Monday, April 30, 2012

2012 April Reading List

A Scanner Darkly by Philip K. Dick – I officially gave up on reading it. I couldn’t find the patience to watch the movie either. Stories about drug use for the heck of it just don’t interest me.

The New Space Opera by Gardner Dozois and Jonathan Strahan – This is actually weird, because up until reading this book I was convinced I liked space opera. Out of 17 stories, I can only say I really liked 2: Mary Rosenblum’s “Splinters of Glass” and Robert Silverberg’s “The Emperor and the Maula” (even if the last one was a retelling of Scheherazade’s story). 4/5 stars

Among Others by Jo Walton – So a damaged teenage girl who only talks about books and not just any kind of book but sci fi books! What more could you want? Well, while it is a great read and I’m glad I started the book during the weekend so I wouldn’t have to put it down, the story does has some flaws. At times, it feels like a reading list or a sci fi encyclopedia prior the 80’s and the girl being a big fan or Lord of the Rings and Zelazny surely doesn’t help. There are also moments when due to her insecurities it makes you wonder if the whole fairy business isn’t only in her head, but this is mainly because the fairy realm isn’t strongly enough represented. She talks a lot about the fairies, but we don’t see enough of them or if we do we don’t get a certain feeling of what they are and how their world is supposed to work. Another part of the story that could have used more focus is the twin sister, the accident and the mother, because we only get hints about their relationship and in the end the big bad villain turns out to be a pathetic evil witch wannabe. And one more thing, we have this girl who eats and breathe sci fi, but she sucks at math, loves Latin and is great at writing poetry. Not even once she doesn’t try to write prose other than retelling her boring days in her journal. How does that work? This being said, I don’t know if it deserves the Hugo as I haven’t read the other books, but it definitely deserves the nomination. 4/5 stars

Fingers and Other Fantastic Stories by Marian Coman – I was already familiar with two out of the four stories, but I was curious to see how they read in English. In Romanian, Coman’s voice has something special, or at least it does for me. Unfortunately, this doesn’t translates well in English. Even to me, who I am not a native English speaker, the language sounded odd in places and that’s a shame because his prose really is better than that. 4/5 stars

Mechanique: A Tale of the Circus Tresaulti by Genevieve Valentine – It’s certainly compelling, both the premises and the story telling. My only complaint is that, while we get deep inside the characters’ heads, I still couldn’t feel connected to any of them. I understood them, but I didn’t really cared what happened to them. Also, from a stylistic point of view, the short chapters combined with the many changes of POV and jumps in time back and forward were close to becoming annoying at some point. 4/5 stars

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak – I don’t care for World War and Nazi stories, but everyone made such a big fuss about this book that I thought I’d give it a try. Well, it’s not a gripping story, it was harder to return to it than to put it down and while there are some good parts, I found that the writer plays too much with the reader’s emotions just for the heck of it. Also, the book’s voice didn’t sit well with me, it drew me out of the story instead of pulling me in. 3/5 stars

The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon – This was my first encounter with Zafon’s work and I’m still not sure how I feel about it. The story starts well and the premise is an interesting one, but then creepiness and melodrama start to creep in (yes, I know it’s a bad choice of words, but this is how it feels) to the point of becoming something close to difficult to stomach or even believe. The characters are great, the setting even better, only the plot is too contrived for words. 3/5 stars

Leviathan Wakes by James S. A. Corey – I wasn’t amazed by the style, but the plot was great and it turned it into one of the most enjoyable reads in a long time. I strongly recommend it to all sci fi fans and I hope it wins all the awards available. 4/5 stars

Thursday, April 26, 2012

The Expendables 2 - Character Posters

They're here and they rock! The entire band of misfits had their mugshots plastered over The Expendables 2 black and white posters.

First, the main poster can be found on Facebook (don't miss the trailer on the official site!) and then we have:

Sylvester Stallone

Jason Statham

Jet Li

Dolph Lundgren

Randy Couture

Arnold Schwarzenegger

Bruce Willis

Jean Claude Van Damme

Chuck Norris

Liam Hemsworth

Yu Nan

Who's excited?! :D

Sunday, April 22, 2012

Muse - Unintended

Saturday, April 14, 2012

Venus Review in Dilematica

There's a nice review of "Venus – povestiri erotice science fiction" in issue no. 71 of Dilematica, including an even better review of my story "Adevarul din privire" in it, yay! Easter Bunny is here already. :)

Update: Here's a scan on Michael Haulica's blog.

Friday, April 13, 2012

Saturday, April 7, 2012

Interview on FanSF

Thanks a lot to the FanSF team for interviewing me this week.

So I guess the cat is out of the bag. Here's a recap of my plans for the upcoming future:
- short story collection of old and new material in collaboration with Millennium Books scheduled for the fall;
- apocalyptic novella translated into English and self-published online;
- vampire story *gasps* yes, because I've never written one and someone needs to save Vlad Tepes' reputation. *hehe*
- first part of a fantasy trilogy again meant for self-publishing.

Now cross your fingers for me so everything works as planned. :)

Update: The interview is mentioned in Galileo Online, who decided to dust off my debut story "Inghetul". I haven't read it in ages so now I wonder if I even recognize myself in that piece.

Sunday, April 1, 2012

Story: Wisdom Seeds


Still keeping close to this month's theme and partially inspired by a TVD promo set of pics, I present you:

Wisdom Seeds

2012 World Figure Skating Championships

26.03-1.04.2012
Nice, France

Full Results

Men

FPl.NameNationPointsSPFS
1Patrick CHAN

CAN
266.1111
2Daisuke TAKAHASHI

JPN
259.6633
3Yuzuru HANYU

JPN
251.0672
4Brian JOUBERT

FRA
244.5845
5Florent AMODIO

FRA
243.0364
6Michal BREZINA

CZE
239.5527
7Denis TEN

KAZ
229.7086
8Jeremy ABBOTT

USA
226.1998
9Javier FERNANDEZ

ESP
225.87514
10Samuel CONTESTI

ITA
224.89119


Ladies

FPl.NameNationPointsSPFS
1Carolina KOSTNER

ITA
189.9431
2Alena LEONOVA

RUS
184.2814
3Akiko SUZUKI

JPN
180.6852
4Ashley WAGNER

USA
176.7783
5Kanako MURAKAMI

JPN
175.4125
6Mao ASADA

JPN
164.5246
7Kexin ZHANG

CHN
157.5797
8Valentina MARCHEI

ITA
150.10119
9Ksenia MAKAROVA

RUS
149.48614
10Elene GEDEVANISHVILI

GEO
149.20715


Pairs

FPl.NameNationPointsSPFS
1Aliona SAVCHENKO / Robin SZOLKOWY

GER
201.4912
2Tatiana VOLOSOZHAR / Maxim TRANKOV

RUS
201.3881
3Narumi TAKAHASHI / Mervin TRAN

JPN
189.6933
4Qing PANG / Jian TONG

CHN
186.0526
5Meagan DUHAMEL / Eric RADFORD

CAN
185.4155
6Vera BAZAROVA / Yuri LARIONOV

RUS
183.6847
7Yuko KAVAGUTI / Alexander SMIRNOV

RUS
182.42114
8Caydee DENNEY / John COUGHLIN

USA
180.3778
9Wenjing SUI / Cong HAN

CHN
179.4469
10Mary Beth MARLEY / Rockne BRUBAKER

USA
170.901010


Ice Dance

FPl.NameNationPointsSDFD
1Tessa VIRTUE / Scott MOIR

CAN
182.6511
2Meryl DAVIS / Charlie WHITE

USA
178.6222
3Nathalie PECHALAT / Fabian BOURZAT

FRA
173.1833
4Kaitlyn WEAVER / Andrew POJE

CAN
166.6544
5Elena ILINYKH / Nikita KATSALAPOV

RUS
161.0055
6Anna CAPPELLINI / Luca LANOTTE

ITA
160.6266
7Ekaterina BOBROVA / Dmitri SOLOVIEV

RUS
150.7597
8Maia SHIBUTANI / Alex SHIBUTANI

USA
144.72711
9Ekaterina RIAZANOVA / Ilia TKACHENKO

RUS
144.43108
10Madison HUBBELL / Zachary DONOHUE

USA
143.95810