Pimpin' for the Dinan'

Congrats to wunderkind Kurt Dinan on making it into Maurice Broaddus's Dark Faith anthology (coming soon from Apex Books). The full TOC can be found here.

Erik's Prediction for Avatar

The resident natives on the planet battle an off-world power greedy for a specific resource. One of the off-worlders falls in with the natives and learns their ways and helps them fight and defeat the greedy off-worlders. Meanwhile, he becomes something more than human, drinks the Water of Life, the Sleeper awakens...

Yeah, Cameron ripped off Herbert. That's my prediction. Set the story on a tropical planet vice a desert one, make the human Fremen blue humanoids, and change the exotic substance from spice to minerals, and you have Avatar. Oh, and change Houre Corino and House Harkonen to corporations and Space Marines and there you have it. Cameron ripped of Ellison and now he's ripping off Herbert's Dune.

At least, that's my prediction. I could be wrong.

"The Spice must flow!"

Quick Movie Review - G.I. Joe

I played with the toys when I was younger. I had probably well over a hundred figures and some where around twenty vehicles. By far my favorite toys growing up. I used to take over the entire living room for days as I waged battle campaigns. So, I had hopes for this movie. Even if it was stupid fun, I could accept that.

This movie sucked hard. I mean Mega Maid sucked (name the movie reference). Where the toys (and cartoon) had cool characters and background stories, this movie has horrible CGI and shitty expositionary dialogue. They never even explain that the characters' names are Code Names, ie Duke, Snake Eyes, etc. Instead, people just call Duke Duke like it's a damn nickname. Which leads to everyone calling everyone else by these "nicknames" without any explanation as to why they're called that. Even Top Gun explained the call signs.

And then there's the storyline, if you can call it that. Evil Technology employed by Evil Corporation vs Good Technology employed by Good Multi-National Organization. Yes, it's Halliburton vs the UN. Stupid. What they should have done was have the super-sercret evil corporation vs unprepared world governments. To counter the SSEC, the govis get together and field their best spec forces guys and gals to hunt the SSEC from the shadows until they can catch up on the tech side. So it be SSEC tech (soon to be COBRA) vs Multi-National Super Shadow Killers (soon to be G.I. Joe). Snake Eyes would of course be the best and to counter the damage he's doing, COBRA would bring in Storm Shadow to target him. In addition, to push the Joes out of the shadows, COBRA would also bring in guys like Firefly and Zartan and the Drednoughts.

Hell yeah. Now that's an f-ing movie. Much better than the shit I watched.

Fight Scene Friday, Wednesday Edition

Since it's a short week, I'm moving it up two days. So, for your Turkey Day pleasure, I give you a montage from The Karate Kid set to the Joe Esposito song Best Around. Enjoy.

Movie Quote Monday

"The time has come for someone to put his foot down. And that foot is me."
-Dean Wormer (as played by John Vernon), Animal House

Fight Scene Friday

The airplane fight from The Raiders of the Lost Ark. Enjoy.

Drive-By Updates

1. BLOOD SPRING is coming SOON!!!!!!!!! More to follow. Soon.

2. THE DEATH PANEL is scheduled for a November 23rd release. Monday, Monday, Monday!

3. I have finished my novel FACELESS. Revisions to follow.

4. Revisions continue on GUARDIANS.

5. I started my next novel, THE ROAD TO DAMASCUS.

That is all.