Point Blank | The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension | Robocop

Mistah Pete – Left Foot Red Productions

First things first, what “smart” in an action movie is not: Smart is not using big words in your endless dialogue. (Looking at you, Michael Mann.) Smart is not taking for-damned-ever to get to the fun parts. (And now a nation turns its tired eyes to you, Christopher Nolan.

So, with those two examples to contrast –

If you want a smart crime thriller to get Michael Mann’s Heat off your shoes, take a look at John Boorman’s 1967 classic, Point Blank. It’s not only got Lee Marvin at his Lee Marvinest (hard as flint, delivering perhaps the first filmed Roshambo in Hollywood history), and Angie Dickinson unclad (I should just stop here, you don’t need anymore reasons to watch this), but the story is one to keep you thinking long after the credits roll. It’s been forty-three years, and film geeks are still debating what really happened to Walker on Alcatraz. I watch it at least once a year, usually with the excellent commentary from director Boorman and his disciple, Steven Soderbergh (who has made some smart thrillers himself).

Now, if it’s the smell of Dark Knight you can’t get out of your clothes, it’s pretty slim pickings in the world of smart superhero movies. (Perhaps that’s why some people think Dark Knight is smart.) But two come to mind — neither of them adapted from funnybooks, which says something right there…

From 1984, W. D. Richter’s The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension is one of those movies that’s so wonderful it was doomed from the start. Peter Weller (playing a dandified Doc Savage-type with a low-key charm that tiptoes just this side of Adam West) is a science-hero who — with his musical band of rock-and-roll PhDs, the Hong Kong Cavaliers — battles an all-star-before-they-were-stars cast to save the world from the Red Lectroids and Orson Wells. Sort of. It is chock-full of fun and science and adventure and a watermelon. Too bad it didn’t do well enough at the box-office to deliver the promised sequel, Buckaroo Banzai vs. the World Crime League.

And in 1987, Paul Verhoeven delivered the most subversive superhero movie of all, Robocop. Again with Peter Weller, this time he’s honest cop Murphy who gets killed in the line of violent, violent duty, and reborn as a robot version of himself. The movie explores a lot of what it means to be human in a robot body, but the truly thought-provoking moments are the satire of the near-future world seen through television clips and advertising. We have gotten damned close to that “near-future” now, and frankly, it’s scary!

Jeff from Hyperbubble

Vanishing Point from 1971, director by Richard C. Sarafian. (not to be confused at all with the Vanishing Point remake from 1997)

On a bet, ex-cop, ex-soldier, ex-racecar driver Kowalski (Barry Newman) agrees to deliver a Challenger muscle car from Denver to San Francisco within 15 hours. He’s got a long way to go and a short time to get there, but that’s where the Smokey and the Bandit comparisons end. In this particular high-speed tale, our amphetamine fueled hero blasts down the existential highway, symbolism at every turn, while being hipped to the whereabouts of the police force by his main man, DJ Supersoul (Cleavon Little), who almost steals the show with this spine-chilling transmission:

“And there goes the Challenger, being chased by the blue, Blue Meanies on wheels. The vicious traffic squad cars are after our lone driver, the last American hero, the Electric Centaur, the, the Demi-god, the Super Driver of the Golden West! Two nasty Nazi cars are close behind the beautiful lone driver. The police numbers are gettin’ closer, closer, closer to our soul hero, in his Soul Mobile, yeah baby! They’re about to strike. They’re gonna get him. Smash him. Rape… the last beautiful free soul on this planet”.

Keep your eyes on the road, and your hands upon the rewind button, ’cause this baby’s loaded.

There’s still a lot of action after the jump…

Vanishing Point | A Boy and his Dog | Le Dernier Combat

Pete Loxsom

When it came to the question of intelligent action films my brain did its usual turn toward the apocalypse. While these two films don’t pack the hyperkinetic thrills of modern actions films they deliver the goods where it counts. A Boy and His Dog (1975), based on a novella by Harlan Ellison, presents a post World War III America where a man will kill you over a can of beans and raider packs train their dogs to sniff out women. Here we find Vic (played by a very young Don Johnson) and his dog Blood, with whom he shares a telepathic connection, wandering the wastes looking for food and females. The gritty, brutal wasteland also serves as a great backdrop for the great dialogue between Vic and Blood. From the start it’s clear that dog is smart one who does his best to educate his boy and to steer them to greener pastures. Then you throw in Jason Robards as the leader of one creepy group of underground vault dwellers who have a nefarious eye on Vic and things just get stranger. It’s the greatest talking dog movie that is totally inappropriate for children ever.

Le Dernier Combat (The Last Battle) (1983): French filmmaker Luc Besson’s first feature film is a gritty black and white visual narrative where the world is in such ruins that the air is no longer even fit to allow speech, except for a few gasping words spoken around an oxygen tank. So there are no subtitles to deal with, we just follow The Man along on his odyssey from a wasteland of buildings swallowed by sands into the ruins of a city with only a few inhabitants. Here he finds what could be a friend in the form of The Doctor, a resourceful man who saves the protagonists life after an encounter with The Brute. The character of The Brute is superbly handled by Jean Reno (from The Professional which is another kick-ass action film from Luc Besson) who blends in just enough comedy with the menace of his character to make him feel believable. The movie having no dialogue really requires you to pay close attention to what the characters are doing and how they express themselves and for the viewer to figure out what they are thinking and feeling. That might not be what everyone is looking for, but it is a movie that really wants you to engage with it.

Equilibrium | Night Watch | Day Watch

Chris Holm – Chris Holm Comics

Equilibrium: This film is often compared to the Matrix for it’s visual style and highly choreographed fight sequences. What makes it smart is it is more of an Anti-Matrix. In that the main character isn’t struggling to be a one dimensional machine like Neo, but is covertly learning to cope with being a human being. Although, the audience, at first, might not get why such things like listening to classical music or petting a puppy might be revolutionary actions to the main character. In the context of the film, where “feeling” is chemically desensitized, those actions are enough to warrant a revolution. And the action scenes are way cool too.

Night Watch/Day Watch: This is a film series about the supernatural side of Russia’s secret society of “Others.” Here, a series of somewhat random and unrelated events end being setups in a race against time by the forces of Darkness and Light. And we see these events unfold discovering that they were planned centuries ago. And it is fun watching the Overlord of Darkness practice his attack on a PlayStation 2. This film reinvents the modern witch into something almost like a superhero. What’s smart is we see the main character try to have a relationship with his estranged son while destiny throws everyone around like pawns in a chess game since the fate of the world is always in the balance. The good guys aren’t always so good. And even a bad girl regrets her actions in a love lost.

Casshern | Paprika | Ultraviolet

Casshern: This film is full of killer robots and supermutants. Science and divine intervention clash in one doctor’s struggle to save his dying wife. His son becomes a soldier against his wishes and is killed in war. But once his research is literally struck the lightning of god(s). His wife is stolen away by super mutants born in the accident, while his son’s body is brought to his complex for a funeral. Using the same pool of life that birthed the super humans that now wage war on humanity, the doctor resurrects his son, giving him superpowers, to rescue his wife. The son, now Casshern, struggle with his sins and all the torment he saw in the previous war. Lots of action and emotional insight. In one scene, the Dictator’s son, after staging a coup, examines the pool of life. He scoffs at it, saying that is everyone has a second chance, then why live life to the fullest at all? Each character is haunted by their pasts in one form or another.

Paprika: An adventure about a dream warrior know as Paprika. Think Freddy Kruger as a cute anime chick. The characters in this film deal with their emotional baggage literally as they try to unravel a mystery about stolen dream technology that could drive the world mad. It’s surreal action will always keep you guessing, and on your toes as reality will sometimes slip from out under your feet.

Ultraviolet: A vampire movie that reinvents the vampire condition. Instead of a curse that makes everyone beautiful and glittery, Vampirism in Ultraviolet is treated as a disease. Society has evolved into a paranoid germophobic locked down society. There are a few scenes where advanced technology is used but not really explained. Like, a ball that can affect one’s gravitational pull or a dimensional portal in your pocket used for storage. Aside from that, seeing the new black plague with vampires and outrageous action only Milla Jovovich can deliver is refreshingly entertaining.

Raiders of the Lost Ark | North By Northwest | Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia

Rene A. Guzman – Geek Speak

Raiders of the Lost Ark (sorry, I just can’t bring myself to call it Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark)
: 

You want smart action? How about an archeology professor who thwarts the bad guys with his wits as well as his whip? “Raiders of the Lost Ark” is quintessential action/adventure, no doubt, but with a brawny brilliance behind the popcorn serial. And nobody typifies that clever toughness better than Dr. Indiana Jones. Whether he’s outrunning giant boulders, outwitting big bad thugs or outlasting Nazi tomb raiders in a horrific climax of Biblical proportions, Indy always has the right tool for the job. We speak, of course, of that mighty gray matter beneath his well-worn fedora.

Jon Gillespie – The Overtime Theater

My pick is an acknowledged classic but for good reason: North by Northwest. Still one of Hitchcock’s absolute best, it’s filled with action, from the UN Building, to a secluded mansion, an art auction, and of course the final confrontation on Mount Rushmore. What makes it smart? How about master screenwriter Ernest Lehman writing the words, which are performed by the all-star line-up of Cary Grant, James Mason, Martin Landau, Leo G. Carroll, and Eva Marie Saint, all directed by the master.

Sanford Allen

Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia: Reviled by critics at the time of its 1974 release for its graphic violence and grim world view, Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia has since achieved cult status as the film that stays truest to the vision of its hard-living director, Sam Peckinpah (The Wild Bunch, Straw Dogs). The movie follows Bennie (brilliantly played by the gritty Warren Oates), a down-and-out American piano player in a Mexican brothel, as he and his prostitute girlfriend chase the score of their lives. That score, of course, is the head of a young Romeo who has impregnated the daughter of a powerful Mexican named El Jefe. See, Bennie and his girl know that Garcia is already dead, and carting his head to the big boss for a hefty cash reward is easy as digging up a grave. Or so they think. What follows is an unrelentingly bleak odyssey across the dusty backroads of Mexico as Bennie attempts to follow through his grisly task and sinks lower and lower into violence and madness. Through Bennie’s decline, Peckinpah holds up a cruel fun-house mirror to the audience’s expectations about what constitutes a Hollywood action picture. Instead of a feel-good buddy flick with guns, we get a glimpse into the lives of sad desperation that most men of violence actually live.

Put your boots on…it’s fixin’ to get weird.

The Secret of San Saba | Curse of the Undead | Jonah Hex

Paul Vaughn – Techno Geek

Several years after moving to San Antonio I discovered the Texas tales of Jack Jackson, published under the pen name Jaxon. Jaxon was one of the original underground comix artists in the 1960s and co-founded Rip Off Press. His historical graphic novels focused on the native people of Texas and their interactions with newer settlers from both Europe and Mexico. Many, like Comanche Moon and Lost Cause: The True Story of Texas Gunslinger John Wesley Hardin, are straight historical accounts, but the book that stands out for me is THE SECRET OF SAN SABA, published in 1989.

Subtitled A tale of phantoms and greed in the Spanish Southwest, this was the Texas weird tale I was looking for. Jaxon mashes up Indians and Cthulhu into a powerfully spicy stew guaranteed to win any South Texas chili cook-off. His meticulous illustrations of the interior of Natural Bridge Caverns (just North of San Antonio) as the otherworldly temple to the Native Americans’ alien god “Zulthu” will stay with you every time you visit this popular tourist attraction. San Saba, in the Texas Hill Country, may be known now as the “Pecan Capital of the World,” but apparently 300 years ago it was a hotbed of giant alien slug worship. And Zulthu’s worshipers were willing to go to great lengths to keep invaders away from their god.

Truly weird, by a master of graphical story telling. This book is now out of print, but it is so worth snatching up if you see one.

Joe R. Lansdale – Author

CURSE OF THE UNDEAD was my favorite Weird Western film as a kid. It’s dated, but I still have a soft spot for it. Favorite comic was JONAH HEX, which, frankly, was more wild than weird. It became weird when I wrote it and Tim Truman drew it. A lot of what we did has become the template for Hex these days, good and bad. Weird Western novel. Huh? Nothing jumps to mind. But, I also liked THE PHANTOM EMPIRE with Gene Autry, an early serial with cowboys and underground invaders. Lots of fun. MONTANA GOTHIC is good, but for some reason can’t remember the author right now (editor’s note: Dirck Van Sickle is the author in question).

Montana Gothic | Yellow Black Radio Broke-Down | Sukiyaki Western Django

Erik Bosse – Eyewash Pictures

His name is the Loop Garoo Kid, and he is the African-American protagonist of Ishmael Reed’s second novel, YELLOW BACK RADIO BROKE-DOWN (1969). He’s a trickster in the Yoruba tradition of Africa. After running afoul of Drag Gibson, the racist land baron in the old west town of Yellow Back Radio Broke-Down, the Kid sets out to destroy his adversary through intrigue, hoodoo magic, and good old-fashioned violence.

Yellow Back Radio Broke-Down gleefully throws itself into a weirdness that is more unfettered surrealism than what one would expect from contemporary slipstream novels, or any of those books umbrellaed under the term “new weird.” In this western we have anachronistic rock groups with electric fiddles, detectives who carry ray guns, and there’s even a scene where the Pope arrives astride a monstrous “loud red bull in front of a great stagecoach full of attendants.” As Life magazine put it in a contemporary review: “Literary surrealism has invaded Marlboro Country.” This skinny book make’s Alejandro Jodorowsky’s mind-bending psychedelic western movie, El Topo, appear by comparison as stodgy as a Republic Pictures horse opera.

James Hartz – Artistic Director, Overtime Theater / Film Classic Productions

My favorite Weird Western Tale is SUKIYAKI WESTERN DJANGO directed by Takashi Miike. It is a mashup of homages to Sergio Leone’s Man With No Name films, Kill Bill, Akira Kurosawa, William Shakespeare and anime. The film is a glorious example of taking a time-tested plot (a nameless gunslinger plays both sides of a gang war) and reinvigorating it by abandoning limitations of realism and replacing with a world that constantly adapts to the emotions of those in it.

Beautifully shot as a blend of Kurosawa’s slow motion, Leone’s long shots, and Miike’s hyper-kinetic action all of which is reinforced by the climatic showdown between sword and gun. The film is more than a pastiche, but rather the all-too-rare joy of watching old ideas come together to create something new.

Zeppelins West | Deadman's Road | High Plains Drifter

John Picacio – Illustrator

When a book offers Buffalo Bill Cody as a head in a jar attached to a mechanical body and mixes it with zeppelins, sharks, Captain Nemo and Frankenstein’s monster, it’s hard not to pay attention. Joe R. Lansdale’s ZEPPELINS WEST isn’t a straight-up Weird Western in the way that his DEAD IN THE WEST might be, but it’s no less a cult classic. Lansdale’s latest Subterranean Press release DEADMAN’S ROAD collects the zombie classic DEAD IN THE WEST along with four other stories, one never before collected, one brand new. It releases in October but Subterranean is taking preorders now.

Don’t make Joe come to your house and do this.

Ross Ruediger – The Rued Morgue

When the “Missions Unknown” shout-out was issued for this entry, the first weird western that popped into my head was HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER. I tried to think of something else – something even odder and bolder (like El Topo) – but “High Plains Drifter” wouldn’t stand for it. It kept coming back to me as the only logical answer to the question. On the surface, there’s doesn’t appear to be anything particularly strange about the piece, or at least no stranger than the “Man With No Name” trilogy directed by Sergio Leone. This was only Clint Eastwood’s second feature film as a director, and once you start watching it becomes clear that, after acting in countless western productions throughout the fifties and the sixties, Eastwood really wanted to do something different with the genre. And so he turned out a violent, supernatural tale of a town inhabited by cowardly people, and one nameless stranger (Eastwood) who demands justice. But what for? That you don’t actually find out until near the end of the piece, long after the Stranger subjects the townsfolk to one humiliating display after another, renames the town Hell, and has it painted red (literally). Eastwood is as unlikable as he’s ever been, and referring to this character as an antihero is generous. The payoff is creepy and disturbing and yet the movie probably asks more questions than it answers, so if you’re looking for a nice, tidy bow on top of the gift, this probably isn’t the movie for you. Of course you are reading a piece on weird westerns, so what are you waiting for?

On the other hand, if I were a kid looking for a weird western, I’d have to go with THE VALLEY OF GWANGI, because, well, you can never go wrong with dinosaurs and cowboys.

The Valley of the Gwangi | El Topo

Sanford Allen – Author & Musician

When it comes to Weird Western cinema, there’s nothing weirder than Alejandro Jodorowsky’s EL TOPO. Released in 1970 but unavailable on DVD until 2007, the film follows a mysterious gunslinger in black as he rides across a wasted landscape littered with religious symbols and copious amounts of corpses. Through the gunman’s travels, Jodorowsky forces the viewer’s eye to a kaleidoscope of disturbing images, from eviscerations and brutal torture to a menagerie of physically challenged characters, among them amputees, dwarves and people with Down syndrome. The movie is reminiscent of Dali and Fellini but also Leone and Peckinpah, serving up a bloody surrealist fantasy that’s so seeped in religious symbols that it’s difficult to know how they all fit together. Whether you watch to unlock the puzzle of Jodorowksy’s imagery or simply take in the eccentricity of his vision, it’s an unforgettable travel across a Wild, Wild West as no director before or since has imagined it.

Mistah Pete – Left Foot Red Productions

Gunsmoke, Wagon Train, The Virginian: in the early 1960s, Zane Grey might as well have owned America’s only Neilsen book. But TV is always hot to jump on a trend (a few years late), and by the middle of that decade, Bond-mania had hit the airwaves. Get Smart and The Man From UNCLE had taken the place of Have Gun, Will Travel and Rawhide, but Bonanza was still number one. It didn’t take Faith Popcorn to see where this trend would lead — CBS debuted THE WILD WILD WEST in September of 1965.

The animated opening lets you know not to take this too seriously. This was produced in the era of Bewitched and I Dream of Jeannie, but what really veered this into the realm of “Weird Western” were the insane plots the villains threw at the President Grant’s favorite Secret Service agents, Jim West (played by diminutive ball-of-muscle Robert Conrad) and master-of-disguise Artemus Gordon (Ross Martin, Emmy-nominated for the role). They ran up against steam-powered earthquake-machines and cyborgs and crystal brain-implants and a circus of assassins and (no kidding) a drug that shrinks men to six-inches tall. Their recurring nemesis was Dr. Miguelito Loveless, a dwarf mad scientist who exhausted too much of his genius on death-traps for Jim and Artie.

The show was eventually taken off the air not for ratings but as a sop to watchdog groups despairing over TV violence. Each episode included at least two impressive fight scenes pitting Agent West against a veritable sea of burly cowpokes (Conrad famously had his skull cracked in one, which shut down shooting for two weeks), and often also just happened to require Jim to be stripped of his snazzy little blue bolero jacket and pose bare-chested and bound in leather as he’s caressed by some ‘60s wild-eyed hellcat in an exploding garter-belt.

So next time you despair that television panders to the 18-35 year old male, remember there once was a time when they were willing to deprive us of this little nugget of kinky fun simply because some blue-haired prudes complained loud enough.

The Wild Wild West | The Twilight Zone - "The Hunt"

Mike Fisher – Goofa Man Productions

This weird western is a Twilight Zone episode that involves hillbillies and a man’s love for hunting and his dog. The episode is called THE HUNT.

It involves a man who, along with his dog, is killed in a hunting accident. He eventually realizes that they are dead. The man and dog come to a gate that is the gate to heaven. But the gatekeeper won’t let the dog in!

The hillbilly says, any place that is too high falutin for Rip is too fancy for me!

Then he finds the REAL gate to heaven. See? See what was happening? Awesome episode and I saw it only a year or two ago for the first time.

The Phantom Empire | The Weird Western Adventures of Haakon Jones | Time Rider

Scott A. Cupp – Author

The field of the weird western is one that is very dear and close to my heart. I have written the occasional weird western and there are books which I would love to mention but cannot because I have a stake in them. Books like RAZORED SADDLES, THE NEW FRONTIER, and CROSS PLAINS UNIVERSE. I’m in those and helped select the contents for one.

But one I wish I had written is THE WEIRD ADVENTURES OF HAAKON JONES by Aaron B. Larson (1999, Battered Silicon Dispatch Box). Larson came into Adventures in Crime and Space when it was open promoting his book. My partner Willie Siros knew I would love it and purchased it for me. Unfortunately in the great book purge of 2007 it was lost to me, so I cannot even refer back to it. I know there were 36 or so stories in it and that they covered a multitude of genres – western, horror, science fiction, fantasy, detective (I think). They were short but definitely weird. In looking out on the web, I see the hardback is available if you want to part with serious cash. There is a paperback available from Battered Silicon Dispatch Box for either $25 or $30 (both prices are listed). I may have to restock this on my shelves. It’s good, it’s odd, it’s a western.

While others may be discussing Joe Lansdale books like DEAD IN THE WEST, ZEPPELINS WEST, or even THE MAGIC WAGON, I am going to go back to the weirdest western of them all, THE PHANTOM EMPIRE, a 1935 serial from Mascot Films starring Gene Autry as himself, a singing cowboy from Radio Ranch who broadcasts daily so there can be a song in each chapter. Out on the ranch is the hidden passage that leads to Murania, an underground kingdom descended from the lost tribes of Mu. Gene and his boys (his musicians and background singers) team up with two teenagers played by Frankie Darro and Betsy King Ross and go after the fiends who are intent on driving Gene away from Radio ranch. The story is convoluted and on close examination makes little sense but what more do you need. You have Thunder Riders (and Junior Thunder Riders!), killer robots, lost civilizations, a beautiful but evil Queen, ray guns, gangsters, radium, six guns, airplanes, skyscrapers, super fast elevators, and super science. What more could you want? The film is available in several inexpensive formats.

Drew Mayer-Oakes – Director, San Antonio Film Commission

TIME RIDER would be my pick. It stars Fred Ward, Peter Coyote and Belinda Bauer and it was produced by ex-Monkee Michael Nesmith.

To find out, we asked a deceptively tricky question: What is your favorite SF/Fantasy album cover of the last decade?

We asked San Antonio’s SF illuminati to wrack their brains and let us know what grabbed them in the oughts. We got some excellent feedback from the likes of John Picacio, Sanford Allen, Jeff from Hyperbubble, Mistah Pete, Paul Vaughn, René Guzman, Scott A. Cupp and Erik Bosse. While we’re showing ours, email us your favorites and if we get enough we’ll run a post in the weeks ahead with your favorites too.

Circa Survive - "On Letting Go" | Die Alten Maschinen - "To Be or Not"

John Picacio – Illustrator

Circa Survive - Blue Sky Noise

Album Title: On Letting Go
Band: Circa Survive
Cover Artist: Esao Andrews

Album covers were such a fertile market for imaginative cover art when vinyl was in vogue. Once the CD package shrunk the image area, lush illustrated music packaging became an increasing rarity as band photos and designer cliches became the norm. It’s even more difficult to find illustrated music packaging this decade as mp3s dominate — even harder to find music art that captivates.

This one does it though. The art is by Esao Andrews for Circa Survive’s album, On Letting Go. The image made me stop in my tracks when I saw it. Beautiful, iconic, poignant and wow. Andrews has done more art for this band’s music packaging including their 2010 release Blue Sky Noise, which is another knockout image. I’ve been familiar with some of Andrews’ work for a couple of years, but I think these bits of music art are amongst his best works to date.

Paul Vaughn – Techno Geek

Album Title: To Be or Not
Band: Die Alten Maschinen with Gerald V. Casale of DEVO
Cover Artist: Adolf Lachman

How could I not pick up this album…well, download it really. Gerald Casale from DEVO (yes, my favorite band ever) teamed up with a Czech techno duo and garnished with a sweet robotic album cover by Czech comics artist Adolf Lachman. The pathos of the robot image matches the theme of the song To Be or Not – mechanical alienation in an organic world. Can a robot love? Are our creations simply collections of plastic bones with servo motor souls or are they more than these parts. This song is a beautiful modern twist on classic DEVO. While Mark Mothersbaugh is normally though of as the vocalist from DEVO, Casale’s voice is pure de-evolution. Listen to this track once or twice and you will be singing it for days…complete with a Czech accent. Lachman’s portrayal of the robot on the cover is sensitive without being maudlin. And the energy dome employed as a flower pot is a brilliant touch.

Venetian Snares - "Pink + Green" | Janelle Monáe - "Metropolis"

Jeff from Hyperbubble – Musician

Album Title: Pink + Green
Band: Venetian Snares
Cover Artist: Arnold Steiner - AS1 Projects, “Eferia” pony designed by Anna Sjöberg

The heavens burst open like a piñata filled with metallic orbs, rainbows and party balloons. My Little Clonies fly though the purple icing skies in Buck Rogers rocketships, surrounded by candy colored foliage, while spikey haired horsies sporting bad ass rock tattoos, legwarmers and cubist eyeballs frolic below, littering the electric green grass of fantasy land with syringes and cigarette butts.

Janelle Monáe - The ArchAndroid

Pretty much describes the music within.

Mistah Pete – Left Foot Red Video

Album Title: Metropolis – The Chase Suite
Band: Janelle Monáe
Cover Artist: ???

I recently read an article about all the things that the Age of the Internet has taken from us, and one of them was the concept of the album in general, and the concept album in particular. No one told Janelle Monáe about this. Her Metropolis – The Chase Suite is a sci-fi concept album that might’ve been made by Styx or the Alan Parsons Project, but for it being the most modern of hip-hop (produced by Big Boi of Outkast fame, and released on the once-and-future Puff Daddy’s label, Bad Boy Records). The Metropolis Suite is the story of Android #57821 (also known as Cindi Mayweather) who has fallen in love with a human and so is now scheduled for “immediate disassembly” (or so goes the creepily cheery-voiced intro to the album). The rest of the album is about her flight from bounty hunters and “droid control marshals” armed with “chainsaws and electro-daggers!” Yeah, pretty much as geeky as it sounds, but it’s incredibly fun, and Monáe’s voice ranges from Cyndi Lauper hiccups to the deep Gospel-growl of Sharon Jones.

It should also be mentioned that Monáe’s new album, The ArchAndroid continues the story, and also has a pretty cool cover, also pretty clearly inspired by a certain Fritz Lang classic silent film classic.

The Flaming Lips - "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots" | Farflung - "25,000 Feet Per Second"

Scott A. Cupp – Author

Album Title: Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots
Band: The Flaming Lips
Artist: Wayne Coyne

This was an interesting challenge. I am officially an old fart and tend to listen more to the music of the 50‘s and 60’s than the current stuff.  Not a total Phillistine, I do get some new music. One album which fits the topic at hand (ignoring the SF related soundtracks I got) was The Flaming Lips’ Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots,  a “semi-concept” album from the oddest band to exit Oklahoma City in many years.  I had heard the song “Do You Realize” in commercials with the big bunnies and weird stuff before I found me way to the album. I like much of it and don’t like other pieces.  It’s a little to self-consciously arty in a spot or two, kind of like Yes on electronic drugs. The opening quartet of songs appears to be related giving YBTPR the semi-concept status.  The album design and layout is credited to George Salisbury. I’m not sure that includes the cover art, which is wonderfully eerie featuring a young female warrior approaching a bizarre robot. I understand that this was to be the basis for a musical but that appears never to have happened.  All in all a mixture of psychedelia, electronic, angst, and Oklahoma weirdness. Try it, you might like it.

Erik Bosse – Eyewash Pictures

Album Title: 25,000 Feet Per Second
Band: Farflung
Cover Artist: ???

There have been times when I’ll buy music because of the cover art. However, it’s a dodgy pursuit, as the music only rarely lives up to the overblown art work. If I see album art depicting, let’s say, flying purple chimps kidnapping a curvaceous she-astronaut under a three moon sky, I’m not going to be happy if the music turns out to be standard delta blues or some New Age pan flute ensemble. But the reverse also happens. When I pick up an album of classic space rock (Pressurehed, Farflung, Chrome, Faust, Hawkwind, Amon Düül, et al.), I demand art work showing, in high detail, something like, well, a planet exploding; a generously craniumed Homo futurien emerging from a UFO parked in present day Hyde Park; or, a gargantuan scorpion perched atop a Mayan pyramid holding a curvaceous she-astronaut in its pincers…under a three moon sky. And so I’m going to cheat here and nominate a wonderful piece of album art which appeared 15 years ago. The band is Farflung. They’re a bastion of traditional neo-space rock who are still making music. But their first album, 25,000 Feet Per Second, has this stellar (if I may) cover art which is so wonderfully retro it could have been cribbed from a pulp mag circa 1945. The best thing is, the music lives up to this wonderful illustration.

King Crimson - "The Power to Believe" | Coldplay - "A Rush of Blood to the Head"

Sanford Allen – Author & Musician

Album Title: The Power to Believe
Band: King Crimson
Cover Artist: P.J. Crook

British surrealist painter P.J. CROOK’S cover to KING CRIMSON’S 2003 album shows a dystopian world that could be the near future, a dark steampunk fantasy or even (gasp!) the present day. Thronging masses wander the streets of a smoke-choked megacity while gas-masked soldiers with guard dogs ominously keep things in line. In the middle of the painting, a gas-masked nurse in Florence Nightingale garb delivers a naked child into the world. A messiah? An innocent not yet sullied by the place’s ugliness? Hell, the kid may even be stillborn. It’s all unclear. But the ambiguity and sense of mystery only add to the power of the image. Certainly, it’s a great match for this dark, heavy — yet occasionally uplifting — disk that is arguably the venerable experimental rock band’s best studio album since the early ‘80s. Bully for Crook and Crimson that it’s also one of the best SF-inspired album covers of recent years. Added San Antonio coolness: Crimson’s lineup on this disk includes Alamo City native Trey Gunn.

René A. Guzman - Geek Speak

Album Title: A Rush of Blood to the Head
Band: Coldplay
Artist: Sølve Sundsbø

Say what you will about Coldplay, the whiny alt-soft rockers cranked out one very popular album in ’02 with one very unnerving image of a ghostlike figure cracking through a vector field or some such technological snapshot gone awry. Which, turns out, it is. Back in the late 1990s, Norwegian fashion photographer Sølve Sundsbø scanned a model wearing all-white makeup with a 3D scanning machine for the fashion mag Dazed and Confused. The model also had on a cape with a colored twill, which the computer couldn’t read so it spit the colors out as spikes. As for her chopped head, blame the machine again for only scanning in 30 centimeter segments. None of which mattered since Dazed & Confused ran the image anyway. Later, Coldplay frontman Chris Martin saw the image and asked Sundsbø if the band could use it for their second album. Sundsbø not only agreed but even suggested scanning the band’s heads to use as art for the singles.

John Picacio

A FEAST FOR CROWS by George R. R. Martin (Bantam) — I’m working on illustrations for the 2012 calendar for George R. R. Martin’s A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE (Bantam). So I’ve essentially been obsessed with these books since late last year. As I work on the pictures, I go back and re-read key passages. A FEAST FOR CROWS is the fourth book in a projected seven-book epic. GRRM is currently working on the fifth book, A DANCE WITH DRAGONS, and in 2011, HBO will debut a major TV series based on the books. If you love great fantasy epics, and have never read these books, now is a great time to immerse yourself in one of the finest epics ever. Start now and you’ll be ready for the new book, and new show, when they debut. The first book of A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE is A GAME OF THRONES.

ROUGH JUSTICE: THE DC COMICS SKETCHES OF ALEX ROSS by Alex Ross (Pantheon) — I wouldn’t call this “reading” because it’s essentially a compendium of sketches from the iconic comic book artist. It does contain short insightful notes by Ross, legendary for his glossy painted superhero work. Obviously not all art books can have the benefit of a living artist’s commentary, but when a book does, it’s revelatory.

TIMES THREE by Robert Silverberg (Subterranean Press) — Don’t bother looking for this book because it doesn’t exist yet. It’ll be a 2011 release from Subterranean and I’ll be doing the cover illustration. I’m reading the manuscript in preparation for this work. If you love time travel stories by one of the great prose masters of science fiction, then this book will be for you.

BW Fenlon

THE PASSAGE by Justin Cronin (Ballantine) — I just finished Jeffrey Eugenides’ Middlesex, which was wonderful but not genre-related. Now, however, I am swinging back into the horror/sci-fi realm with an advance readers copy of Justin Cronin’s The Passage. Cronin is an English professor at Rice University, and The Passage is the first in a highly anticipated trilogy about a secret government experiment gone awry, as secret government experiments are wont to do. It’s a nice, fat tome (at 70 pages I’m still less than a tenth of the way in) and though I am yet to encounter the government-spawned vampires that wreak havoc on a post-apocalyptic America, I am enjoying meeting the characters who will surely suffer at Cronin’s hand. The book is riding a wave of publicity right now (there is talk of a Ridley Scott flick), and I look forward to the author’s signing at the San Pedro Barnes & Noble on June 18th. It’s always good meeting Texas-based sci-fi folk.

Continue after the jump for more from Mistah Pete, Paul Vaughn and Sanford Allen…

Mistah Pete

NIGHTS AT THE CIRCUS by Angela Carter (Penguin) — It’s a sort of magical realism thing, a novel about a winged trapeze-artist and tightrope walker who may be part swan, and the reporter trying to learn her story. Like a lot of books in that style, it’s complicated and far-ranging, with stories and characters that go all over London and Eastern Europe. I’m told it’s feminist and post-feminist and for all I know pre-feminist, but I don’t see it. It’s beautifully-written and a lot of fun.

Paul Vaughn

ELRIC: TO RESCUE TANELORN (Chronicles of the Last Emperor of Melniboné, Vol. 2) by Michael Moorcock (Del Ray) — OK, I’m a little embarrassed to admit this, but I’m fairly new to Elric. I read a few of the comic book adaptations in the early 1980s, but have only sat down to the books recently. This latest series of Elric books looks to be a complete collection of Moorcock’s tales of this deeply flawed sword-and-sorcery hero. The first book really highlighted Moorcock’s evolution as a your writer and felt very complete…it did not look like there was much left that need to be told. Yet there are plenty more volumes after this one so my curiosity was peaked. I realize that Elric fits into Moorcock’s epic storyline of the Eternal Champion, but I was surprised that Elric: To Rescue Tanelorn dives right into the concept immediately with the story “The Eternal Champion”.  In fact, of the first four stories, Elric stars in only one. The tales themselves, however, are compelling. Moorcock is weaving something larger than the typical fantasy world, he encompasses the entire multiverse including our own world. The fourth story, “The Greater Conqueror” is a fantastic tale of Alexander the Great and how he fits in to this overall mythos. The book is illustrated by Michael Wm. Kaluta.

Sanford Allen

FACE by Tim Lebbon (Leisure Books) – This book by British author Lebbon looks at what happens when bad things happen to good people. In this case, the poor unwitting Powell family. The Powells’ descent into Hell begins on a snowy night when they decide to help an enigmatic hitchhiker named Brand. The devilish drifter spends the rest of the novel dissecting each family member’s psyche — the mother who lives in fear because of a past assault, the father burdened by his sense of failure and the teenage daughter coming to grips with her burgeoning sexuality. Lebbon keeps the scale small, and the book consequently works both as a horror tale and as a look at isolation inside the modern family unit.

Sanford Allen

Cancel the new Tron Legacy…
Yeah, I’ll admit it, the idea of Academy Award winner Jeff Bridges drawling and duding his way through the almost-three-decades-too-late sequel to Tron, Disney’s stab at Cyberpunk Lite, does have its appeal. And — from its neon chopper chases to its art deco robo-dames — the movie does look pretty nifty. But do we really need to rehash that tired franchise any more than we need another fricken Transformers movie? (Hell, does it even qualify as a franchise? More like a mediocre regional chain like Carvel Ice Cream, come to think of it.)
…and replace it with When Gravity Fails by George Alec Effinger.
Look, if Hollywood’s going to throw money at ’80s cyberpunk, let’s go for the real deal: George Alec Effinger’s brilliant and underrated When Gravity Fails. Gravity was the first book of a trilogy that imagined a 21st Century future as gritty and grimy as anything Wm Gibson came up with, but then had the audacity to set it in the Middle East. To boot, a Middle East turned into a market of flesh, drugs and rock-n-roll that bears an uncanny similarity to Effinger’s beloved Big Easy. Wisecracking protag Marid Audran is a perfectly drawn street-smart fixer who’s regularly chewing on a wad of delicious trouble. On one page, he’s outwitting cyber-enhanced baddies, the next he’s working to stay on the good side of his stable of dope-fiend, hooker and transvestite informants. It’s exactly the kind of fun, smart and subversive stuff Hollywood avoids like the plague. But we can always dream, can’t we?

John Picacio

Instead of making films like Reign of Fire…
This one was a 2002 post-apocalyptic man v. dragon film, thick with plotholes, thin on common sense. It starred Christian Bale & Matthew McConaughey and plays best given half your attention so that you don’t realize how derivative it all is. Essentially, dragons return to ravage our contemporary times, and humankind doesn’t fare well. Enter post-apocalyptic scenario and feisty survivor protagonists fighting back from the edge of extinction. If you feel like you can connect the story dots from here, that’s because you can. The silver lining of this film: the dragons, or more specifically, the fabulous special effects and production work that make them terrifyingly real. It makes you wonder what could have happened if a richer screenplay had been attached, and that’s why I’d love for Hollywood to…
…Film the Age of Misrule trilogy by Mark Chadbourn.
The three books of this series, World’s End, Darkest Hour, and Always Forever, made their US debuts last year from Pyr. Chadbourn weaves an amazingly well-researched tapestry of the whole of Celtic myth as the ancient gods and monsters collide with our contemporary society in a spectacular collison made for the big screen. The characters are richly conceived, and the tales contain the kinds of formula elements that Hollywood scripts love (quests, high romance, aching tragedy, and big spectacle). The difference is Chadbourn’s narrative has a depth of historical research that few epics can match, and even fewer screenplays do. Even in distilled form, his story would make rich cinema. Possible dream team would be William Monahan (gifted research-loving screenwriter for Kingdom of Heaven and The Departed) and director Alfonso Cuaron (Children of Men). Guillermo Del Toro would go nuts with this kind of story material, but he’s busy with The Hobbit for the next several years. As much as I love Del Toro’s films, Cuaron’s films have an intimacy of character that might actually better complement this one, and possibly translate the humanity even better on screen.

Jeff from Hyperbubble

Instead of remaking Flash Gordon…
Besides a winning cast, ultra-fun set design and more spandex than you can shake a linebacker at, Flash Gordon had the KILLER soundtrack. It marked the moment Queen stopped putting “no synthesizers” on the back of their albums, went positively Moog-crazy, and never looked back. There’s talk of Columbia taking a shot at a remake. They might as well try to re-make A Hard Days Night.
…Film Time of the Hawklords instead
If it’s sci-fi fun with a synth-rockin’ soundtrack we’re after, how about a movie version of Moorcock/Butterworth’s Time of The Hawklords? British space rock gods, Hawkwind are the stars of the book, and they’re about as close as you’ll get to a real-life Spinal Tap. It shouldn’t be that hard to toss a movie version together: Get Hawkiwind to do the original soundtrack, and employ a flavor-of-the-day film fox to play the cosmic go-go dancer,Stacia. For added star power, get ex-Hawkwind member Lemmy (from Motorhead) to play…..HIMSELF!

Click on through…we’ve got plenty more!

BW Fenlon

Instead of remaking Conan the Barbarian…
Conan the Barbarian is slated for a 2011 remake. Instead of casting another Austrian bodybuilder in the titular role, the sandals will be filled by Jason Momoa, former Baywatch hunk and 1999′s Hawaiian model of the year. And while this may cut back on some of the lamentations of the women, we’re still left with a remake sans James Earl Jones, Mako, Sandahl Bergman and Max von Sydow.
…Film Joe Abercrombie’s The Blade Itself
The Blade Itself is the first in a trilogy by Joe Abercrombie. You want barbarians? This one is chock full of them including “the Bloody Nine,” a berserker more likable than Conan and twice as dangerous. It also features a crippled former hero turned torturer named Glokta who’s too much fun to hate, and a short-tempered wizard named Bayaz who would leave Thulsa Doom quaking in his boots.

Scott A. Cupp

Instead of remaking The Wizard of Oz…
I have heard that there are always plans to remake The Wizard Of Oz. Why would anyone in their right mind want to attempt this? It would be expensive with lots of CGI and everyone would compare it to one of the greatest movies ever made.
…Film Neal Barret Jr.’s The Hereafter Gang instead
Neal Barrett Jr.’s The Hereafter Gang is basically the polar opposite of Oz but still very fun. Our hero, Doug Hoover, cannot decide what has happened to him. Has he left Texas, gone to Oklahoma, or died? There is no Wicked Witch but there is this serene Cosmic Cheerleader Car Hop who may have never graced a Sonic drive in. There are biplanes and zeppelins, all the fun stuff that guys like. There are few explosions but the trip is one Thelma and Louise would never make.

Keep the tone of Barrett and you will have a winner that everyone will enjoy for years to come. Screw with his voice and you make a turd. The voice is everything in this film and it could be done well for a song and a dance.

Or, failing that, make Joe Lansdale’s The Nightrunners and everyone who got scared at Blair Witch, The Exorcist, Or Paranormal Activity will see what real horror is. Hospital emergency rooms will be flooded with heart attack patients who now know why everyone wants a Lansdale movie and why anything done will have to be toned down to about 2 on a 10 point scales and then you might still get the NC-17. I was going to say, let Tarrantino do a Lansdale movie but he sorta already did, stealing heavily from On the Far Side of the Cadillac Desert, With Dead Folks when he made From Dusk Til Dawn.

Pete Barnstrom

Instead of rebooting Spider-Man…
As of January of 2010, Sony announced that Sam Raimi and Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst would not be asked to return for a fourth Spider-Man movie. Speculation soon followed that there would be a reboot of the series as soon as next year, with (500) Days of Summer director Marc Webb attached, and perhaps starring a Twilight actor as a young Peter Parker.

Disregarding for the moment any need for a “reboot” of a film series started less than ten years ago, I’m ambivalent about funnybook adaptations in general. They rarely seem to translate to the screen, and when they do, it’s usually the more obscure characters that do it best. Blade, Hellboy? Yes, please. X-Men, Batman? Not so much. (I would restate here my claim that the most faithful Batman adaptation is still the Adam West version, but it always starts fights.)

So my request would be for Hollywood to keep its latest version of Spidey, and instead look at some more unconventional choices.

…Film Scud the Disposable Assassin instead
Rob Schrab’s Scud the Disposable Assassin has gotten close a few times (both MTV and Oliver Stone tried it), but now that Schrab is something of a Hollywood comer (he’s a creator of The Sarah Silverman Program and wrote Monster House), it might be time to let him do it himself. Not without reason, Alan Moore has never been too happy with Hollywood’s attempts at turning his stories into features (League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, V for Vendetta, Watchmen), but his Tom Strong books, with their wholesome, jet-packed, Silver Age world of “science-heroes” and steam-powered robot butlers and super-intelligent apes, seem tailor-made for the big screen. And my own personal dream has always been to adapt Bob Burden’s absurdist, dada-influenced Flaming Carrot as an animated film. I can see the lunchboxes now, the atomic pogostick and stink-bombs on one side, Senator Babyhead and Death playing Jarts on the other.

Mike Fisher

Instead of reremaking the Planet of the Apes…
Instead of rebooting the Planet of the Apes franchise, why not use all of those dollars to start a brand new franchise?
…Film Bruce Sterling’s Schismatrix Plus instead
Someone please try to film Bruce Sterling’s Schismatrix Plus. Well, try to film a PART of it. I don’t think you could get the whole thing into one movie. A nice trilogy, perhaps? That series is full of cool cyberpunk ideas. And the necessary visuals would provide a healthy challenge for any special effects house! It’s been a few years since I read this great work, but I remember that with every turn of the page, Sterling pried my skull open just a little bit wider. I remember, in particular, “Swarm” — part of the Schismatrix Plus collection of stories — drove home the point that intelligence really isn’t necessary for survival. It’s a creepy story that totally blew me away. Put it on film!

And instead of making Transformers III, why not just find the biggest dump truck in town, fill it with auto salvage parts, and film it as it is driven at high speed over the edge of a tall cliff? I think the entertainment value would probably be equal to a third Transformers movie, plus it would cost a lot less!

Paul Vaughn

Instead of remaking Escape from New York…
Sure John Carpenter’s nihilistic future prison New York rocked my world in 1981 and it is pretty hard to watch now. It presented a possibility of a decayed and degraded society that we could easily imagine with the state of the world at the time, but that doesn’t mean Hollywood has to go back and remake it for today’s audiences. Leave it as the time capsule it is.
…Film Pohl & Kornbluth’s The Space Merchants instead
Frederick Pohl and Cyril M. Kornbluth teamed up to write two novels about a society that was completely driven by marketing, advertising and consumption. Corporations have taken over and governments exist only to help the corporations become more profitable. Sound familiar? The Space Merchants was published in 1952, but it hits too close to home and reads like a SF version of Mad Men. The main character is an advertising executive tasked with enticing people to emigrate to Venus. He soon finds out how tenuous life can be when he gets on the wrong side of the society he has been manipulating. I suspect the misleading title was aimed at selling the book to SF audiences, there is little space anything in The Space Merchants, but 1984′s The Merchant’s War does take us to the colony on Venus for a contrasting perspective. This satirical novel is just the kind of SF that can shine a harsh light on our own culture today.

Thank you all for the great year. We look forward to much more in the year to come.

Sanford Allen

Quarantined by Joe McKinney: Part murder mystery, part apocalyptic SF, McKinney’s latest novel moves quickly but carries real character depth. Detective Lily Harris investigates the mysterious death of a World Health Organization doctor as San Antonio grapples with a viral outbreak that’s wiped out a huge swath of the population. An SAPD detective himself, Joe ably handles the action sequences and the procedural stuff. The pleasant surprise is how well he weaves domestic drama into the story as Lily tries to keep her family sane, stable and together as the world falls apart around them.

John Picacio

The Texas in 2013 WorldCon Bid: The most exciting San Antonio science fiction news of the year was that San Antonio is a proposed city for the 2013 World Science Fiction Convention bid. Note that San Antonio is NOT guaranteed to win the bid, and at this point, there’s no word which cities are bidding against Texas for that year’s convention. One way or the other, the Texas bid will have its work cut out for it, but it’s quite an opportunity for San Antonio’s sf/f community to rally together. If you’re a San Antonian who wants a more literate, sophisticated sf/f scene in SA, or just a driveby Alamo City fan of sf/f media, now’s your chance to make a difference and make San Antonio a better science fiction city.

Mistah Pete - Left Foot Red Productions

The Brain that Wouldn’t Die at the Overtime Theater: Let it first be said, I hate theater.  I don’t go to plays.  I have the attention-span of a caffeinated gibbon, and you’ve got a very brief window before I’m bored enough to start ripping up the seats and lighting fires. And unlike movies and books and music, I feel an obligation to sit through it all; the people who made it are there in front of me and will look at me walking out and suddenly it’s the screaming pyromaniac vandal who’s the bad guy.  But the Overtime Theater‘s production of The Brain That Wouldn’t Die was fun. Even for me. The songs were peppy, the set design was beyond clever (that car was aaaawesome!), and the cast was engaging. What’s more, it adhered to that great San Anto tradition of snatching up the discards of those with more money than sense and turning it into something useful: the producers took a cheesy public domain movie, copped the plot and title and characters, and fed it back to us with a heaping tablespoon of attitude. It worked. Worked enough that they should take it on the road.  And one day, I hope to see the movie of a play of a movie, raking in the bucks at the multiplex. That’ll show the fatcats. Next time they’ll spend their money more wisely!  Wait, then maybe they’ll not make the bad movies that the Overtime can rip off… hmm, gotta rethink this…

James Hartz – Film Classics Productions

Dr. S Battles the Sex-Crazed Reefer Zombies: OK, since I’m obviously biased as all hell on this one I’ll let part of this review from Quiet Earth do the talking: “[Bryan] Ortiz gives us three chapters, which help to structure the story and keep-up a flowing narrative in a film that could have easily fallen apart. With the imposed three-act structure in Doctor S, as well as a rather saucy intermission, it’s a fun ride to follow the story without worrying too much about missing any important plot-points. I’d go as far as to say that Doctor S is a film that doesn’t really require in-depth analysis, it’s simply an excellent example of itself as a spoof/homage and any attempt to see it as anything other than a bit of fun, anyone trying to seriously look at it as a morality tale or cautionary warning on drugs, communism or teenage sex is going to be left scratching their head by the end. It’s presented as a wacky horror comedy, that’s clear from the poster and tag-line, but the talent on display is at times quite staggering. Ortiz uses the fact that the budget was low to his advantage, basing the film on a style of 50′s sci-fi that was cheap and, by today’s standards, laughably cheesy. He manages, however, to create enough moments where the viewers expectations are confounded; special effects actually look special, fight scenes are amazingly graphic and well co-ordinated, jokes are laugh-out-loud funny, references to old horror films and b-movies are noticeable and witty, etc, etc, to transcend it’s limitations and to seriously impress. Honestly, there were moments during the two viewings I’ve seen of Doctor S. where the word genius wasn’t far from mind…”

Paul Vaughn

In Astrovision by The Sandworms: I love music that caters to my genre taste and this disc I picked up at a live show did that in spades. I actually missed the Sandworms when they were on stage, but everybody said they killed so I purchased their CD, In Astrovision. It was a great choice. Straight ahead goth surf rock instrumentals. Like if Dick Dale was pierced, tattooed and alienated. With song titles like Red Planet Green Love, Frankencrisp, Thundercorpse, Agents of Terror, Vampire Clam Babies from Outer Space and Invasion of the Octopus People it’s almost like they were making the disc with me in mind. If you are looking for some high-energy instrumental music for your next goth rave or the perfect score for your vampire zombie surf movie, take a look at The Sandworms. A close second was Hyperbubble’s Better Set Your Phasers to Stun. A synthpop homage to Star Trek is always worth a listen!

Jeff from Hyperbubble

1984 by The City of San Antonio: The City of San Antonio gets The Maxwell Award this year for covering downtown with shiny new closed-circuit TV cameras. Now everyone is a star. The National Security Agency is also working on a new data archive in SA, said to be about the size of The Alamodome, to house our email, phone calls, web searches, bookstore visits etc. For more info on the NSA, read The Secret Sentry: The Untold History of the National Security Agency by Matthew Aid (2009)… Hola, Big Brother.

Frank Zieglar - KiDDandGEEZER

Missions Unknown: Not to be brown nosing, but honestly, the best genre-related item from San Antonio in 2009 is Missions Unknown. I’ve known for years that San Antonio is home to some great stuff, but I had no idea about most of the things I’ve learned about from this website. The people and events that you guys bring to my attention is unbelievable sometimes. Thanks guys for all your work!

Scott A. Cupp

The Texas in 2013 WorldCon Bid: The best Genre related thing to come out of San Antonio in 2009 did not actually come out of San Antonio. More accurately, it came into San Antonio. I am talking about the announcement of bid for the 2013 World Science Fiction Convention. While this is nowhere near a sure thing, I will be working hard for the next two years on the bid process. The bid will be determined at the 2011 World Science Fiction Convention in Reno, NV. The various bids will be voted on there and the 2013 site will be selected. Then the real work begins to show the rest of the world what a cool place we live in. The last Texas World Convention was held in San Antonio in 1997. I did not live here then, but I attended and it was an extreme amount of fun and work. I worked briefly on that convention and now that San Antonio is once again my home (my third tour here in the last 42 years) I want us to give the most exciting Texas related whup-ass convention seen in a long time. I will keep touting the bid here during the two year bid time and will be trying to get locals very involved. It takes a lot of folks to make one of these things run. The more locals involved, the better. Check out the website.

Michael Mehl – Fotoseptiembre USA

The Sasquatch Bigfoot of the Southside: Or as I call it: El Sasquatchale Patotas. Of course, it’s only fitting that El Sasquatchale will breed with El Chupacabras (at the end of the day all SF monsters are gay), begetting the heretofore renowned -and feared- El Chupaquatchale. Hear the actual 911 call below.