The Great Geek Manual

Art

• Escapism is the Highest Form of Art rants io9 contributor Charlie Anders.
• io9 has posted an expansive gallery of Concept Art that Reimagines the Greatest Space Epics.
• Superpunch has posted a great gallery of Fallout Lego Minifigs.

Comics

• Topless Robot’s list of The 6 Best and 6 Worst Comic Book Vehicles needs more of Cobra’s arsenal, but is otherwise still a nice walk down memory lane.
• Time has come up with a bizarrely over-obvious list of the Top Ten Graphic Novels.

Film

• News: The recent firings and hirings of studio executives at Disney and elsewhere point to a widespread corporate panic amid sharp declines in DVD sales.
• Hero Complex wonders Can ‘The Hobbit’ escape the towering shadow of ‘The Lord of the Rings’, then roundly argues against it.
• Mental Floss remembers 10 Film Set Tragedies.
• SciFi Wire claims that the 7 Things Spike Jonze changed in Where the Wild Things Are are “good things,” but I disagree. That book is perfect the way it is.
• The Telegraph interviews Harry Potter star Harry Melling on life after Dudley Dursley. Believe it or not, he’s still working in show business.
• There’s a great montage of Cinema’s Top Human Villains over on YouTube. Check out the sidebar if you can’t put a name to a face.

Internet

• Star Wars Uncut is a site organizing a co-operative fan based remake of the original space opera in fifteen-second intervals.
• Tor.com discusses Steampunk as Subculture… mainly, the difficulty of identifying what culture steampunk is a part of.
• The University of Florida is all set for a Zombie attack, thanks to the Zombie Attack Disaster Preparedness Simulation Exercise that was recently posted alongside plans for hurricanes and criminals loose on campus.

Literature

• The American Library Association is offering up a guide to the shit-storm that is The Google Books Settlement, entitled Who is Filing and What are They Saying? [PDF] After a summary of the case, the following half-dozen pages contain charts of who has filed in support of the settlement, and who has filed in opposition, along with brief notes about their reasons.
• Ouch! Turns out, Princeton Students Don’t Like Free Kindles.
• The New York Times discusses the treatment of “orphan” works in the proposed settlement between Google and the Authors Guild in the essay, Advantage Google.
• Yet again, the publishing industry proves it has absolutely no imagination with a new set of near-identical covers. This time around, the covers feature crouching women with their midriffs hidden.

Television

• News: NBC picks up J.J. Abrams’ new spy drama.
• Doctor Who has gotten itself a new logo to go with its new Doctor. In my opinion, it’s the least retro logo in the series yet.
• Entertainment Weekly wonders Where did Dollhouse go Wrong? But they also admit that “the blame can’t be put on Whedon’s shoulders alone.”
• io9 reminds us of 10 Reasons Not to Bring Someone Back from the Dead.
• io9 reveals that Joss Whedon wrote a Mind-Transplant Script before Dollhouse.
• Time picks the Top 10 Twilight Zone Episodes.

Video Games

• Crispy Gamer reveals The Truth Behind 10 Great Videogame Myths.
• Robert Yang on the homophobic response to his Half-Life 2 mod Handle With Care.

Writing

• Online Colleges offers a directory of 100 Great Web Sites for Poetry Lovers.
• Thinking ahead to November, The Paperback Writer has posted a set of NaNoWriMo Badges for writers to display on their blogs.
• Victoria Strauss shares a few Thoughts on Self-Promotion and Searching for Publishers on the Internet.