Blógünder Schlock

Pre-orders for Schlock Mercenary: Under New Management will close on May 5th, 2006. That’s this Friday. We will not re-open for regular orders until after all pre-orders have shipped.

The books should be arriving on my doorstep May 10th, at which point I have roughly 250 sketches to sketch and 1500 autographs to auto… graph? Whatever. We’re planning to ship the books beginning on May 13th, which means they’ll start arriving at your doorsteps a couple of days later.

If there are delays, I’ll announce them here.

Remember — only pre-ordered books will be autographed. When regular ordering opens back up (hopefully by May 20th), the books you get will be unmarked by my pen. Yes, it’s possible that this will actually increase their value.

I’ve been too busy to post my own photos of the event, but fortunately others have posted theirs.
Check out Combat Camera Studios first — it’s a nice, two-page gallery with some commentary (it looks best in IE, but that may change now that I’ve pestered them about it.)

If you want more… well, head over to Flickr and check out all the photos that have a “Penguicon 4″ tag, conveniently linked right here. There are 400 or more right now. There’s also a slideshow composed of stuff Matt Arnold uploaded. (They can’t be all his pictures though, because he’s in more than a few of them.)

And now I need to quit reminiscing and get back to work. Books arrive in two weeks, and I need to be ready for ‘em.

Brad Guigar, whose finger always seems to be on the pulse of these kinds of things, just linked to this article in the LA Times.

The upshot is that newspaper strips are too timid, and the art form is stagnating at least in part because editors lean towards pleasing legacy readers rather than attracting new ones. It’s a story that has been played out in countless industries over the last 200 years, and the outcome is fairly predictable.

Brad’s commentary cuts, as always, straight to the heart of the matter.

“So, in a way, people like me are indebted to the myopia of people like Ms. Joyce [president of the American Association of Sunday and Feature Editors].

You keep sending them, Ms. Joyce, and I’ll keep keeping them.”

Amen to that, Brad. I love newspaper comics for just that reason. Their pallor keeps me in business.

I’ve gotten a spate of “when are you coming this way?” questions. My convention schedule can be found at the bottom of the Schlock Mercenary front page. You can also find it here.

If you’re wondering what it takes to get me to your favorite convention, check out this page.

I now return you to your regularly scheduled web-surfing.

The day began with the disassembly of the Chaos Machine. I got a few pictures, and then began organizing the bins to quickly recieve parts. A few volunteers showed up, and the half-dozen of us had the machine completely disassembled and in its bins within about 90 minutes.

It always surprises me how fast it goes.

Packing it back into its boxes went fairly quickly, too. Steve Jackson recently created partitioned boxes, with labels and everything, so that once you’ve got things in their bins, it’s a simple matter to get them shipped. I was done with the Chaos and all checked out of my room by about 12:15pm.

I then headed to the Writers Workshop, where a couple of other artists and I were supposed to draw based on what was being read. It was an interesting exercise, but I was too tired to fully appreciate it. I believe the artists’ time could have been better used in a more straightforward “draw what we tell you to” session. Have the authors describe a character, and let one of the artists render it. With four artists and 12 authors there would have been no problem getting a drawing for everybody.

Of course, that assumes the artists WANTED a drawing. If what they wanted was a READING then I’m sure the panel worked fine.

At around 2:00pm a truly hardcore Schlocker showed up from Ohio. Trent checked into the convention after almost everything was gone just so he could pre-order a sketch edition. I took care of that, and I also gave him a Schlock sketch, and hooked him up with the gaming guys… I hope he had a good time.

The nice lady running Operations told me that on Saturday a Schlocker named Tim had come through, again, just for a sketch edition. He had gotten married on Friday, and was headed out on his honeymoon on Sunday. I checked my notes… yup, I got his order placed. But I feel a little guilty. Are there Schlock Mercenary Widows out there? Is this the beginning of a home-wrecking trend?

(Answer: No. Buy a book, and read it with your family.)

I was told that Michael Z. Williamson and Eric Raymond wanted to meet with me in the dealers room. I wandered in and got distracted… my friend Rob Balder was there hawking his (excellent) wares, so I chatted with him for a moment. Unbeknownst to me, a crowd was gathering behind me at Mike’s instigation. Suddenly I was surrounded by high-fidelity, low-quality gregorian chant.

Ahh-Ahh-Ahh-Ahh-Ommm-eee-nooooos

HUMMMMMMMMMMM

You got me, Mike. Nailed me, even. Thank you for that.

At some point early Sunday afternoon the Con Suite folks decided they had to dispose of the last of the Liquid Nitrogen, which was being used to make ice-cream. One bowlful was thrown into the hot-tub. The resulting nitrogen fog was so impressive they decided to throw the next bowlful (these are big bowls, holding at least 4 liters of LN) into the pool proper.

I got that on video. Maybe the Penguicon folks will share it with you, but that’s their call, not mine.

That’s pretty much it for the convention. Just before 4:00pm I hitched a ride to the airport and flew home exhausted. But happy, too. Exhausted and happy.

I checked on the Chaos Machine first thing in the morning, and it was cranking along merrily. A couple of guys had been working on it all night, and by the time I arrived it was all tuned up and running pretty much optimally. And that’s pretty much the LAST time it was so tidy.

After breakfast, Chaos-poking, and blogging (the “Day 1″ post), I took a 50-minute nap to tune myself up for the coming day.

I checked out the Dealer’s Room — it was tightly packed and very crowded. It looks as if this particular venue has less than enough space for the dealers, which is kind of sad since the atrium area is so perfect for the rest of the convention stuff. Anyway, while there I picked up Rob Balder’s newest book, and had a look at Michael Z. Williamson’s table full of sharp things (including some books I need to get).

My 1:00pm panel was fun — Rob, Eric, Ferret, and I talked about “success” as webcartoonists, both in terms of defining it and in terms of achieving it once you’ve figured out what “it” is.

At 2:00pm I talked hot peppers, hot sauces, and other hot-stuff with Eric Raymond and John Guest. Regaling people with hot-sauce anecdotes is always entertaining. At 3:00 we adjourned to the Con Suite where we had a hot-sauce tasting. My favorite was the 40,000-scoville-or-so “Pete’s” sauce from Australia… poured over a bit of Oaxaca chocolate bar. Close behind it… stuffed olives. They’d been stuffed with habanero. Yum, followed by BANG!

At 4:00 I took in the “Warfare in Science Fiction” panel. This was in “the Pit,” an open living-room type setting that seats about 30. The hotel made an absurd request: Don’t talk about Warfare in an open area. So the panelists rose to the challenge, and euphemistically discussed “Tea-Parties in Science Fiction” at euphemistic length. Starship Tea-Drinkers by Heinlein, Old Man’s Tea-Party by John Scalzi, A Hymn Before Tea by John Ringo… the lengths to which this eupemism were stretched defy logic.

It was hilarious and brilliant. And they managed to cover the material, even if there were a few disambiguation problems.

At 6:00pm Jay Maynard and I made chupaquesos in the Con Suite — the demonstration went well, and everybody enjoyed the eating part. Then I burned my hand on cheese grease. I got it into some ice water fairly quickly, but it still hurt a lot. Fortunately, Sal Sanfratello has a first-aid kit. He arrived within three minutes, slathered my hand with ointment, and wrapped it. As of this writing 13 hours later I have a blister on one knuckle, but no pain.

That’s the end of my scheduled activities for the evening. From 7:15pm until 1:30 am I poked the Chaos machine (which sprouted some very improbable towers and suspension bridges, none of which worked half so well as the stuff built on Friday), socialized, nibbled on treat-food, played with liquid Nitrogen, and basically “Con-puttered” myself into happy exhaustion. I won’t trouble you with a blow-by-blow. Suffice it to say that during all that time I was never bored.

I was fast asleep in bed by 2:00am. Tomorrow would come waaaay too fast, and getting everything packed and shipped promised to be a lot of work. I found out that I was to be scheduled for a 12:00 noon panel, too. Something about drawing stuff for the writers’ workshop.

The day (for me, anyway) began with Chaos. I got the machine unpacked, and marvelled at the brilliance of Steve Jackson, whose box construction is fantastic. The machine comes in 12 boxes, each of which has different components in it. Slowly but surely, packing list in hand, I got it unpacked.

I then enlisted the help of a couple of techies, Barry and Max, to get things going. By noon we had one functioning “run” with a trampoline-to-basket combination, and a chinese cymbal in the ball path. Aah, so sonorous. The machine makes NOISE now.

I then took my 4-gallon BYU Creamery bucket, cut a hole in the edge of the bottom, and announced to the group that I wanted a ball jump firing balls into the bucket. Rob Landley built an arch to carry the balls to the far edge of our space, others took care of laying the track, and by 3:00pm my challenge had been met — balls were being launched down a “ski-jump” style ramp, and fired into my bucket, where they made a nice, drumulous thump (inspiring my invention of the word “drumulous”) and then dropped out into a collector track.

At 4:30 PM I went to dinner with Sal and some friends from Aegis. Why is it that Red Robin only serves burgers that I cannot fit in my mouth? I don’t understand. They’re tasty, but very unwieldy, and that’s on a good day.

At 6:00pm I did my “Schlock Mercenary” panel. It was fun. It took me a few minutes to warm up, but the cozy crowd of 40 or 50 and I had a good time. I took a few pre-orders for sketch editions, and then headed back to the Chaos Machine.

It was Chaotic. The children had arrived. I wish there was a way to politely convince parents that the Chaos Machine is not a baby-sitter. I quickly realized that I needed to scare the children away before pieces got broken (Dr. Seuss was not an architect, and neither are certain members of his audience), so I announced that the machine would be taken offline for 30 minutes of scheduled maintenance. I then asked everyone to help clean up the various scattered bits of track.

You should see children flee the scene when a grown-up announces that it’s clean-up time.

One happy side-effect: we were able to expand the Chaos area a little bit, and I was able to get all of the loose pieces back into their bins… for a little while, anyway.

Following our “down-time” the adults returned in force, and a few children showed back up. These children had their parents in tow, and were well-behaved. Their parents went to work expanding the machine, and before long we had a second arch (the first had been filled in from beneath with chain-drives and track… the ski-jump now ran through a major cloverleaf intersection), loop-the-loops, and Chaos everywhere.

By 9:00pm I was ready for bed. I meandered about the convention, met Ken Burnsides from Ad Astra games, met folks I’ll be paneling with on Saturday, watched a team of special forces commandos get wiped out by a Canadian terrorists (I helped them change their battle-cry to “mon canard est en feu!”), and headed for my room.

The $18.00 set of sub-woofed Creative Labs speakers I brought for music in the Chaos area (and which we hadn’t needed, what with all the ambient noise already in that room) became my bed-time music system… except that the Firefly Room Party downstairs had no sound system to accompany their large projection screen. So I loaned them my speakers, and they gave me a Browncoat ribbon. Sal then loaned me a much smaller set of speakers which was just right for tuning out the noise of the Convention, which was still churning merrily away at 11:00pm when I finally found my way to my bed.

I know, I know, I went to bed early. It felt nice.

My flight to Detroit was very educational. I talked at length with the guy sitting next to me, who packed a Harley bag, and wore a Harley hat and a Harley shirt. We discussed Subchapter S incorporation, tax-sheltered retirement funding, and profit margins.

I thought my margins were pretty good. This guy buys industrial components from dismantled power plants at pennies on the dollar, refurbishes them with the help of his team of 20 or so machinists and engineers, and then sells them at about a 20% discount under new parts. Since they’re every bit as good as new, he does a bang-up business… for mega-dollar values of “bang-up.”

The best part, though, was how his attire totally skews any impression people get of him. He’s worth 8 figures, and he looks like a biker. Very down-to-earth.

So… Penguicon.

I got to the hotel and it took a little while to get squared away in a room. While I waited the truck with the pop showed up… and the cargo pallet of pop had broken free of its saran wrap and was canted sharply to one side in the truck. I jumped outside to help, and took charge of staging the pop from the pile, such that it wouldn’t tip any further.

This was not selfless. One of my incomplete tasks for the day was “excercise.” After slinging flats of pop around I was confident that could be checked off.

I met Steve Miller and Sharon Lee, Guests of Honor, and rode with them over to the Ground Round for the pre-convention dinner. It was very typically loud. I sat at the table with Steve, Sharon, Chris DiBona (the Tech Guest of Honor), The Ferret (blogger extraordinaire and webcomic writer), and several other interesting people. The party of 25 or so was squirreled away in a private room, and we had a great time.

My fajita platter was delicious. I’d neglected to eat anything beyond a bagel that day, so I had no trouble cleaning the plate. And then Aaron Thul, the Con Chair, went ahead and picked up my tab. Maybe he was saying thank you for my help with the pop. Maybe he’s just that kind of guy. Regardless, I ate well and am thankful.

Back at the hotel I hit the hot tub, and met a couple of guys who were at Penguicon last year. We talked, got thrown out of the pool area when it closed at 10:00pm, went to the dry sauna and talked some more, and then headed our separate ways when we realized we had all turned into steamed prunes.

And that was it for Thursday. I’m told that the Chaos Machine is sitting in secure storage awaiting my ministrations this morning… but first, breakfast, and maybe a nap. I’m going to need all the sleep I can get.

Scott Kurtz is running a week of guest strips over at PvP, and today (Friday, April 21st) is the day my piece is up.

Have a look. I hope you enjoy it.

–Howard “hah-hah, Pan-Pan is fat, hah-hah” Tayler

In 8th grade I read Ray Bradbury’s short story “A Sound of Thunder.” I loved it.

Last night I rented the big-screen adaptation and watched it with Sandra. It was nice to make fun of, but the punch of the original story was gone.

Also, the effects were very 1993. “Hey, we can make all these backgrounds and monsters and stuff on the computer!” Any scene with CG in it not only shouted “CG in this scene!” but also invited the viewer to play “how far back does the blue-screen begin” instead of watching the actors.

The “science” was your usual mish-mash of tech-fantasy garnished with unsupported plot devices.

In the original story the time-travellers return from the Jurassic to find that everybody is speaking a different language. One of the travellers finds a crushed butterfly on his boot. As I recall, the safari leader then kills him in anger, and the report of his weapon is described as “a sound of thunder.” End of story.

In the film version we have “time waves” in which the effects of the squashed butterfly (which we don’t find out about until the last 20 minutes of movie) propagate visually, moving across the landscape like tidal waves. They begin seeing plant growth throughout the city. Then come the bugs. Then the (admittedly very inventively constructed) velociraptor-baboons.

The heroine tells the hero that the changes are propagating beginning with the things that evolved first (plants, bugs) up to higher-order critters, and that the last things to evolve will be the last things to change. Humans, of course.

I’ve seen evolution misquoted and abused. There was that episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation where everybody got “devolved,” for instance. Oh, and there was this kid in a chat room years ago who insisted that black people evolved from a different species of monkey than white people did. By comparison, I supppose A Sound of Thunder merely insulted evolution, threw some poo at it monkey-style, and then moved on to depicting the now-supposedly-justified absurdity.

*sigh*

Final plot hole… it turns out that the reason it’s supposedly okay for them to shoot at an Allosaurus who has fallen into a tar pit is that the whole area is about to be obliterated by a volcanic eruption. They only have about five minutes from Allosaurus-in-tar to wall-of-burning-ash.

The volcano destroys everything… including, one might suspect, the butterfly.