The Carol Burnett Show in the 1970s was a Saturday night fixture at my house, and at least part of the enjoyment came when one of the incredibly talented cast members would do his or her best to crack up his colleagues. An outtake:

Five Years of Rifftrax Highlights

2011-08-02T18:49:00.000-07:00

A peek at one of my favorite sources of retail humor:

Sex and the City ... Berlin 1931, That Is

2011-08-02T18:32:00.000-07:00

Deutsche Welle has an (English language) article about German novelist Irmgard Keun, who wrote a number of popular books, including The Artificial Silk Girl, which has been compared to Sex and the City.

I've increasingly been thinking about the idea that women in the West were more independent in the years between the world wars than they were after World War II, when they were sent back home and told to spend their time being amazed by their electric washing machines.

I haven't read The Artificial Silk Girl yet, but I've put it on my Amazon wish list. Thanks, DW.

Schlockmania Ponders Fangoria #10

2011-07-29T11:55:00.000-07:00

in which Don Guarisco confronts the question of the ages: Which is scarier – an exploding head or a Faeries TV special?

As I noted in my comment to Don's writeup, I have to wonder if Fangoria #10 can go down in history as the first magazine to put an exploding head on its cover. Has anyone else done it? Famous Monsters? Castle of Frankenstein? Car and Driver? I think not.

Read Don's description on Schlockmania.

Japan's SF Magazine: Great Magazine Covers, Continued

2011-07-28T09:08:00.000-07:00

As another in my occasional series of great magazine cover appreciation, I present this 1971 issue of SF magazine from Japan. For more Cold War-era SF magazines, see Meanjin's Spike, and for more Japanese Sf magazine covers, see Pink Tentacle.

Sneak Peek at Never-Seen Deleted Star Wars Footage

2011-07-22T09:09:00.000-07:00

Here's just a taste of the deleted Star Wars scenes that we'll get to see in more detail when the movies are released on Blu-ray this September.

(If that embedded video doesn't work, see it at Huffington Post.)

News International Continues Trying to Change the Subject

2011-07-21T18:58:00.000-07:00

Not to be outdone by The Wall Street Journal's whining that it was being drawn into the salacious scandal of its owner, over in the UK News International (which, like the WSJ, is owned ultimately by News Corp.) is trying desperately to change the subject.

The subject, of course, is the phone hacking scandal that has morphed into a Watergate-level threat to that country's political elite.

So how did The Sun, News International's other bottom-feeding tabloid besides the now-defunct News of the World, report on the scandal today? The only thing I saw on its website was this:

Yes, this is News International's "Leave Britney alone!" moment.

Maybe if I dug and dug I might have found something else on the paper's website about this huge scandal. But if this is the first thing one comes across when searching for the hacking scandal on that scandal sheet's website, then this is the first thing the paper's owners want you to see.

Digital Magazines Magma & Galaxis Keep Growing

2011-07-20T14:05:00.000-07:00

I was so pleased in late June when I noted here that my digital science-fiction/science magazine Galaxis had reached the 1,000 viewers milestone.

Today, I happened to notice that my previous digital magazine, Magma (a magazine about the magazine industry), had also reached 1,000 viewers. That was a very pleasant surprise; I knew Galaxis had a larger audience, because science fiction is a popular topic. But Magma caters to a much more specialized reader.

So now Magma is at 1,000 and counting. And Galaxis keeps zooming along; as of today, it's at 1,600!

Enjoy them both!

Open publication - Free publishing - More weimar

I should note that the second issue of Galaxis is well under way and should be available (from issuu and magcloud) in early September. As always, you can find all of my publications at my main website.

Open publication - Free publishing - More futurism

David Brooks Strikes Again

2011-07-19T08:17:00.000-07:00

Coming on the heels of his braining of the GOP over its refusal to accept the "no-brainer" budget deal offered to them by President Barack Obama, New York Times columnist David Brooks struck again today with a column that continues his line of accusation that today's Republican Party is not a serious governing party.

Some choice bits:

[Grover] Norquist is the Zelig of Republican catastrophe. His method is always the same. He enforces rigid ultimatums that make governance, or even thinking, impossible. ...

Republicans now have a group of political celebrities who are marvelously uninterested in actually producing results. Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann produce tweets, not laws. ...

All of these groups [components of the GOP] share the same mentality. They do not see politics as the art of the possible. They do not believe in seizing opportunities to make steady, messy progress toward conservative goals. They believe that politics is a cataclysmic struggle. They believe that if they can remain pure in their faith then someday their party will win a total and permanent victory over its foes. They believe they are Gods of the New Dawn.

Mind you, Brooks has not become a liberal. He is an honest conservative writing this, and as such, deserves a hearing.

Read the entire column at The New York Times.

Why Didn’t Sylvester Stallone Run for Governor? The Starlog Project, Starlog #196, November 1993

2011-07-13T11:20:00.000-07:00

The 1980s and 1990s were the era of over-muscled heroes, from Douglas Quaid to Rambo to the Terminator. Brains were out, cartoonishly rippled chests and arms were in. And two actors ruled in this era.

There were pretenders, such as Dolf Lundgren. But the two actors who were consistent box office gold were Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger. And, though I might not care for many of the pictures they starred in, certainly millions of others loved them and threw their money at any cinema showing the flicks. (Did Stallone and Schwarzenegger ever confront each other on screen? I don’t think so. But it would have been something to see.)

So they kept making the films. With 1993’s Demolition Man, Stallone takes the lead again, playing a police officer cryogenically frozen for several decades, who is awakened to find that the world has gotten stranger during his time asleep. The antagonist is Wesley Snipes, a criminal who was also frozen and thawed to provide some drama in 2032.

On page 29 of this issue of Starlog, a photo caption reads: “Death Race 2000 is Stallone’s only other SF venture up until Demolition Man. The future, however, holds quite a few more.” That would come true a year later with the release of Judge Dredd, the long-awaited but disappointing American film of the legendary UK comics.

Meanwhile, Demolition Man reportedly debuted at the box office in the #1 slot and went on to make almost three times its production cost.

Starlog #196
92 pages (including covers)
Cover price: $4.95

This classified ad on page 79 caught my eye: “SCI-FI + ROCK = AUDIO COMIX. Series on cassette. Buy one. $11.50. …” No, I still don’t have any idea what that equation means. Also this issue, the magazine advertises its latest licensed movie magazine: Jason Goes to Hell, featuring all of the gruesomeness horror fans need.

The rundown: Sylvester Stallone’s Demolition Man character takes up the cover shot, while a Joe Chiodo illustration of RoboCop controls the contents page. In his Medialog column, David McDonnell reports first news that Tom Cruise got the controversial call to portray the vampire Lestat in Interview with the Vampire. Has anyone told Anne Rice yet? Michael McAvennie’s Gamelog reviews Iron Helix, Acclaim’s Alien3, and more. Communications letters cover Star Trek, of course (including one writer who says that Star Trek: The Next Generation “is frequently a politically correct bore”), as well as The Abyss and Lost in Space, while Mike Fisher’s Creature Profile features an Invader from Venus. And Booklog reviews Virtual Light, Night of the Cooters, The Jaguar Princess, Retief and the Rascals, Camelot 30K, Dancer’s Rise, Icarus Descending, Manhattan Transfer, Greendaughter, Against a Dark Background, Hunty Party, Larissa, and On Basilisk Station.

Of course the Fan Network features the usual convention calendar and Scott Briggs’ directory of fan clubs and publications. David Hutchison’s Videolog includes Francis Ford Coppola’s movie Bram Stoker’s Dracula, plus other recent video releases. A two-page Tribute section includes Jean-Marc Lofficier’s obituary for publishing legend Lester Del Rey, and Tom Scherman remembers production designer Harper Goff, whose work includes Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and other classics. And Kerry O’Quinn’s From the Bridge column features a letter from novelist Simon R. Green talking about his early perserverence in becoming a successful author.

Marc Shapiro interviews actor Sylvester Stallone, who calls his new movie Demolition Man “a science fiction/action/comedy.” Kyle Counts talks with actor Richard Hatch, who – in 1993 – was just getting started trying to revive Battlestar Galactica. Joe Nazzaro chats with Red Dwarf star Robert Llewellyn, who also talks about his appearance in the ill-fated American pilot of the UK’s Red Dwarf.

Steven Spielberg, for all of his astounding successes at the movie box office, has never been a raging success on the small screen. His Amblin Entertainment would try again – with Spielberg as executive producer – on the submarine show seaQuest DSV (which, as I noted in an earlier writeup, was dubbed by one early critic as Voyage to the Bottom of the Ratings). Well, Bill Warren previews the new show; like all TV series preview articles, it’s filled with the actors and other creators making glowing, positive remarks about the show and telling you little of real insight or detail. A more successful sea voyage would be the 1993 Sea Trek cruise in the Caribbean, about which David Hutchison reports. A highlight of the trip – or at least an unexpected occurrence during the voyage – is the rescue of four Cuban refugees at sea.

On dry land, Ian Spelling interviews Trek’s Marina Sirtis, who describes how things might have been different if she had gotten the part for which she had originally auditioned: the security chief (eventually played by Denise Crosby). David Hirsch profiles composer Basil Poledouris, who discusses his work on RoboCop, Conan the Barbarian, and other films. Mark Phillips brings us back to the water with an interview of Allan Hunt, who portrayed Stu Riley in one season of Irwin Allen’s Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. (See? This entire issue is connected.) Ian Spelling also talked to Sigourney Weaver about Alien3, which she discusses in a one-page article. She admits that the film “was sort of a downer” but defends it as a brave attempt to continue making each Alien film different than the previous ones. And editor David Hutchison wraps it all up in his Liner Notes column with a report on his trip to Australia, where he did not pick up any Cuban refugees.

“Trying to generate renewed interest in Battlestar, either as a theatrical feature or as a three-parter for the Sci-Fi Channel … Hatch has written a script that picks up where the original Battlestar left off. … ‘It ties up all the loopholes and puts the characters on track to finding their home. My story tells what that journey would really be like, rather than suddenly having them find Earth, which is what they did in Galactica 1980. [While Hatch was offered a role in that incarnation of the saga, he turned it down due to work conflicts.] I think they threw the premise away and turned it into a gimmicky show. The original series had a much different mystical, profound quality to it,’ Hatch observes.”
–Kyle Counts, writer: “Life Beyond the Battlestars”

For more, click on Starlog below or visit the Starlog Project's permanent site.

UK Phone Hacking Scandal in Taiwan Video News Treatment

2011-07-08T13:14:00.000-07:00

Naturally, I join the entire civilized world in reveling in anything that causes Rupert Murdoch headaches.

But I think there's an even more important thing at stake. Britain's "lively" tabloid newspaper culture is sometimes defended as the cost of a free and vigorous press. But clearly there's a lot that's just criminal going on, and it's hardly a matter of hard news and civic duty to report on a celebrity's shenanigans.

Meanwhile, over in Taiwan, they're showing us what a lively news culture is really about: taking the stuffing out of people in a manner that is fearless, borderline bad taste, and sometimes downright brilliant. NMA rules.

My Column in Marina Times: Lying Liers

2011-07-07T18:16:00.001-07:00

My Northside San Francisco column this month is also printed in its sister publication, San Francisco's Marina Times.

Common Knowledge
Living on lies

By John Zipperer

Former congressman Anthony Weiner made a revealing (forgive the word) statement when he belatedly explained his recent unraveling sex scandal. At a press conference, Weiner admitted that even when he first lied about the situation, he ultimately knew he wouldn’t get away with it.

READ THE ENTIRE COLUMN

My Latest Column in Northside San Francisco – No Lying

2011-07-07T18:11:00.000-07:00

The July 2011 Northside San Francisco has my latest column:

Common Knowledge
Living on lies

By John Zipperer

Former congressman Anthony Weiner made a revealing (forgive the word) statement when he belatedly explained his recent unraveling sex scandal. At a press conference, Weiner admitted that even when he first lied about the situation, he ultimately knew he wouldn’t get away with it.

Weiner lied, of course, in the horror of being caught doing things that were inappropriate for a sitting U.S. Representative – or anyone else, probably. But his lies were direct attempts to avoid or delay a reckoning that might ruin his career and marriage.

READ THE ENTIRE COLUMN

My Review of Erik Larson's In the Garden of Beasts

2011-07-07T18:08:00.000-07:00

ERIK LARSON. Photo
by Benjamin Benschneider

In the current edition of Northside San Francisco, my review of Erik Larson's new nonfiction book In the Garden of Beasts is published.

Book Notes
Strangers in a stranger land

By John Zipperer

Adolf Hitler met my stepmother. True story. She was a young schoolgirl in the 1930s, one of thousands of locals lined up to observe the Nazi leader on his visit to their eastern German city. As the dictator walked through the crowd shaking hands, he stopped long enough to playfully tug on my stepmother’s pig-tails, and he moved on.

History is filled with such minor but interesting details that either make history come alive or bogs it down even further for people who hate history. In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin, the new nonfiction book from author Erik Larson, is filled with just those kinds of details of character and location, sight and even smell.

READ THE WHOLE REVIEW

ISI Full Civic Literacy Exam

2011-07-03T09:29:00.000-07:00

In my new column in Northside San Francisco (which is out on the stands now, and I'll post a link to the online version in a week or so), I note some of those notorious survey results that show that Americans are less knowledgeable about the world than they should be. Real survey results, such as that more Americans can name two members of Snow White's Seven Dwarfs than can name two members of the U.S. Supreme Court. Or that a majority of Americans don't believe in evolution. Or that a quarter of Americans don't know what country we fought to gain our independence.

One could go on, but demonstrating the lack of informed opinion in this country is a bit like shooting fish in a barrel; it's just too easy. And all the water leaks out from the bullet holes.

So I was pleased when a friend send me a link to an online survey from the Intercollegiate Studies Institute's 33-question Full Civic Literacy Exam. It notes: "The average score for all 2,508 Americans taking the following test was 49%; college educators scored 55%."

Take the test, then come back here and tell us in the comments section below what your score was. (Be honest; you can post anonymously.)

For the record, I got 93.94%. Now, that and $3.00 will get me a cup of coffee, and I don't even drink coffee, so it's pretty useless. But it should be noted that I'm an editor, writer, and publisher, not a college educator, so you can now think your own thoughts about the decline of American civilization.

UPDATE July 3, 2011, 9:35 a.m.: I should note that after I took the test and posted this to Facebook and my blog, I looked further into ISI, which is connected to the conservative Collegiate Network, which used to be known as the Institute for Educational Affairs (a nonprofit that helps conservative college newspapers, including one I edited back in the 1980s at the University of Wisconsin-Madison). The test isn't necessarily conservative, though there are a few economics questions that likely wouldn't please left-wingers. Just FYI, in the interests of full disclosure. (And though no, I wouldn't fit any real definition of a conservative today, I do think that overall this is a good test. It's not tricky, and most people really should know all of the information it tests.)

Fangoria Uber Alles

2011-06-30T17:11:00.000-07:00

Because ... for its first couple years, horror film magazine Fangoria featured the motto "Monsters • Aliens • Bizarre Creatures" on its cover

Because ... it was a darn cool motto

Because ... it was playful yet dark at the same time

Because ... the newest edition of Fangoria features a return of the old logo

Because ... that old logo was my favorite of all Fango logos

and because the newest edition features an awesome play on the old motto,

I hope that someone in the Fangoria offices is getting a pat on the back from the company's president. A framed certificate, perhaps. The publisher's box seat tickets for the next Yankees or Mets game, maybe.

1,000 and Counting!

2011-06-29T08:51:00.000-07:00

Late yesterday, viewership of my digital magazine Galaxis ("The worlds of science & science fiction") surpassed 1,000, all in about a month's time. Now, I know that 1,000 readers is a minor amount both in print and online publications. But for a free digital magazine that has had no budget – absolutely zero – and has spread only by word of mouth (and, I guess, word of Facebook and Twitter), it's a promising start. My one thousandth viewer is therefore a milestone.

If you haven't checked it out yet, click on it below to view it full-screen on your computer. You can also download it to your computer from my host issuu.com site (just look for the download icon beneath the magazine image on that page). And if you want an actual, paper-and-ink hard copy of the magazine, you can purchase it from my print-on-demand pals at MagCloud.

While I continue to welcome new readers to issue #1, I am hard at work on issue #2, which is shaping up to be even better. I've got lots of original, in-depth articles on new and classic science fiction and science from around the world. One reader commented to me that he likes reading a science fiction magazine that shows him stuff he doesn't already know about, that widens his base of knowledge and enjoyment of the genre. I feel exactly the same way, and I think this second issue will really establish Galaxis as the smart portal to the global SF field that we've been needing.

Look for issue #2 in a couple month's time. Until then, enjoy the premiere issue!

Green Bay's Martin H. Greenberg, RIP

2011-06-25T17:26:00.000-07:00

The news is spreading that editor Martin H. Greenberg passed away today at the age of 70. Greenberg edited – what's the technical word I'm looking for? – zillions of books in science fiction and other genres over the years, working closely with other legends such as Isaac Asimov and Robert Silverberg.

I remember seeing his name as a co-editor with Asimov on countless SF anthologies when I was growing up, and when I learned that he was from my hometown – Green Bay, Wisconsin – it was my first clue that this far-away world of science fiction could also originate from out-of-the-way places like GB. That was almost as exciting a realization as the cool visions and ideas that were being presented in the science fiction I was reading.

Starting in 1975, Greenberg taught at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay. He passed away after losing a fight to cancer. As writer Max Allan Collins put it, "This business ... this world ... is suddenly a smaller, shabbier place."

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Ed's Pop Culture Shack Takes the Fangoria Challenge

2011-06-24T10:02:00.000-07:00

It looks like Schlockmania has competition:

Check out Ed's Pop Culture Shack for a new series of Fangoria magazine restrospectives, starting with the earliest issue in his collection, #2 from 1979.

Readers of my blog already know about Schlockmania's fun series chronicling the early years of Fango.

Is there room for both series? Absolutely. It's fun to get each person's take on the issue, the films highlighted inside, and the times (the '70s were a definite watershed for many folks!). I like them both, and I recommend them for any movie magazine fan and horror film fan who wants to do some digital time traveling back to those pre-digital days.

As everyone knows, I like to do that.

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Starlog is Back – On Your Back, As a T-Shirt

2011-06-22T08:27:00.000-07:00

From small beginnings ...

Fangoria magazine, the sole survivor of a small but prolific magazine publishing house, has teamed up with Fright Rags to sell t-shirts emblazoned with the logos of Fangoria, Gorezone, and Starlog.

Starlog, as every reader of this blog knows, is the dearly departed science fiction magazine that died a sad death two years ago. It continued as an online-only product for less than a year before that, too, was shuttered, and Starlog.com is no more. Much has been written about Starlog's print and online existence – and much of it by me – but there's as yet no indication that the magazine will return to print soon or ever. So this t-shirt might be no more than an exercise in keeping legal control of a logo and name. But one never knows; Gorezone was a short-lived horror film sister magazine to Fango, and it is being resurrected in July as a special best-of one-shot, with the tantalizing possibility of a full-scale rebirth, depending on customer response, no doubt. So readers can hope that Starlog has a future life, too, and that it will be done well.

Either way, I'm still happy to see Starlog's appearance on clothing – and yes, I'm glad they used the classic logo for the magazine, the logo that was used almost until the very end of the publication's run, when it was replaced by a less dramatic, less graceful version. They made the correct choice for the shirt.

You'll also notice below that the Fango shirt uses the old logo for that magazine. This version was actually the second version of Fangoria's logo, appearing from the second issue until it was changed a few years later to the version that lasted a couple decades. The magazine has been switching back and forth with this classic logo and the current logo on its covers lately, so it's an open question which logo will be the long-term winner.

The shirts are only $19.95 each. And you know I'll be ordering the Starlog shirt. Order yours, if you're interested.

Roger Ebert Censored on Facebook; 16-year-old Kids Flame Him

2011-06-21T09:52:00.000-07:00

Say what you will about film critic Roger Ebert. You might as well say it, because people are posting all kinds of profane and nasty things on his Facebook wall today in the wake of a couple of comments he posted about the death of the star of Jackass, which he implies was because of drunk driving.

Personally, I think Ebert is a hero. Since he lost his voice, he has found his voice in the new media world, becoming one of the bravest and sharpest (and one of the few intelligent) commentators on Twitter and Facebook and blogs.

But Facebook, which never seems to stop shooting itself in the foot (and must therefore have the most bullet-riddled shoes in the world), censored Ebert this morning by taking down his Facebook page as a result of some complaints about Ebert's comments. Now, Ebert didn't post anything that was outrageous. His comments weren't racist. They weren't inciting violence.

He commented, "Friends don't let jackasses drink and drive." He was referring to a photo that showed the Jackass star drinking shortly before the accident, which killed two people.

Facebook reportedly apologized for removing the page, but it is chilling that the company would remove the page anyway. Is there really no free speech on Facebook? Does Facebook think it is the arbiter of good taste? (This is, after all, a company caught red-handed on numerous questionable business practices, most recently when it was exposed as the company behind a public relations campaign to spread negative stories about Google.)

And then there are the unbelievably foul mouthed and uneducated brats who have "liked" Ebert's Facebook page this morning so they could post messages on his wall. Here's one message (dashes added by yours truly): "I pray every single one of you idiots mothers get raped and murdered maybe then you will think twice talking about someone who is gone. f---ing idiots." Or this charmer: "you sir, are a scumbag. and so are all of you're disrespectful little "followers". you know what you said was wrong and WAY to soon to be said. you don't even have the respect for everyone hurting, and crying, to apologize. why don't you grow up a little bit and APOLOGIZE. show some respect to Ryan's family, and to the members of Jackass."

To help counter the onslaught of crying tweeners on the wall, I posted my own comment: "Roger, I think this wall shows that you have the support of people who don't ride their skateboards to work. Keep up the good work." I was pleased to see it quickly earned a number of "likes," but sure enough, responses started coming in about what was possibly wrong with skateboarding to work. Sigh.

I guess what surprised me second most (following Facebook's creepy level of censorship, of course) is the vehemence of fans of the dead man. The comments on Ebert's wall refer to themselves crying, hurting, in pain. Those are feelings you should have when a family member or friend dies, not a star of a oddball TV show and movie series. It reminds me of a time in high school when I made some negative comments about Ted Turner (most definitely not nasty comments, just negative; I was probably commenting on his opportunism as a conservative at the time; Turner would later change sides and become a vocal and at times brave liberal); a classmate confronted me about criticizing his hero; the classmate worked himself up to tears as he described how he and his mother both idolized Ted Turner for his success in business. It was an unnerving experience.

Roger Ebert has a way of not being unnerving, nor of being unnerved. You can read his sensible follow-up to the controversy on his blog (which I urge you to bookmark and read regularly).

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