Literary as hell.
This past weekend during New York Comic Con, Bookcon was busy taking over Hudson Mercantile with various panels and signings. At the Fantasy Fandoms Unite panel, Garth Nix (Abhorsen Trilogy), Kendare Blake (Three Dark Crowns), and Renée Ahdieh (The Wrath and the Dawn), sat down to answer fan questions. Continue reading
People of Earth may be TBS’s strangest, if not funniest, new show. Reporter Ozzie Graham, played by Wyatt Cenac, interviews a support group for alien abductees (they prefer the term “experiencers”) in Beacon, NY, a hotbed of alien activity. Though a skeptic, within the first episode he comes to learn and even believe that he may be one of them. Wildly absurd humor and an all-star cast will surely delight audiences.
Creator David Jenkins joined the cast yesterday, October 7, at New York Comic Con, to discuss the stories and inspiration behind People of Earth.
“[The show] really doesn’t have a format, so every episode that we wrote it felt like we were trying to reinvent the show or at least find it in a new way,” Jenkins said.
Though the show is a sci-fi comedy, Jenkins said that he was most interested in exploring the characters that populate his zany universe. “The episodes that I like the best tend to focus on a personal life, then what’s happening in the group, then there’s a sci-fi story that seems to be happening around it but it’s not the focus on the actual episode. You’re still in that world. It’s a comedy that has really interesting sci-fi things around it.”
People of Earth will premiere October 31 on TBS.
He buys you a drink and says his name is Hutch and you think there are worse things to be named after than a song. Like a seventies TV character or piece of furniture.
“Layla,” you say, and shake his clammy hand.
“Layla, Layla,” he says, rolling your name around his mouth like a toothpick. And he’s still squeezing your hand when he says, “Like the song, right?”
You roll your eyes and slide your hand from his grip.
“Right,” you say. “Like the song.”
“Stones, right?”
“Clapton.”
“Right, right. Clapton. It’s about banging George Harrison’s wife or something, right?” Continue reading
Q: Your drawings in the Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage are very kinetic. How do you think your work as an animator informs your 2D drawing style?
Sydney Padua: Thanks! I work in 3D on a computer now, but I started out old-school animating on paper back in the Good Ol’ Days. Animation is a great teacher for drawing expressive characters— it comes from the same tradition as Vaudeville and pantomime, a language of archetypes that works well for comics. You learn a lot about conveying energy and character in a pose, because in a sense you are part of theatrical troupe, you’re always thinking in terms of supporting the story and the scene. And of course there is simply the training aspect of producing enormous volumes of drawings at speed— drawing all day every day for a few years, you’re bound to learn something!
Conversely, I think I took as long getting the ‘animation’ back out of my drawing— after many years as an industrial drawer I’d lost a feeling for my own line, my own way of relating to drawing. The nice thing about working on a computer is I felt I had my drawing to myself again; I didn’t have draw ‘correctly’ any more.
Q: Parts of L&B reminded me of Alan Moore’s LoEG, in the best way possible. Can you tell us about some authors and artists who influence your work in general, and this work in particular?
Sydney Padua: One of my clearest memories is being six years old and touring the Louvre, surrounded on every side by the greatest masterpieces of civilisation from antiquity to the present day. I didn’t see any of them because my nose was buried in an Asterix comic, which I as far as I was concerned eclipsed all previous human accomplishments. I still sort of think that, and instinctively feel that awful puns, extravagant sound effects, and a lot of running around and shouting are the mark of Quality Historical Literature.
Alongside Asterix, the late, great Martin Gardner’s The Annotated Alice. It’s Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, but marching along under and beside and around the text are a friendly crowd of footnotes. They might have the original poem Lewis Carroll was mocking, or a tidbit of biography, or an explanation of relevant 19th century mathematics. Mostly the footnotes were little short snippets but sometimes they’d take over half the page when they got unruly. I used to spend hours and hours poring over that book when I was twelve or thirteen and still perk up every time I see a footnote in a book.
Q: L&B is littered with great tidbits from history that you found through research. What’s one of your favourite facts about the pair?
Sydney Padua: Only one fact!? Can I have two? One for each? My favourite Lovelace find is a single sentence from the “News Miscellany” in the New York Mirror of 1835, when Ada was 20. It reports, in full: “It is said that Ada Byron, the sole daughter of the “noble bard,” is the most coarse and vulgar woman in England!” Ada was given to swearing a surprising amount in her letters (don’t get too shocked, by swearing I just mean things like “damned”), but that’s a tantalising and very rare peek into what impression she must have given in person. She was not a very good Victorian lady!
My favourite Babbage anecdote is from a little memoir called Sunny Memories, by a lady who knew Babbage in his old age. She tells a story about how he forgot his calling-cards once when visiting, so he pulled a gear out of his pocket, scratched his name on it, and left that instead! I couldn’t have made up something so irresistibly Babbagey in a million years. If that gear ever turned up on the Antiques Roadshow it would be worth a fortune!
Q: In the book you touch on computer science scholars who don’t believe AL original work developing the worlds first complete computer program is really her own. Why do you think that is?
Sydney Padua: That’s actually a really complicated question. It’s tempting to say it’s just just straight up sexism because, I mean, a lot of it is just straight up sexism. The critics tend to use pretty blatant language– she was a “lusty coquette”, a “hysteric”, “mad as a hatter”, they go on about her love life and her personality and her wanting attention– as though Babbage wasn’t weird, arrogant, and wanted attention! There’s a sort of “fake geek girl” narrative that sounds awfully familiar. Some of it is a genuine question mark— for sure Babbage sketched out some work for the program, it was a collaborative process, I think that’s pretty clear from their letters. To me it’s also evident from the letters that the final program was Lovelace’s. I do think some of the ‘Team Babbage’ people resent how much attention Lovelace gets when poor old Babbage already had such a hard time getting recognition in his own lifetime, and as a Babbage fan I get where they’re coming from– I want Babbage to be celebrated and adored too! But I’m Team Lovelace and Babbage, which is the best team, and also fights crime.
Q: Right now, is there anything going on in your life, or in the world, that makes you furious?
Sydney Padua: Hmmm, I’m not a very furious person! I’m piqued.. nettled? that so many women are persuaded to feel that computers aren’t their “territory”. Women were there from the very beginning!
Hello all,
Happy Day of the Dead. On an unrelated note, since it’s not the same holiday, we would like to announce our Halloween contest winner. We loved all our finalists for the Halloween contest and this was a very hard decision to make. But we made it. Because we had so many great submissions, we have decided that in addition to our first prize, which is a book and a $25 gift card, we will also be awarding the first runner up a book in the genre of their choosing.
The second runner up is: Mureall Hébert for her flash pieces “The Side of the Road” and “Why I Had to Bite You” Congratulations Mureall, you’ve won a book in the genre of your choice!
The first runner up is: J. J. Steinfeld for “The Nefarious: A Tale of a Notorious Halloween Dance”
Congratulations J.J., you also get a book in the genre of your choice!
Our first place winner of the book and $25 gift card is Michael Puican for his poem “Halloween”
Congratulations everyone and good job to all of our finalists.
Goodnight, my love
sleep here beside me
my lifelong man. My
champion who hurls against
cobblestones the fears I reserve
for he, whose shoulders arch
city streets and deeper still
on concourses of sheets. I wonder
which of his ribs made me. Dust
settles in the sky as we name
fleeting things we have seen.
Light will dim eventually my
compass, glass and archer and
I will streak west contentedly.
Fleeter be they than dappled
dreams, and every word for
Marion is such and every day;
when I was lean and long
and words scraped against
the city skies of pages one
foot high, I raced in swimming
meets; the whistle blew and
I churned, arms winding like second
hands but really my joy propelled
me down the aisle as I thought
that time was not like her who I
would immortalize like air.
Dear readers,
While it is still September, supermarkets already have their Halloween sections out and my candies look like eyeballs. THEREFORE Halloween contests are upon us and it is time for you to make us cry tears of terror. Send us something haunting, grotesque, pumpkin themed, etc. and you could win a book in the genre of your choosing as well as a $25 Barnes and Noble gift card. The top contenders will all be published on our site. Only one gets the coveted book and gift card.
Acceptable forms of writing for this contest are the same as our regular submission guidelines which are here: http://thefuriousgazelle.com/faq/ . The only rule is that this is a Halloween contest so your piece(s) should reflect that in whatever way you deem Halloween-ish.
That’s right piece(s)! We will take up to five submissions from each contestant. Please send your submissions with Halloween Contest Submission in the subject line of your email. The Deadline is Friday October 24, 2014.
BOO!
-The Furious Gazelle Editors
The air is paved
with fire; you are there
and I and in privacy
I sense the larger end
of land, and a wild and
waiting sea. None, my
soul, is small
upon its course
of flames and I oar
upon your love of me
to a waiting Face that
looks for me in flashes
of the dark.
I love the brilliance of this
hour; simple calico is turned
to Joseph’s coat and your
upturned face does not permit
transient light to wheel and disappear.
No furrows mark your cheeks and
I long to lengthen lines of joy
about your eyes, and dam them
high against the beat of flood. Emmaline,
our crop is heaped into flowered
fields, and our book of days is
waiting to be inscribed, one
generation at a time.
Listen: when I was a child, I explored the jungle of ferns
near my house on the island where the hibiscus close like
shutters at night. I found sometimes living things and
scooping them up, felt them beating in my hands. I blew
between my fingers and thought they would remember the
signature of my soul when they were free. That is how I
love you.
You were not a monster,
but gold robed and smiling,
shyly looked directly at a
camera lens and held a thumb
up as Emmet Till might have
done if he had earned a degree;
I wish I could have set you
free; there are flocks of you
migrating in the long and
practiced curves of boys who know
the difference between a cage
and the beat of air beneath
uncreased wings.
The Furious Gazelle is continuing to serialize Charles Bane’s new book of poetry, Love Poems. You can find more of his poetry here.
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