Enter the Octopus

After careful consideration, I’ve decided to stop updating this blog – at least for a while. I may come back to it after the holidays. Here are the reasons why:

1. Pressing deadlines: I’ve got some high profile publicity work that I’ll be busy with at least through January. I’ve also got a few regular writing gigs that I need to focus on. I’m also interested in increasing the amount of writing on assignment I do for other content providers.
2. Changing priorities: I’m becoming more interested in creating things these days. I’d like to sculpt, draw and paint more, and also maybe learn a few crafts. Plus, I’d like to do some creative nonfiction writing and maybe try to write a story or two.

All of this being said, you’ll probably see more of me, but just not here. I’ll be writing for publication, and of course you’ll see me here and there planning or promoting this or that book title. I still love the genre, but I think that my time and energy can be more constructively spent in other ways.

I’m going to leave the site up here as an archive, and in the meantime, if you’re interested in having me contribute reviews, essays or other material to your blog or publication, feel free to reach out at com Dot gmail At mattormeg

I had to put my oldest cat, Booka, to sleep today. I knew it was coming, but it didn’t make it any easier to do. She was 16 years old, a beautiful calico with whom I had practically grown from a kid to a man. She’s been with us from move to move, place to place.

Read the rest of this entry »

Richard Grant’s new book “God’s Middle Finger” explores the lawless expanse of the Sierra Madre mountain range, where narco-traffickers and murderers live with relative impunity alongside loincloth wearing Indians, rattlesnakes and venemous scorpions. Grant, a British writer with an “unfortunate obsession” with the region decides to travel the range for a year, a tip that ends with him being hunted by night like a wild animal by AK-47 toting “Mexican hillbillies”.

It’s out in trade paperback now. Get it.

I have no idea how this book slipped past me, but now I must have it. I’ve talked ad nauseum about how important gaming has been in my life, so I won’t bore you with it here, but damn, how did I manage to miss this? Check out the author’s website here. I’m hoping that this title won’t be marred with snark.

Breaking news: The Walt Disney Co. just announced its purchase of Marvel Comics for $4 billion dollars in cash and stock, netting the Disney ownership of over 5,000 unique Marvel characters, including Iron Man, Spiderman, and many more.

I can’t say that I’m too happy about this. I’m no fan of Disney, as I consider them shameless bloodsuckers of the highest order – not that Marvel’s as bunch of saints either. Disney’s appropriation, commodifying and copyrighting of classic children’s tales in whole or in part infuriates me, along with their lobbying for more copyright extensions on characters like Mickey Mouse, as did their “Disney Vault” marketing strategy of a few years back where they urged parents to buy movies for their children now or risk them going back into the “Disney Vault” for an unspecified number of years – presumably long enough so that their children would miss out on seeing the same films that mom and dad saw when they were children.

Well, anyway, looks like they’re acquiring more real estate in the imaginations of children around the world – and by extension their parents’ pocketbooks -  and we know how valuable that can be.

By the way,  check this Disney Vault parody on Saturday Night Live. (NSFWish)

The Tachyon Publications 14^th Anniversary Party

Sunday, August 30th, 2 p.m. – 6 p.m.
Borderlands Books
866 Valencia Street (at 20th St.)
San Francisco, CA 94110
415.824.8203

Join Tachyon in celebrating fourteen years as an award-winning independent publisher of smart science fiction and fantasy.

If you’re going to be in the San Francisco area this Sunday afternoon, then make plans to be at Borderlands Books for cake and conversation with the friends and staff of Tachyon Publications. Everyone’s invited for what’s sure to be a very special event.

Featuring:

• A tribute to F&SF Magazine on its 60^th anniversary from Gene Wolfe, Charles de Lint, Ellen Klages, F&SF editor Gordon Van Gelder and others: to celebrate F&SF’s 60^th anniversary (and Tachyon’s Best of Fantasy & Science Fiction 60^th Anniversary Anthology, and Tachyon’s 14^th anniversary), we’ve done 11 interviews (5-7 minutes each) with F&SF authors who are also Tachyon authors. The authors discuss their first stories in F&SF, what F&SF means to them and to the genre, and give their personal congratulations to the magazine. Interviewees: Peter Beagle, Karen Joy Fowler, Michael Swanwick, Mary Rickert, Jeffrey Ford, John Kessel, Delia Sherman, Ellen Klages, Gene Wolfe, Charles de Lint, and Gordon Van Gelder himself.

• Presentation of the 7^th Annual Norton Awards: The Norton Award, a San Francisco Bay Area-specific award given each year for “extraordinary invention and creativity unhindered by the constraints of paltry reason.” Two awards are given, one to a single work of SF/F/H or to an author in these genres; the second to any creation, creator, or service relating to those genres. The award is named after and commemorates the memory of Joshua Norton I, Emperor of the United States of America and Protector of Mexico. It is a juried award, and this year’s judges were Richard Lupoff (author), Alan Beatts (book store proprietor), and Jacob Weisman (editor/publisher). This is the seventh annual award; last year’s awards went to Cory Doctorow (for Little Brother) and Dark Carnival bookstore owner JackRems.

• Local author appearances: Peter S. Beagle and others!

• Really good cake: who doesn’t like cake? Really.

www.tachyonpublications.com

Interested in GreenPunk? Want to watch the evolution of a movement? Check out http://www.greenpunk.net for fiction, essays, art, news and more.

GreenPunk: a technophilic spec-fic movement centered on characters using and being affected by the use of DIY renewable resources, recycling and repurposing. GreenPunk would emphasize the ability of the individual  – and his or her responsibility – for positive ecological and social change.

Rejecting steampunk’s romanticism while embracing its focus on approachable, “knowable” technology (as opposed to the “black box” nature of digital tech), GreenPunk envisions a world in which the detritus of consumer culture as propogated by the Elite is appropriated and repurposed by the masses toward the reconstruction of a devastated ecology and the address of social ills.

Note: after posting this, I discovered that someone else had coined the term GreenPunk. But their GreenPunk concept is utterly different from my own. So, in the spirit of the True GreenPunk Movement I am Reappropriating it.

ADDITIONALLY: I am interested in developing a list of GreenPunk stories and novels – something toward a canon. Please leave your suggestions via comment below.

A GreenPunk Manifesto by Matt Staggs is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at entertheoctopus.wordpress.com.

Zachary King broke into David Shokrian’s home and brutally assaulted Shokrian and roommate Logan Bryson with a hammer in an incident stemming from disagreements over an earlier  Dungeons & Dragons game and jealousy over a girl. Bryson  suffered a concussion and Shokrian lost some vision and his ability to read and write, which he is trying to recover through therapy. LINK

Here’s an earlier story that provides a lot more background. Apparently Shokrian was beaten so badly that EMS responders found bits of his brain and skull on his pillows.

There were other extenuating circumstances involved in the attack. According to the article there was a disagreement over money and some jealousy over a girl, so really, the D&D aspect is only one small part of the story. I have no doubt that it will soon become the only part that people care about. For that matter, the guy was a Mormon missionary as well, but I don’t think that this was what led to the brutal attack. If you’re interested, you can check out King’s LiveJournal page here.

The guy was obviously nuts. You get all kinds in this hobby, but you get them in other hobbies too.

A comic book describing mentally ill people as “long thought useless to society” and  “ridiculously disturbed” isn’t cool at all, Image. Jeez. I thought you people were a little more professional than that. Can’t wait to see what happens with NAMI finds out.

“It started with Dr. Sebastian Ghislain: rogue psychotherapist/covert op/DJ.  Tasked with creating a counter-intelligence unit, he turned to those long thought useless to society…patients with Multiple Personality Disorder.  These agents became known simply as Triplets. Misguided?  Yeah.  Impractical?  Sure.  But did it work?  Absolutely not. Now someone has located each Triplet and created a band of ridiculously disturbed, but highly effective assassins. Our only hope?  A Triplet known as Cowboy Ninja Viking!”

Feel free to contact IMAGE here.

And the National Alliance for on Mental Illness here

(spotted at Major Spoilers)