The ‘S‘ on his chest doesn’t stand for ‘Superman’. It stands for SCIENTIST.

Scientist (AKA Hopeton Brown/AKA Overton Brown) gave Reggae Dub mass appeal by creating a series of sci-fi themed concept albums packaged in cartoon cover art. Using B Movies, UFO conspiracy theories and video games as points of reference, albums [Read it all...]]]>

The ‘S‘ on his chest doesn’t stand for ‘Superman’. It stands for SCIENTIST.

Scientist (AKA Hopeton Brown/AKA Overton Brown) gave Reggae Dub mass appeal by creating a series of sci-fi themed concept albums packaged in cartoon cover art. Using B Movies, UFO conspiracy theories and video games as points of reference, albums such as Scientist Meets the Space Invaders (1981), Scientist Encounters Pac-Man (1982), and Scientist & Jammy Strike Back (1983) promise to transform your stereo into a teleportation device, while song titles like  ‘Cloning Process’, ‘Plague of Zombies‘ , and ‘Flash Gordon Meets Luke Skywalker‘ provide further context for researching Scientist’s mad audio experiments.

Scientist’s musical  instrument is the recording studio, and his prowess on the mixing desk is the stuff of legend. The dissection and re-animation of his subject is diabolically precise. ‘Dread In A Remulacks’ Dub, from Heavy Metal Dub (featuring The Roots Radics)  is typical of Scientist’s formula: Space truckin’ bass and electronic squiggles give the sensation of cruising though the cosmos. High hat patterns splinter off like debris from your deflector shields, while the reverb-heavy snare demolishes everything in its path.  Space guitars drenched in delay disappear into the void just as quickly as they arrive. Time stands still until the track fades out. The trip is over far too soon, but the good news is that Scientist has made a skillion dubs on a bazillion albums, and they’re all great!

Along with influencing the look and sound of modern artists like Major Lazer, as well as the current Dubstep craze, Scientist is still hard at work in his laboratory. 2000′s Scientist Dubs Culture Into a Parallel Universe shows further refinement in the Scientific approach, juggling more instruments than ever in the mix, with super-clear sound quality. Having Culture as Dub fodder sure doesn’t hurt. On the 2010 album  Scientist Launches Dubstep into Outer Space, new kids like Armour, Asbo, Cyrus, Distance, Kode 9 and Spaceape get the full treatment, while paying respect to the original.

So if you’re not in any hurry today, consider kicking back aboard Scientist’s  supersonic dubcraft. It’s a mighty smooth ride, and a good time is guaranteed for all. And don’t forget, this Halloween, you may wanna make sure your haunted house is stocked with a copy of ‘Scientist Rids the World of the Evil Curse of the Vampires‘ !

NEXT WEEK: OTHER GALACTIC FUNK

There’s none we can suggest more highly than the 33rd annual ArmadilloCon, where variety of well-known sf, fantasy and horror writers will read works, sign books and debate weighty subjects ranging from what books belong on a college-level sf reading list and why people just can’t get [Read it all...]]]> Looking for a geeky diversion this weekend?

There’s none we can suggest more highly than the 33rd annual ArmadilloCon, where variety of well-known sf, fantasy and horror writers will read works, sign books and debate weighty subjects ranging from what books belong on a college-level sf reading list and why people just can’t get enough of those wacky flesh-eating zombies.

Guests at the venerable Austin convention include Guest of Honor Paolo Bacigalupi, author of The Windup Girl, which has won the Hugo, Nebula, Locus and just about every other award you can think of; Artist Guest Vincent Villafranca, known for his vibrantly imaginative bronzes; Editor Guest Lou Anders, award-winning editorial director for Pyr Books; Fan Guest Fred Duarte Jr.; Toastmaster Mark Finn; and Special Guests Emma Bull and Will Shetterly.

I counted nearly 100 participants, including horror giant Joe R. Lansdale, off-the-wall short story writer Howard Waldrop and fellow Alamo City residents David Liss, Scott A. Cupp and myself. (Cupp, I believe, has attended every Armadillocon since the con was established.)

The convention is being held Friday, Aug. 26, through Sunday, Aug. 28, at the Renaissance Hotel Austin, 9721 Arboretum Blvd. Three-day memberships are $50. Individual daily passes are available for $20 (Friday and Sunday) and $35 (Saturday).

I have enjoyed every Armadillocon I have attended, and I appreciate the organizers’ continued focus on sf, fantasy and horror literature. Yes, folks, good old-fashioned books. That’s not to say no one dresses up in costume, bitches that Firefly was cancelled or huddles in a corner playing GURPS while nibbling on Cheetos, just that media and gaming are not the sole reasons for the con’s existence.

If you’re a reader, a writer or aspire to be either, it’s a con not to miss. Especially since it’s just an hour’s drive from the Alamo City.

For a full rundown, including a list of all the panels and participants, check out the Armadillocon website.

Joe McKinney's latest features a rather sultry looking cover zombie.

Flesh Eaters (Pinnacle), the third in his four-book zombie series, recently hit the shelves, and his story “The Day the Music Died” graces the new zombie anthology Holiday [Read it all...]]]>

Joe McKinney's latest features a rather sultry looking cover zombie.

Flesh Eaters (Pinnacle), the third in his four-book zombie series, recently hit the shelves, and his story “The Day the Music Died” graces the new zombie anthology Holiday of the Dead.

Flesh Eaters follows emergency worker Eleanor Norton as she and her team conduct dangerous salvage work in the streets of Houston, flooded with both plague-filled waters and ravenous zombies. Brian Keene, perhaps the current dean of zombie fiction, praised the book as “mercilessly fast-paced and genuinely scary.”

Apocalypse of the Dead, the previous book in McKinney’s series, came out last fall and now is in the running for a Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a Novel.

We last did a Q&A with Joe McKinney back in 2009, after he’d just released his second novel, Quarantined. Since then, he’s co-edited the zombie anthology Dead Set, put out two more novels — the zombie epic Apocalypse of the Dead and hard-boiled crime tale Dodging Bullets [Read it all...]]]>

Riding High: Prolific horror author Joe McKinney.

We last did a Q&A with Joe McKinney back in 2009, after he’d just released his second novel, Quarantined. Since then, he’s co-edited the zombie anthology Dead Set, put out two more novels — the zombie epic Apocalypse of the Dead and hard-boiled crime tale Dodging Bullets — and this week picked up a second Stoker Award nomination (for Apocalypse).

Given McKinney’s rising stock on the horror scene, we figured it was time to sit down with him once again. McKinney, who works for the San Antonio Police Department, was more than happy to discuss the origins of his new crime novel, the future of zombie horror and his spate of upcoming projects.

How does it feel to be nominated for a Stoker Award alongside horror heavyweights like Peter Straub and Joe Hill?

A little intimidating. Peter Straub is one of the authors I grew up reading. Koko, Ghost Story, Shadowland…for me, reading those novels was like discovering gold. It’s hard to overstate the importance of great writing encountered early in one’s life. All I can say is I’m the richer for having encountered him. And though Joe Hill is a relative newcomer on the scene, he shows the same promise as the early Straub. These are both writers that my friends and I have discussed over long drunken nights. Suddenly finding oneself lumped among them, well, that’s flattering, and frightening. I guess I feel like the ugly stepsister at the gala ball.

Although you don’t write about zombies exclusively, you certainly made your name as a zombie writer. Are there signs the zombie phenomenon is starting to wane, or do you still see plenty of life left in the genre?

It depends on where you look. The critics have been saying zombies were, uh, dead for years. They were saying it back before Max Brooks released World War Z. They were saying it again when Robert Kirkman’s “The Walking Dead” showed up on TV. They’ll go on saying indefinitely, I’m sure. And, one day, when a big budget zombie film falls flat on its face, the critics will dance around triumphantly claiming that they told us so.

But I think zombies will be around for a long while still. I’m sure their popularity will roller coaster over the next few years, but my guess is they’re here to stay. If you want proof of that, you don’t have to look much further than our language. We used to see people in shock and say they had the 2,000 yard stare. Now, we’re far more likely to say that person looks like a zombie. Economists talk about zombie markets and zombie businesses. A recent issue of The Economist, for example, even carried the cover story, “Night of the Living Fed.” Computer experts use terms like zombie terminals. There are dozens of other examples, but the fact of the matter is that the zombie is embedded in our language. Language is a very accurate way to gauge the mind of a society, and ours seems to have embraced the zombie on an archetypal level. So I’d say, yeah, the zombie is here to stay.

Are there some up-and-coming writers taking the living dead trope in new and exciting directions?

Absolutely. A few I’ve read recently, and enjoyed, are David Moody, Craig DiLouie and Wayne Simmons. Through them, and others, we’re seeing new variations on familiar themes. In many of these works, zombies are changing from the shambling, slow-moving reanimated dead of George Romero’s “Night of the Living Dead” to more complicated articulations of our current fears. They are changing from images of horror to metaphors for larger, more socially-based fears. Zombies are merely that, remember: reflections of what we fear most. No matter what you’re most afraid of, whether it’s illegal immigration or forced conformity or losing your mind or disease or death itself, we have a zombie for that. They are blank slates upon which authors and readers alike project their fears. To anybody curious about zombies being used in this way, I recommend checking out the first and second volumes of John Joseph Adams’ The Living Dead, John Skipp’s anthology, Zombies, and Christopher Golden’s anthology, The New Dead. Between those four books, a reader should be able to get a great perspective on the metaphorical potential of the zombie. You may also pick up a few new favorite writers in the process.

You were short listed for the Stoker in four categories this year: novel, long fiction (novella), short fiction and as editor of Dead Set: A Zombie Anthology. Which type of work do you enjoy most? Which would you most want to be remembered for?

Wow, that’s a hard one to answer. I think short stories give me the greatest joy while I’m writing them, but there’s no feeling in the world like typing that last line of a novel. For a moment, you ride this tremendous high. It’s disbelieving joy. It’s shock. There’s even the beginnings of the inevitable ennui that always follows a completed manuscript. But right when you hit the last keystroke, that moment, it’s glorious. You look at the page in stunned silence and try to drink in the fact that the book is done. So I guess I’d have to grudgingly say that the novel is my favorite venue. As for what I’d like to be remembered for…well, I’d be tickled pink just to be remembered.

In addition to horror, you also write crime fiction. Gutter Books released your hard-boiled crime novel Dodging Bullets late last year. First, tell us a little about the book, then tell us whether would you prefer to be considered a crime writer who also does horror or a horror writer who also does crime.

Dodging Bullets is special to me, not because it’s my first novel-length crime story, but because of where it takes place and the time of my life it captures. I went to college at Trinity University, here in San Antonio, and those years were some of the best I’ve ever known. Trinity is located on the outskirts of a very old neighborhood known as Monte Vista. The homes there are predominantly Craftsman-style bungalows, but with a few glorious Queen Anne and Victorian era mansions mixed in. Many of those homes have since been converted to apartments, and for a young man looking for adventure, and open to new experiences, it was a paradise. I remember nights there, walking down the streets, the cool night breezes blowing through the magnolia trees, hearing the soothing notes of Van Morrison’s Moondance, or Pink Floyd, or Bob Dylan, coming from the upstairs apartments. Inevitably, those walks ended up in those upstairs apartments, where the conversation lasted deep into the night. I imagine New York’s Greenwich Village was a lot like that, back in the day.

Needless to say, those days left an indelible impression on me, and the novel’s female lead lives the life I remember living. Her boyfriend, Peter “Peto” Hurst, is a different story. His life is based on my later experiences as a San Antonio police officer. It’s an odd experience, looking at your neighborhood as a cop. When I first broke out of the Academy, and was still doing my training rides with a more experienced officer, I was assigned to work the same area where I once lived the carefree life of a college student. For the first time, I was entering those upstairs apartments to answer calls for family disturbances and burglaries and all manner of cases. It was very much a through-the-looking-glass type experience. And Peto Hurst grew out of that. His relationship with his wealthy Trinity girlfriend, Shannon Dupree, was based on the collision of my memory with my present circumstance. The crime that destroys them is really incidental to that collision. What matters in that story is intensely personal, and perhaps invisible to the reader. I think the most satisfying stories, to the tellers at least, are like that.

The second part of your question is equally hard to answer, but I think I can do it in a lot less space. Horror is my first love. When people ask me what kind of books I write, I always tell them horror. That said, most of my horror stories contain a significant police procedural element. I think that focus will remain with me for a long while still. It may never go away, in fact.

What’s next for Joe McKinney? Any projects in the pipeline?

Well, this year is going to see several major releases, with April being the busiest month. I’ve got the third book in my Dead World series, Flesh Eaters, coming out on the first. Then, later in the month I’ll be traveling to Austin for the World Horror Convention, where I’ll be sitting on a few panels and launching my next novel, The Red Empire. The month after that I’ll be launching an anthology of abandoned building stories I edited with Mark Onspaugh. Late in the summer I have a fourth book, Lost Girl of the Lake, coming out. I co-wrote that one with Michael McCarthy. And then, late in the year, probably around November or December, I’ll be turning in the manuscript for the fourth, and probably final, book in the Dead World series, called The Zombie King. In between, I’ll be publishing short stories in a variety of anthologies, ranging from Bigfoot to zombies to post-apocalyptic tales. It’s shaping up to be a pretty good year.

Get ready to laugh until your face hurts, because this Friday night, September 17 at 10:00 PM, the Overtime Theater is having their monthly screening of Mystery Science Theater 3000. Sure you may have seen all of these shows when the were originally broadcast back from 1988 to 1999, but [Read it all...]]]>

MST@OT featuring "Zombie Nightmare"

Get ready to laugh until your face hurts, because this Friday night, September 17 at 10:00 PM, the Overtime Theater is having their monthly screening of Mystery Science Theater 3000. Sure you may have seen all of these shows when the were originally broadcast back from 1988 to 1999, but there is nothing like busting a gut to one of these features with sixty of your most charming pals!

Image via Wikipedia

This month’s feature is Zombie Nightmare, a 1986 straight-to-video film starring Adam West and marking the film debut of Tia Carrere. You’ll also find Motorhead’s classic track Ace of Spaces in the opening credits along with more music by Girlschool, Pantera, Fist and Thor.

‘Nuff said. Be there! The Overtime Theater, in the Blue Star Complex, 1414 S. Alamo, #103, San Antonio, TX 78210. Admission is FREE, but donations are appreciated. And you can BYOB.

You can keep up with upcoming MST3K showings on the MST@OT Blog.

As if writing historical thrillers, urban fantasy, comics and zombie stories hasn’t kept San Antonio’s DAVID LISS busy enough, he’s also kept his schedule full of local appearances. Check it out.

Wednesday, Feb. 16 at  7 p.m.:  David will be reading his aforementioned zombie short story, “What Masie Knew,” the same day as its [Read it all...]]]>

THE NEW DEAD: Chock full of gut munching AND David Liss.

As if writing historical thrillers, urban fantasy, comics and zombie stories hasn’t kept San Antonio’s DAVID LISS busy enough, he’s also kept his schedule full of local appearances. Check it out.

Wednesday, Feb. 16 at  7 p.m.:  David will be reading his aforementioned zombie short story, “What Masie Knew,” the same day as its released in Christopher Golden’s THE NEW DEAD anthology.  The reading will take place at Barnes & Noble La Cantera, 15900 La Cantera Parkway. 

Thursday, Feb. 18 at 7 p.m.: David and San Antonio author Andrew Porter will appear together as part of the GEMINI INK AUTOGRAPH SERIES.  Again, he’ll likely be reading from his zombie story (“just to be difficult,” according to his blog).  It will take place at Trinity University’s Chapman Graduate Center Auditorium, 715 Stadium Dr.

Friday, Feb. 19 at 11:45 a.m.: Both authors also will appear at the Autograph Series’ COLLOQUIUM LUNCHEON, each doing an interview, a Q&A and a brief reading. No word whether zombies will be involved this time. The event will happen at  Pearl Studio, 312 Pearl Parkway, Bldg. 2. Unlike the other two events, it’s not free. Tickets are $50.

Thursday, March 4 at 7:30 p.m.: David is speaking to the SAN ANTONIO WRITERS GUILD about the research that goes into writing a novel. The meeting is free, open to the public and takes place at Bethany Congregational Church, 500 Pilgrim Drive.

Wednesday, March 10 at 11 a.m.: And, finally, for those of you living outside the Loop, David will be appearing at the Bulverde Library BOOK AND AUTHOR LUNCHEON.  San Antonio Express-News columnist Cary Clack will emcee the event, held at 131 Bulverde Crossing in Bulverde. Tickets are $50.

Aspiring horror writers take note. San Antonio zombie maestro JOE MCKINNEY will be teaching  a one-day seminar at GEMINI INK on writing modern horror.

The session is Saturday, April 10, noon to 5 p.m., and registration deadline is Wednesday, April 7. We know the deadline’s a few months away, but it doesn’t hurt to register early since the [Read it all...]]]>

Joe McKinney

Aspiring horror writers take note. San Antonio zombie maestro JOE MCKINNEY will be teaching  a one-day seminar at GEMINI INK on writing modern horror.

The session is Saturday, April 10, noon to 5 p.m., and registration deadline is Wednesday, April 7. We know the deadline’s a few months away, but it doesn’t hurt to register early since the class is limited to 12 participants.

Pricing info on the session will be forthcoming.

Joe, an SAPD homicide detective by day, is an engaging speaker, and we can only imagine that he’ll do a bloody good job explaining how to scare the pants off readers.

If you want a preview of how he handles himself in front of a group, check him out at Gemini Ink’s First Thursday Reading series with DAVID LISS on January 7 at 6:30 p.m. Location is TBA.

More big news on the zombie front!

SAPD Detective and zombie-fiction writer JOE MCKINNEY has scored a three-book deal with Kensington’s PINNACLE BOOKS line, bringing his trilogy about the zombie takeover of the Alamo City to bookstores everywhere.