The Great Geek Manual

Comics

• 10 Iron Man Armors you won’t see in the movie is an excellent introduction into Tony Stark’s wardrobe for fans who haven’t read the comics.

Film

• A big screen adaptation of Robert Heinlein’s The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress written by Firefly’s Tim Minear has been posted online by the SoCal Browncoats.
• Den of Geek has posted 10 great movie trailers of the last 30 years, many of which are actually more fun to watch than the movies they’re promoting.

Internet

• Geekologie’s “Folder In Residence” is offering up the patter to Create an Origami version of Wall-E.

Literature

• How do you define Science Fiction and should you even bother defining it at all?

Television

• Author John Scalzi poses the question, “What Are the New SciFi Classics?”
• Trying to decide on the Worst Sci-Fi Shows ever can be a tricky proposition, as numerous as the candidates are, but Forever Geek takes a crack at it.
• What the frack is going to happen next on BattleStar Galactica?! Or The True Meaning of Starbuck’s Bonfire.

Video Games

• PC World counts off the 15 Hottest Games of Summer, starting, predictably with Spore.

Art

• Once in while, you just find a bit of fan art that tickles your funny bone. Spidey vs. Hulk is one of those pieces.

Comics

• Cracked presents their choices for The 7 Most Hilariously Mismatched Superhero Battles, but I don’t think that the Flash, who is frequently stymied by Guerrilla Grod, outmatches anyone.
• Terry Pratchett’s Discworld has been released as a two-part graphic novel, The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic.

Film

• Damn. When MTV give notice that DC has lost out to Marvel in the movie game, you know the situation is bad.
• The first poster for “The Day the Earth Stood Still” has hit the net.

Internet

• The Anime Laws of Physics are numerous but open to discussion.
• Gizmodo has posted a pointless but fascinating video of the helmets of Imperial Troopers being painted at the LEGO factory.
• Interview: Guys Lit Wire has an interview with Rob Heinsoo, lead designer of the D&D Fourth Edition.
• J.J. Abrams’ upcoming science fiction series, Fringe, which is scheduled to air this fall on Fox, has been leaked and you can now find it on Pirate Bay and practically any other torrent site. Is this becoming a trend? I seem to remember the same thing happening last summer.

Literature

• Free Fiction: Audible is offering up The Disappeared by Kristin Kathryn Rusch for free.
• Free Fiction: The Secret History of Star Wars by Michael Kaminski is now available as a free e-book.
• The List Universe offers an opinion on who qualifies as the Top 10 Most Influential Science Fiction Writers.

Television

• i09 explains the argument behind the belief that the planet that the planet Galactica discovered in the mid-season finale wasn’t Earth.

Anime

• Death Note, Vol. 5 (Jun 24)
• Kujibiki Unbalance, Vol. 2: Love Rikkyouin
• Maburaho: Complete Collection
• Shattered Angels, Vol. 2: Kyoshiro and the Eternal Sky

Books

• The House of Many Ways by Diana Wynne Jones
  A young adult fantasy novel set in the world of Howl’s Moving Castle.
  HarperCollins/Greenwillow. (ISBN: 978-0-06-147795-9) Hardcover. Length: 404pp
• The Summer Palace by Lawrence Watt-Evans
  The third volume in the Annal of the Chosen fanasy trilogy.
  Tor. (ISBN: 978-0-7653-1028-6) Hardcover. Length: 316pp

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Art

• If the Seven Deadly Sins were red wine glasses, how would they be shaped?

Comics

• I don’t know how the Topless Robot managed to narrow their “The 10 Least Incredible Hulk Villains Ever Smashed” list down to ten, but…
• io9 posts its best list ever: Superheroes Who Can’t Have Sex.
• PS3 Fanboy has compiled a list of the 10 Best PlayStation Ads and the 10 Worst PlayStation Ads.
• The Late Show presents Top ten signs your wife is having an affair with The Incredible Hulk.

Literature

• Free Speculative Fiction Online offers a rapidly growing selection of vintage science fiction short stories.

Video Games

• According to a PricewaterhouseCoopers, global video game industry sales will reach US$26.4 billion by 2012.
• The ten most ludicrously named arcade games includes such winners as “Boong-Ga Boong-Ga,” “Hotdog Storm,” and “Xexex.”

Art

• Chet Zar, one of the artists behind the upcoming Hell Boy movie, has a haunting, somewhat dissettling online gallery.

Film

• The American Film Institute has released a list of their top ten best science fiction and fantasy movies as determined by a jury of 1,500 film artists, critics and historians.
• Den of Geek has a great list of the Top 10 Forgotten British Fantasy Movies for the next time you have a weekend to kill.

Literature

• An 1881 scifi novel republished last month is being compared to Pride and Prejudice. “The Great Romance deals with ‘ground-breaking’ themes such as interplanetary colonisation by humankind, sexual relations with aliens and the problems of space flight, including space shuttles, spacesuits and air locks academics and reviewers say.”
• Free Fiction: ManyBooks.net has published “This Crowded Earth” by the renowned Robert Bloch.
• Zogby International’s has published the interesting (and somewhat depressing) results of a survey of The Reading and Book Buying Habits of Americans.

Television

• Both Paste Magazine and Telewatcher have weighed in on what they consider to be the best sci-fi television series.

Video Games

• Topless Robot has a list of The 10 Most Punishingly Hard Videogames Ever Made with the ring of truth about it.

Comics

• AMC’s Nick Nadel argues that Green Lantern Could Be the Next Iron Man.
• ComicMix has written a guide to 10 Comics you Must Read Before you see The Incredible Hulk film this weekend. It’s a bit strange that he doesn’t include any books from the Hulk’s first series, but I supposed you’d be hard pressed to find them anyway.
• Randy Queen of “Dark Chylde” fame is working on a new Top Cow comic series called Starfall which will follow a crew of space pirates who have crash landed on an uncharted jungle planet where they – and this is the good part – unleash nanobots that transform the planet’s dinosaur and cannibal population into zombies!

Film

• CNN asks for William Shatner’s thoughts on the upcoming Star Trek movie.
• Entertainment Weekly lists 17 Sci-Fi Misfires, with Jumper and Vanilla Sky topping the list.
• Interview: Cinematical interviews M. Night Shyamalan, director of The Happening.
• M. Night Shyamalan’s The Happening: the critics will hate it. Duh.

Literature

• ClarkesWorld Magazine has an interesting editorial defending the state of short fiction, entitled Chicken Little and the Death of Short Fiction.
• Free Fiction: Feed Books has posted “The Day of the Boomer Dukes” by Frederik Pohl.
• Free Fiction: Strange Horizons has posted the short story Alone in the House of Mims by Barth Anderson.
• Interview: Tor Books Blog interviews Cory Doctorow, author of Little Brother.
• The List Universe has compiled a list of Top 10 Most Controversial Non-Fiction Books, with the Bible coming in at number one.

Television

• Blake’s 7 is back. The sci-fi classic from which many of Star Trek’s gadgets and plot devices are… stolen? borrowed? homaged? …will soon be coming to Britain’s Sky One.

Film

• Science Friday’s Ira Flatow talks to M. Night Shyamalan about the intersection of real en environment issues and his upcoming film, The Happening. Is Mother Nature out to kill us?

Literature

• Book Stove offers up 10 Obscure, Thought Provoking Reads.
• Fantasy author Ursula Le Guin spoke briefly last week on why you must read Boris Pasternak’s novel Doctor Zhivago.
• Free Reading: Tor is offering the fantasy novel Orphans of Chaos by John C. Wright.
• Free Reading: You can download all the works of Robert E. Howard at Arthur’s Classic Novels, including his Conan novels, his El Borak stories, and Solomon Kane.
• Interview: The Courier Journal has a great interview with Ray Bradbury.
• Interview: PopMatters interviews The Name of the Wind author Patrick Rotheuss.
• The Library Journal has posted an excellent article on urban fantasy, complete with a list of recommended reading.
• Neil Gaiman thinks that labeling books with an age range is “deeply stupid.” A billion Harry Potter fans chorus their agreement.

Television

• Jeremiah Tolbert of Fantasy Magazine contemplates the mainstreaming of science fiction on television, using Lost as an example.
• Scary Good! TV’s 15 Best Fright Nights.

Video Games

• Is there no end to Wikipedia’s usefulness. Now it features a List of commercial games released as freeware.

Anime

• Bleach Uncut Box Set, Vol. 1: Substitute
• Burst Angel: Box Set and Ova
• GaoGaiGar King of Braves – Premium Box Collection
• Naruto Uncut Box Set, Vol. 8: Special Edition

Books

• The Adoration of Jenna Fox by Mary E.Pearson
  Henry Holt. (ISBN: 978-0-8050-7668-4) Hardcover. Length: 266 pp
  A young adult science fiction novel set in the near-future young-adult following a seventeen year old girl who wakes from a coma with amnesia.
• Bad Moon Rising by Jonathan Maberry
  Pinnacle. (ISBN: 978-0-7860-1817-8) Mass Market Paperback. Length: 608 pp
  A horror novel about a Pennsylvania town famous for its annual Halloween Festival and a monstrous evil that threatens it.

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