Hope springs eternal, they say… especially for football fans.
I have not been paying much attention to the NFL during the offseason. Too many other things to do. Both of my teams did pretty well in the draft, though, so surely they would do better than they did last season, which was dismal to say the least. The Jets have a new coach in Aaron Glenn, the Giants have a couple of new quarterbacks (a couple old new quarterbacks and a new new one). Opening day, the G-Men were playing the Commanders from DC, and the Jets the Steelers. At least one of them would surely bring home a win.
Well, no.
Sigh.
The Giants looked absolutely dismal against Washingon. Defense was okay, but the offense did not exist. Could not run the ball, could not pass the ball. The game was not nearly as close as the final score suggested.
The Jets were much better. Scored first, led for much of the game, Justin Fields showed flashes as QB. Couple times it looked as if they had the game in hand. But no. Bad mistakes at key moments doomed them, and a long field goal at the end drove the knife through their hearts. Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory is something the Jets have a lot of practice at.
So there we are. 0-1 and 0-1. Another long season awaits.
August was a busy month for me and mine, with two conventions on the schedule, a road trip in between, and a couple of guests afterward.
Worldcon was in Seattle this year. The Brotherhood Without Banners were there in force, which I always like to see. Caught up with some old fan friends, made some new ones. I did two panels, both of them emjoyable, and the autographing was well run, drew about three hundred. For me, the highlight of the con was our screening of the three Howard Waldrop short films — NIGHT OF THE COOTERS, MARY MARGARET ROAD GRADER, and THE UGLY CHICKENS. We had a full house for that, every seat occupied, people sitting in the aisles and standing in the back of the hall, and everyone seemed to enjoy the movies, which pleased me no end. I just wish Howard could have been there to see them.
When not signing books or doing a panel or showing a film, I mostly sat around in the bar with Parris and friends, chatting about everything and nothing. I have reached the point in life where that’s the best part of any con for me. It does bring back memories, though. Worldcons these days are filled with ghosts: Howard and Gardner, Ed Bryant and John Miller, so many more.
Drove home after the con, through Washington, Montana, Idaho, Utah, Colorad0, and New Mexico, before returning to the Land of Enchantment just in time for Bubonicon, which was its usual friendly local convention. Guests this year included two of my favorite Joes, Joe Lansdale and Joe Haldeman. It was great to see them both. And Gay as well, who is always a treat.
I’m home now, though, and back at it. New York City Comicon is next on the schedule, where I’ll be meeting up with the stars and showrunner of KNIGHT OF THE SEVEN KINGDOM, and checking in with the family over in Bayonne. Maybe I will see some of you there.
We’re excited to announce GRRM will be headed to New York Comic Con this October to introduce the new HBO series A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms.
There will be a panel with Showrunner Ira Parker alongside Peter Claffey & Dexter Sol-Ansell who play Dunk & Egg. So keep your ears to the ground for more details on time and room information.
See you there on October 9th!
THIS MESSAGE HAS BEEN BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE MINIONS OF FEVRE RIVER
It’s been months since Parris and I last went to the movies, but we finally got out of the house last week, and bopped down to the Violet Crown to catch SUPERMAN. I’m glad we did. Supes and I are old friends, and this is one of the best Superman movies in a long time… maybe ever. This new Superman reminds me of the version I used to read about when I was a kid, the strange visitor from another planet who came to Earth with powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men. (And yes, an innocent, of course, he’s always been an immigrant. And an illegal immigrant, when you stop to think if it). The film looks great, and James Gunn did a great job with the casting. Rachel Bosnahan was terrific as Lois Lane; I’d say it’s between her and Margot Kidder for Best Lois Ever. And there’s no doubt whatsoever for the Best Lex. Nicholas Hoult was far and away the Best Luthor of All Time, a truly chilling villain. The kid in the cape was excellent as well. I hope he gets to play Kal-El in another dozen movies.
There’s been some great SF on television as well. The Murderbot stories are always a lot of fun, and the TV show did them justice. I look forward to another series.
ANDOR was this year’s highlight, though. Far and away the best of the Star Wars spinoffs. Looked gorgeous, Diego Luna was first rate, and there was a realism and tension to the story that was sadly lacking in most of the other spinoffs.
It’s nice to see someone doing science fiction right.
For all you Howard Waldrop fans out there… if you enjoyed our short films, the adaptations of MARY-MARGARET ROAD-GRADER, NIGHT OF THE COOTERS, and THE UGLY CHICKENS that we’ve been showing at film festivals over the past couple of years, we have big news a-coming. A Waldrop feature is on the way. All animated, from Lion Forge.
It’s an adaptation of Howard’s novella A DOZEN TOUGH JOBS, his take on the Twelve Labors of Hercules. Joe Lansdale, the Sage of Nacogdoches, father of Hap and Leonard, and creator of Bubba Ho-Tep, did the screenplay, and no one could have done it better except maybe Howard His Own Self.
(I know, I know. Some of you will just be pissed off by this, as you are by everything I announce here that is not about Westeros or THE WINDS OF WINTER. You have given up on me, or on the book. I will never finish WINDS, If I do, I will never finish A DREAM OF SPRING. If I do, it won’t be any good. I ought to get some other writer to pinch hit for me… I am going to die soon anyway, because I am so old. I lost all interest in A Song of Ice and Fire decades ago. I don’t give a shit about writing any longer, I just sit around and spend my money. I edit the Wild Cards books too, but you hate Wild Cards. You may hate everything else I have ever written, the Hugo-winners and Hugo-losers, “A Song for Lya” and DYING OF THE LIGHT, “Sandkings” and BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, “This Tower of Ashes” and “The Stone City,” OLD MARS and OLD VENUS and ROGUES and WARRIORS and DANGEROUS WOMEN and all the other anthologies I edited with my friend Gardner Dozois, You don’t care about any of those, I know. You don’t care about anything but WINDS OF WINTER. You’ve told me so often enough).
Thing is, I do care about them.
And I care about Westeros and WINDS as well. The Starks and Lannisters and Targaryens, Tyrion and Asha, Dany and Daenerys, the dragons and the direwolves, I care about them all. More than you can ever imagine.
I loved “A Dozen Tough Jobs” the first time I read it, ages ago. I loved Howard too. It saddens me that he did not live long enough to see the film; I hope we do him justice. How can we not? Hercules, Howard, Joe, Lion Forge… I wish you all could share my excitement at the prospect of this movie.
For those who do, The Hollywood Reporter broke the story
Joe Abercrombie has a new novel out: THE DEVILS, volume one in his latest fantasy trilogy.
Joe has crossed the pond to the US on a promotional tour, and one of his first stops was the historic Kimo Theatre in downtown Albuquerque, where I had the privilege of sitting down with him for an hour to talk writing, reading, fantasy, fandom, and all manner of other stuff. We answered a few questions from the audience as well.
Joe is a terrific writer and an even better guest.
We had a lot of fun, and I believe the audience did as well. The Kimo was full nearly to bursting.
After the talking Joe did a bit of signing. inscribing copies for Bookworks, the sponsoring bookshop. They may still have a left down there in Albquerque.
He signed some books for my own Beastly Books as well, and Twig and I lugged them back to Santa Fe. I would tell you how to write in and grab one, but alas, we sold out within two days of arrival. Plainly, we should have ordered more.
((We still have autographed copies of my own books, though. Hardcovers, softcovers, fantasy, science fiction, graphic novels, signed and unsigned, what have you. Lots of other good stuff as well)).
If you have not read any of Joe’s previous novels, you don’t know what you’re missing. He’s a powerful, evocative writer with a unique voice, one of the brightest fantasists on the current scene. He never disappoints. He writes a lot faster than I do too, so there won’t be nearly as much waiting.
I had thought the Kimo would be videotaping our talk, but, alas, there was some sort of mix-up and that did not happen. I am told some of fans present taped the discussion, but only on audio. You might be able to find that on the internet.
Meanwhile, Joe is off to Atlanta, Austin, Denver, and various other stops. Catch him if you can.
The Miami Science Fiction Film Festival was held January 18-19, down in Florida (natch). Mike Cassutt and I were there… we had a series of meetings that week, and we’d enetered MARY-MARGARET ROAD-GRADER in the festival.
The film was well received, as I reported downstream in my post about the festival. We came away with four awards. Steven Paul Judd took two of them; he took Best Director, and also won the prestigious Russell Bates Award. MARY-MARGARET also won honors for its costuming and wardrobe… and Miami was kind enough to present me with a lifetime achievement award.
We were not able to attend the awards presentation at the festival, and I believe there were some delays with the trophies. They were finally completed, however, and the rockets arrived here in Santa Fe a couple of day ago.
The Bates Award was shipped directly to Steven Paul Judd; the other three turned up here, and will be distributed to the winners. (Steven’s when he returns to Santa Fe in a few weeks to direct his next episode of DARK WINDS. He has been doing an amazing job for us since he joined the show. Super talented guy. And DARK WINDS itself has been kicking ass and taking names. If you have not been watching it, you don’t know what you are missing).
And speaking of film festivals… if any of you are in Texas this weekend, do check out the schedule for the Dallas International Film Festival, to be held this weekend. Another of our Waldrop shorts, THE UGLY CHICKENS, is entered in the shorts competition. I am told it’s scheduled for Sunday. Sid Khalsa will be on hand to help present it. TUC was adapted by Michael Cassutt from Howard’s Nebula-winning short story, and was directed by Mark Raso. The one and only Felicia Day stars.
Rudyard Kipling said it way back when, in THE JUNGLE BOOK, in a poem called “The Law of the Jungle.”
Now this is the Law of the Jungle — as old and as true as the sky; And the Wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the Wolf that shall break it must die.
As the creeper that girdles the tree-trunk the Law runneth forward and back —
For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack.
Ned Stark echoed those words in A GAME OF THRONES. “When the snows fall and the white winds blow, the lone wolf dies, but the pack survives.”
Wolves run in packs. Grey wolves, red wolves, coyotes, makes no matter… and direwolves too. Thousands of years ago, when they ruled most of North America, their prey included the megafauna of the period: giant ground sloths, horses, huge bison, bears, mammoths. Direwolves were formidable hunters, but even so, a lone wolf would have had a helluva time bringing down any of these by itself. There is evidence that direwolf packs were much, much larger than those of their modern descendants.
Colossal Biosciences has given us a pack too. A very small one, admittedly.
Romulus, Remus, and Khaleesi are their names. And they are learning to howl.
That’s the two boys. I don’t believe that Khaleesi is howling yet. She is younger than her brothers, born a few months later. When I visited Colossal back in February, I had the honor of meetings Romulus and Remus and holding them in my arms, but Khaleesi had not been born yet, though I hope to make her acquaintance later.
Colossal announced the return of the direwolves last week. Since then the story has spread all over the world. Millions of people seem to be as thrilled by the news as I am.
Yes, there are nay-sayers too. I will not get into that here, the debates are raging all over the internet. I will let the scientists argue the genetics. The things that trouble me more are the people saying, “Why? We did not need a direwolf”), those arguing that god made the direwolf extinct and man has no right to undo what he has done, the movie buffs who think we’re now blundering into Jurassic Park (fine book, great movie, but no, we are not going to have packs of direwolves chasing children through Central Park)… but most of all, I am horrified by those now saying that now that we have mastered de-extinction, we don’t need the Endangered Species Act, so let’s gut that for the benefit of the oil and gas industry. (Trump and his MAGies have been trying to do this for years).
That’s coming from the right wing. From the left, we have people saying we should not be bring back extinct animals, that we should be spending our money defending living animals whose numbers are dwindling as their habitats vanish.
This is not a choice. Colossal is not trying to bring back extinct animals in lieu of defending endangered ones. They are trying to do both. And in fact they ARE doing both. Romulus and Remus and their sister are not the only miracles Ben Lamm, George Church, Beth Shapiro and their incredible team have wrought; they have also been cloning red wolves, the most severely threatened of today’s wolves. It is a matter of learning; the techniques that Colossal is pioneering will benefit both. That is how science works. There will be failures and successes, theories formulated, theories disproved. The direwolf is only the beginning. The woolly mammoth, the moa, the dodo, the Tasmanian tiger, the passenger pigeon. and a hundred other animals may follow… in time… maybe ten years, maybe a hundred.
Any of them who make it back will make the world a better place, as far as I am concerned. But we need to protect the animals we have now too. The woolly mammoth should not replace the elephant; Earth is big enough for both. We need lions and tigers and bears, yes… but we deserve dodos and moas and smilodons as well.
(And fwiw, there are no stronger supporters of the Endangered Species Act than Ben Lamm and the good folk at Colossal. Extinction is the abomination here, not de-extinction.).
morose
busy
pleased
enthralled
hopeful
determined
