Here’s a quick movie review for you. When you’re stuck in an airplane seat in coach for 14 hours, spending 7 of them watching the Matrix trilogy straight through is surprisingly fun. Heresy to say this, I know, but those last two films hold up really well in that context. The Zion mecha-suits are still stupid, though.
While Howard is off in Australia I thought it would be appropriate to put up a blog post which applies to the rest of the world. You see we printed up a small supply of Plasma Cannon Safety Activity Books for GenCon and we did not sell them all. So now I have made them available in our store. These are print books on paper and supplies are limited, so get one before they run out.
If you are one of those folks who prefers to read electronically, we still have the Plasma Cannon Safety Activity Book available as a pdf download. All you have to do is make a donation of any size via paypal.
When you’re done paying, click “Return to the Tayler Corporation” and the thank you page will have a download link.
Not interested in coloring books? In the post book shipping clean up, we discovered some scratched and dented copies of Resident Mad Scientist. These books have been scuffed, bent, dented, or otherwise rendered unsellable as new. But we guarantee that no pages are torn or missing. You can find them in the clearance section of our store.
This should be enough to keep the rest of us busy while we wait with bated breath to find out whether Howard wins the Hugo on Sunday. If not, well, you can always go read the archive again. That’ll last you for days.
Howard is in Melbourne Australia this week and he hopes that any of you Schlockers who are Melbourne local will take time from your busy schedules to come and see him.
Schlock Meet & Greet
Thursday Sept 2, 2010
7-9 pm at Dragon Boat on the Yarra Restaurant
Cost: Whatever food or drink you order while there. No Aussiecon membership required.
Thanks to some local volunteers we have scheduled space at Dragon Boat on the Yarra restaurant for Schlockers to gather and dine together. As of this writing, the Facebook event page has ten confirmed guests. We’ve scheduled space for twice that number, so there is room for you. If there are too many attendees for the restaurant to seat at one table, Howard will be sure to circulate. He will also bring along his sharpie markers to sign objects and create sketches. Every time we host a Meet & Greet, we are impressed with what a kind, intelligent, and fun group Schlockers tend to be. So come meet your fellow Schlockers and make some new friends.
AussieCon Four, WorldCon in Melbourne Australia
September 2-6
Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre
Cost: AussieCon Membership required to attend the following events. Rates vary. Single day memberships available. Check the AussieCon website for details.
This is Howard’s panel & presentation schedule for AussieCon. When he is not participating in one of the listed events, you can find him in the dealer’s room at the Schlock Mercenary table. (See also Tayler Corporation tables) Howard will be happy to sell you copies of Schlock Mercenary books that have been pre-imported to Australia for you. He will also be glad to draw pictures in books that you have already purchased.
Thurs Sept 2
2-3 pm Howard The balancing act of Speculative Fiction and Comedy
Room 219 with Tee Morris, Richard Harland, Howard Tayler
Fri Sept 3
10-11 am Howard Reading
Room 207 with Ika Vanderkoeck
4-5 pm Howard panel: From Print to Pixels, paper comics to webcomics
Room 211 with Foz Meadows, Phil Foglio, Kaja Foglio, Howard Tayler
5-6 pm Howard panel: Military SF revisited
Room 217 with Toni Weisskopf, Howard Tayler, Jean Johnson
Sun Sept 5
11-12 am Howard signing Room 201
Mon Sept 6
10-11 am Howard Kaffeeklatsche Room 201
12-1 pm Howard panel: RPGs and storytelling
Room 211 with Will Elliot, Bob Kuhn, Howard Tayler, Jennifer Brozek
2-3 pm Howard panel: Forms of Government in Science Fiction
Room 213 with Will Elliot, Gail Carriger, Howard Tayler, Dave Freer
On a related note, I have to express my thanks to the many Australian Schlockers who inundated us with offers of help the moment we said that we would need some. I have spent lots of time corresponding with them in the last few weeks and can truly say that this trip will be a success because of their help. Thank you so much.
Brandon Sanderson handed me the Advance Reader Copy of The Way of Kings, and my first thought was that maybe they were doing ARCs in large-print editions only. My second thought was one of humble gratitude. I’m glad to have Brandon as a friend, yes, but I’m also very fortunate to be strong enough to lift this book.
I read the first line of the prologue and was instantly hooked.
I am going to bypass the actual review and cut straight to the pithy conclusions that humorists like to believe they are paid to jump to.
1) This 1000-page tome is the best argument you’ll have all year to get an e-reader, because you HAVE to have this book, but you might not be muscular enough to carry it around. I’ve been working out, so I’m okay.
2) If Brandon were my arch-nemesis, I would despair of ever stopping his rise to ultimate power, and then I would seek to become a minion. The Way of Kings is a work of such force that those who hate Brandon will be compelled to love him, and those who already love him will begin spontaneously giving birth to his children.
3) I briefly considered cancelling my trip to Australia just so I could attend the midnight launch party for this book. When literary historians declare August 31st, 2010 as the beginning of the Sandersonian Era I want to be able to say that I was at ground zero. I’m good with Photoshop, so I think I can fake it.
4) When Brandon practiced the book pitch on me back in 2008 I thought it was kind of small, and maybe not compelling enough. Today I realize that the difference between the book pitch and this book is like the difference between an acorn and a space elevator.
The Way of Kings, by Brandon Sanderson, is available for pre-order now, and hits the streets on Tuesday, August 31st, 2010. I cannot recommend it strongly enough.
The wait is over. There is now an ad-supported version of the Schlock Mercenary app for iPhone and iPad. If you’re one of the dead-sexy folks carrying an Apple device around, you can now be deadlier, sexier, and smarter than ever before at no charge.
This has the same basic feature set as the subscription app, with three key differences:
1) You don’t have to spend any money.
2) There are ads.
3) There is no 3-day read-ahead.
You still get all of the content that appears on the web — strips, footnotes, and blog posts — and you get the strips a full 1000 pixels wide instead of the 780px resolution seen on the web. Why the larger format? Because it looks completely awesome this way on the iPad, and it allows us to zoom panel-by-panel on the smaller screen of the iPhone.
You still have some questions, I know. Here is a FAQ:
Q: What about Android? Can’t Android users be deadly, sexy and smart? A: Of course you can. JUST NOT YET. Gary at Plus 14, Ltd., is working on an Android version right now. We don’t have a release date.
Q: Who is providing the ads? A: Google AdMob and Apple iAd, depending on whether you’re on iOS 3 or iOS 4.
Q: Are you making decent money on the ads? A: It’s been two days, and we have a whopping $1.75 to split between us. Our plans for wealth and world domination hinge upon you telling all your friends how cool this app is.
Q: Is the subscription app going away? A: No. We’ve heard from many of our subscribers, and they love going ad-free while supporting the cartoonist and the app developer. We still have ideas for fun subscription-only things, too.
Q: How hard is it to switch back and forth from the subscription version to the free version? A: It’s all handled in the same app. When your subscription expires, you’ll start seeing ads and you’ll not be able to read 3 days ahead. When you buy a subscription the ads vanish and you can see into the future.
Q: How much of the Schlock Mercenary archive is stored on my device? A: Only the strips you’ve read in the app. These have been pulled down from the server by the app. This cache can be flushed if you need the space for other stuff, but that means longer load times between comics if you go back to re-read.
Q: Why isn’t the whole archive downloaded at once, and kept on the device forever? A: Because Apple doesn’t allow apps larger than a certain size to be distributed via 3G, and the full archive would take this app to about 70 times Apple’s limit. Besides, with 700 megs of Schlock you wouldn’t have room for as much of your deadly, sexy, smart music.
This Week at the Keep: You can find me most afternoons and some evenings (esp. Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday) at Dragon's Keep. Come and watch me draw next month's comics!
Shop at Amazon via this link from Schlock Mercenary (or the box below), and Amazon gives Howard a cut of the profits at no charge to you -- no matter what you end up buying! We all win!
