The Great Geek Manual

Art

• Doctor Who / Star Wars Mash-Up
• Heroes & Villains: The Science Fiction Caricature Art of Kevin Greene
• A Little Tokien Book
• Mad Men Illustrations
• ‘Steampunk’ fashion heading for the mainstream, researcher says
• TIME asks Is Steampunk Next Big Fashion Trend?
• X-Wing Coffee Table

Film

• Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar: 10 Things You Need To Know.
• ‘Kick-Ass 3′ plot details revealed by Mark Millar

Internet

• Examining One Reaction to the James Gunn Controversy
• Tor.com A Steampunk Convention Listing for 2013
• What Kind of Geek Are You?

Literature

• Interview: Agony Column Podcast interviews Ken Scholes of Requiem
• Interview: James Smythe talks to SFSignal about his debut novel, Hereditation
• Interview: Orbit Books interviews Gail Z. Martin of Ice Forged
• Interview: SF Signal Q&A with John Birmingham, Author of Without Warning, on Reading, Writing and Bridging Genres
• News: Adjustment Bureau Director Plans Another Sci-Fi Film
• News: A Memory of Light Debuted at #1 on the New York Times Bestseller List
• 3 Books to Read After Nineteen Eighty-four
• AbeBooks on 50 Essential Science Fiction Books.
• Adventures in SciFi Publishing examines Fantasy Tropes in Japanese Folklore.
• BBC News discusses The battle against ‘sexist’ sci-fi and fantasy book covers.
• Flatland: Rediscovering A Multidimensional Classic
• Science Fiction Is Sapping My Will to Live
• Where’s Neil when I need him?
• Why Public Libraries Matter: And How They Can Do More

Technology

• News: Kickstarter sci-fi book to pay for laser weapon research (Wired UK)
• Great, Researchers Give This Creepy Cyborg Fish the Ability To Swim Forever
• The Smithsonian Magazine breaks down the history of the Fisher Space Pen, including the old myth about how the Russians just used pencils instead.
• Technological Superiority: Star Wars vs. Star Trek
• Why online book discovery is broken (and how to fix it)

Television

• Interview: “TVGuide.com talked to stars John Noble (Dr. Walter Bishop), Joshua Jackson (Peter Bishop), Anna Torv (Olivia Dunham), Jasika Nicole (Astrid Farnsworth), Lance Reddick (Phillip Broyles), Blair Brown (Nina Sharp), Mark Valley (John Scott), series co-creator Abrams, executive producers J.H Wyman, Jeff Pinkner and Bryan Burk, Warner Bros. President Peter Roth and Fox’s Chairman of Entertainment Kevin Reilly about the bumpy road to the series finale, starting with the conception of the show. This is the first in a four-part series. Check out Part 2 and Part 3.” (Part 4 is pending.)
• 5 Science Fiction Shows That Went Off The Rails In Their Final Season
• The BFI’s Doctor Who at 50
• Fox’s sci-fi drama ‘Fringe’ ends its five-season run
• Is the new legal drama “Suits” the new “Buffy”? Legal scholar and reviewer for the Atlantic and closet Buffy fan thinks that the new legal drama “Suits” may do for big law firms what “the best teen drama ever made” did for high school, succeeding because “the central metaphor, though ridiculous, dramatized a deeper truth. For teen-agers, high school really is a life-or-death struggle against monsters.”
• Real Violence Puts Pressure on TV Fiction

Video Games

• News: House bill wants $5,000 fine for video games without ESRB rating… Act would also prohibit selling AO- and M- rated games to minors.
• 10 Elements of Reality Not Allowed in Fiction
• 50 Non-Violent Video Games That Don’t Suck
• Chillingo on why App Store self-publishing isn’t always the way
• Do Video Games Make You Violent? An In-Depth Look At Everything We Know
• Introducing Microsoft’s IllumiRoom
• Modding allows amateur and semi-professional designers to fiddle around with commercially-produced games – anything from adding monocles to crabs to recreating Westeros, all the way to a zombie survival mod more popular than the orginal game. While mods have traditionally been free, Valve’s Steam Workshop is a marketplace to sell hats and other items for a selection of games, including Team Fortress 2 and DOTA 2 – both sequels to mods. PC Gamer talks to the modders who are making six-figures sums.
• What is Indie? DIY developers discuss what it means to go solo, and whether the label really matters.

Writing

• 8 Rules to Become a Great Writer
• Endings And Beginnings: Finding The Reader Satisfying “Loops” In Your Story
• Just Write
• Fantasy Literature: Writing Groups: On the Web or Face to Face?
• How to Write a Query Letter