The 2005 Nebula Awards Weekend starts today. This year Anne McCaffrey, best known for her Dragonriders of Pern series, will be inducted as a Grand Master. Until the awards are actually presented, it is semi-guarded information as to who has won for best novel, novella, novelette, short story, and script. The list of nominees alone is impressive. The Nebula is awarded for excellence in science fiction as voted on by the members of the Science Fiction Writers of America. It is more indicative of the respect of one’s colleagues than it is of general popularity. This means that winning a Hugo does not mean an author is going to win a Nebula and vice-versa, even though, in a general sense, they honor similar achievements.

The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy opens today. I keep telling myself don’t panic. I keep telling myself that Fight Club was a brilliant adaptation of a book people thought could not be made into a movie. Sin City was a terrific adaptation of a book no one thought could be made into a movie. Maybe Arthur Dent will take me places I want to go, although I always was partial to Zaphod. Oh, did I want to leave with Zaphod, in my younger days, whenever some guy at a con was boring me. He was from outer space and I wanted to see his spaceship. Although Martin Freeman looks more sitcom-ready than anything else in the promo photos, I’m going to wait until I see the movie to form a final opinion. When I see the actual flick, I may not find Mr. Beeblebrox all that appealing either. I just really feel like this was a book written to be a book and not a movie. I know I would be unemployed if producers felt that way about SF across the board, but I can’t help feeling just a little bit betrayed somehow that this got made.

My CFIDS tends to be worse in the summer time and this makes me more goth or at least more gloomy, so, as the long days of summer draw closer, let’s enjoy the Gothic Sluts free picture of the day every day. An excellent bookmark.

Kerry Conran is a writer/director who came to Hollywood via an unconventional route. He was an avid fan of 1930’s science fiction serials. As an animation student at CalArts, he started thinking about using modern animation techniques to do a new take on some of the traditional serials. Over a period of four years, utilizing the talents of friends and family, Conran put together a six minute short from the confines of his apartment. Marsha Oglesby, who executive produced The Rules of Attraction, was a friend of the family. She brought the project to Jon Avnet who incidentally I worship as the god that he is. Jon Avnet has producer credits on movies ranging from Mighty Ducks and George of the Jungle to Less Than Zero and Risky Business. So, instead of random people who stopped by his apartment, Kerry Conran ended up creating his fantasy project with talent including Angelina Jolie, Jude Law, and Gwyneth Paltrow. He even managed to make Giovanni Ribisi look pretty hot.

Kerry Conran says his favorite action movie of all time is the 1933 version of King Kong. If you watch the backgrounds carefully in Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, you will spot King Kong climbing in the distance.

The only wrinkle in the Sin City deal was that Frank Miller was to be given a co-director credit which Robert Rodriguez was fine with giving. The wrinkle part being that the Directors Guild blew a gasket and told Rodriguez he couldn’t do that. So, to his immense credit, Rodriguez kept his word to Miller and quit the DGA. This meant losing the director gig for the upcoming Barsoom movies to Kerry Conran of Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow fame. There is some debate in Hollywood as to which picture among Sin City or Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow or the kiddie version of Star Wars was the first truly digital feature film. This means it probably rankles to have a job such as John Carter of Mars being given to a director Rodriguez is obviously going to be compared to. Even when a creative person comes out ahead in a comparison, being compared is painful and bad for the creative process. An organization such as the DGA helps maintain standards for what directors should be paid and that is great, but a union of creative professionals can also be quite limiting. I’m guessing and hoping that Robert Rodriguez made excellent bank doing Sin City his way and I hope the DGA regretted missing their percentage for him no longer being a member.

The Teenage Kix blog uses erudite language to describe teener porno to entertaining effect. Teenage Kix had this to say about Sexy Fandom, “Something else struck me about the geek/porn interface, the excellent blog Sexy Fandom with Molly Case, which is the guide to all places where sex and genre fandom interlap, such as vampiric gothette porn and Star Trek cosplay smut. (Porn and Trek - why did it take the net so long to put these two things together!?). “

There is an interesting and I hope not apocryphal story about how Robert Rodriguez convinced comic book auteur Frank Miller to allow Sin City to be committed to the silver screen. Every few years, Hollywood goes on a rampage optioning comic books. Most are never made into movies and, those that are, are rarely made into good movies the comic book creators can feel good about. Frank Miller had long been known to be a hold-out on his Sin City property. So, when Robert Rodriguez came calling with tales of fabulous new digital techniques, Frank Miller was skeptical. So the maverick director invited Miller to come watch Rodriguez put together a short film based on a self-contained Sin City short story. It was a no-strings-attached deal where Miller would own the final short and could decide, based on the short’s quality, whether or not he wanted to ink a deal with Rodriguez. When Miller showed up, he saw that Rodriguez had Josh Hartnett playing the role of Sin City’s assassin known only as The Man. Needless to say, brilliant casting was only a small piece of the puzzle and everyone who saw the short was blown away and Miller and Rodriguez made a deal. The short became the beginning of the movie and Hartnett’s brief bookend appearance in the movie is delightfully chilling and shows that he has much much more range as an actor than some might have guessed.

The Hugo Awards are determined by the membership of each WorldCon, including both attending and supporting members. They are given to honor extraordinary works of science fiction which were published during the preceding year. Oddly enough, they are named after Hugo Gernsback who is largely forgotten by all but those most involved in fandom as a way of life. And of course writers who like receiving awards.

Hugo Gernsback founded the magazine Amazing Stories and is considered one of the fathers of both modern fandom as it exists socially and of modern science fiction magazine writing. Additionally, the man was a huge ham radio buff and also founded the Wireless Association of America. He held roughly eighty patents at the time of his death in 1967.

Last year, science fiction author Vernor Vinge won the Hugo award for his novella “The Cookie Monster” which was originally published by Analog Science Fiction & Fact. The magazine had a teaser for the story online at this link for some time and now has the more satisfying deal at this link in honor of the story being considered for a Nebula. Vernor Vinge was nominated for the Hugo for novels, not once, but twice in the mid-eighties, but he was beaten each time by William Gibson and Orson Scott Card respectively.

Blue Blood’s Amelia G wrote a humorously poignant ode to Cookie Monster for BlueBlood.net. She included some great barroom bet winner trivia and a surprisingly true expose of Sesame Street’s recent partnering with a health food company. For those of you who do not follow specialized pop culture trends with as much diligence as I do, Sesame Street recently made the decision to make Cookie Monster cut down on his cookie consumption and - I hesitate to say this - teach kids how to toss a salad with Cookie Monster.

As unusual as the subject matter is, this Cookie Monster article is one of the best pieces of writing we’ve seen from Amelia G in a long time. Her voice is so fresh and inspiring when she is passionate about her subject matter. I wish she would get back to writing fiction or accept the hook-up to write for television. Television writing is not nearly as soul-draining as many authors suspect and the paychecks are a bit of all right.

The Snark and Mayhem blog recently had this to say about Sexy Fandom, “Yes Virgina, somewhere, somehow, there is a fandom sex blog. I wish I was making this up. Although really, porn links aside, it’s a damn good blog.”

I meant to mention something about the toothing hoax perpetrated by Galker’s Gizmodo last week, but I was feeling too irritable about the forthcoming Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy movie. At any rate, bluetooth devices are able to detect other bluetooth devices within approximately a thirty foot radius. I believe this is primarily so that your cell phone’s new wireless headset can find your actual cell phone, although I am definitely not a bluetooth technology expert. You would expect that some of the people at Wired and the BBC would be technology experts, however, but, according to Fleshbot, they reported on the toothing phenomenon presumably based just on posts in Gizmodo. The idea was that someone with a bluetooth enabled device such as a cell phone or PDA could find other devices in the area and the owner could send a message saying “toothing?” and then they could use the tech to arrange sexual assignations with strangers. The only bummer for lonely people attempting to hook up this way was that the whole thing was like an out of control April Fools joke and the world is not actually packed with high tech hotties looking for speed sex. Which is pretty humorous from the right perspective.

I might have a preference for darker comic books aimed at adults, but there is always something to be said for an ass-kicking super heroine. Even more to be said for a super hero hottie in rubber. This sample bonus gallery from Rubber Dollies just has some of that sexy superhero appeal.

It is known from tomb paintings in Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamian civilisations that stuffed animals existed in those societies for religious purposes, and undoubtedly for human play as well. Human psychology has very strong links with anthropomorphism, and so it is almost certain that most cultures and societies in human history have used stuffed toys in the form of popular animals for childrens’ entertainment.

In medieval Europe, stuffed animals were often used in mystery plays to represent Biblical animals, such as the serpent in the Garden of Eden and the lions in the Book of Daniel. During the Industrial Revolution in Europe from c.1750 onwards, the toy industry became a significant source of profits amongst the rapidly expanding and increasingly young populations of European nations. During the nineteenth century, the concept of the stuffed animal (known as a cuddly toy in Britain) as an entertainment product took off, with commercial enterprises such as the Steiff company being established to produce childrens’ toys.

In the twentieth century, anthropomorphism became highly popular amongst urban communities, who were often isolated from contact with real animals and who subsequently assigned human characteristics to soft toys. The baby boom of the 1950s stimulated massive demand for stuffed toy animals in order to entertain babies and young children, whilst increasing appreciation of stuffed animals in adult culture led to the establishment of teddy bear collectors’ societies.

Soft toys remain very popular in human societies due to certain aspects of human psychology. Humans, like all mammals, are naturally predisposed to nurture their young, whilst humans’ domestication of increasing numbers of creatures has led to a subconscious need to nurture and protect young animals as well as human children. In modern industrial societies, humans living in urban environments are frequently isolated from contact with animals (except household pets) and so are able to anthropomorphise soft toys. Humans’ curiosity of the unknown and unfamiliar has led to a vast increase in the popularity of soft toys representing animals not indigenous to Europe, particularly exotic African animals such as elephants and parrots. (via Wikipedia)

A stuffed animal describes a toy animal stuffed with straw, beans, cotton, and other similar materials. Some stuffed animals are very old - home made cloth dolls stuffed with straw go back to at least the 1830s, perhaps much older.

Stuffed animals in the past were frequently produced by stuffing the evacuated skins of hunted animals. The phrase is still sometimes used to refer to examples of Taxidermy. However, with modern technology it is now possible to produce them with synthetic materials. For this reason, a plush toy or plushie may be a more appropriate name for a modern synthetic stuffed animal.

The first commercial concern to create stuffed toys is apparently the Steiff company that was founded in 1880 in Germany. In some parts of Germany, stuffed animals are informally referred to in German as Steiftiere, which derives from the name of that company; however, this is largely unknown to casual German speakers today because steif also means stiff, which is also why the word lost the second f.

One of the most popular types of stuffed animal is the teddy bear. Another is the sock monkey.

A popular commercial brand of stuffed animals is Ty Beanie Babies. (via Wikipedia)

Although there appear to be only about a dozen shoots of Naughty Nati on her site, they are really adorable shoots and you get access to buckets of other content as well. I am always a sucker for anyone who appreciates stuffed animals. You can check out Nati and her stuffed furry friend in this free sample gallery.

Science Fiction author Damon Knight died on April 15 in 2002. I am not a member of SFWA as the WGA is far better at negotiating anything I would be working on for the money, as opposed to for the joy of it. Still, Damon Knight’s importance to the science fiction genre and the fannish community is not to be overlooked.

Damon Knight (September 19, 1922-April 15, 2002) was a science fiction author, editor, and critic. His first story was published in 1941. He was a recipient of the Hugo Award, founder of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA), cofounder of the National Fantasy Fan Federation, cofounder of the Milford Writers’ Conference, and cofounder of the Clarion Writers Workshop. Knight lived in Eugene, Oregon; with his wife Kate Wilhelm. At that time of his first story, he was living in New York, and was a member of the Futurians. One of his short stories describes paranormal disruption of a science fiction fan group, and contains cameo appearances of various Futurians. The SFWA’s Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award for lifetime achievement was renamed in his honor. Formerly known as the Grand Master Award, Knight received that honor in 1994. (via Wikipedia)

A coronal mass ejection is a solar event which emits a burst of plasma (electrons and protons). On Earth, such ejections disrupt the magnetosphere and can deplete the ozone layer. As a CME impacts Earth’s magnetosphere, it compresses it on the day side and extends the nightside tail. When the magnetosphere’s lines reconnect on the nightside, this creates trillions of watts of power which is directed back towards earth’s upper atmosphere. CME’s, along with solar flares, can cause particularly strong polar aurora. These events can disrupt radio transmissions, cause power outages (blackouts) and damage satellites and electrical transmission lines. (via Wikipedia) I feel like there is a humorous metaphor about sexy human stars like the Blue Blood stars and coronal mass ejections. Unfortunately I am finding this humorous metaphor just out of my reach. If the one-liner comes to me, I will be sure to fill you all in on my coronal mass ejection joke.

Blue Blood’s Barely Evil has a sexy free picture of the day every day at this link and my but they have an eye for talent over there. [Fans self.] Not only do they have a great eye for who has what it takes, but no one can bring out that star quality like Amelia G and Forrest Black. Girls like Scar and Jax and Szandora just take my breath away. Even a girl like Keiko who seems very sweet on the Blue Blood boards ascends to a whole new level of stardom once she appears on Barely Evil. I liked how Keiko came across on Bookworm Bitches too, but the most recent pictures of Keiko for Barely Evil really show what Blue Blood brings to the table in terms of bringing out the inner star in their impressive talent roster.

The Descend from Grace blog likes Sexy Fandom. Author Janelle M. Jimenez listed amongst her five random thoughts for the day, “2 So, after getting myself into LJ discussions I really didn’t need to get involved with, I decided to start browsing random shit and came across this amusing website http://sexyfandom.com/archives/category/costuming/ This is just one of the categories in her blog, but it’s fantastic. Holy shit. There’s Star Trek porn cosplay! And…and….um, RenFaire Cosplay Porn too? Amazing. Girl in chain mail giving a dildo a blowjob, c’mon. It’s HOT. ;p”

Nice to know my, uh, research is going to good use and being appreciated. I found this mention doing a search for SexyFandom on MSN which is apparently a lot more on-topic than Google these days. It was nice to search for something on a search engine and find results which actually had to do with the search. I wish Google would fix whatever has been wrong with it recently. Anyway, this write-up in Descend from Grace really brought a smile to my face.

Yesterday morning Slashdot had a huge thread about how stressed geeks are about the new Hitchhikers movie and its apparent likelihood to suck. According to Slashdot, MJ Simpson, who has apparently been making a study of Douglas Adams for the last twenty years says “Hitchhiker’s fans, prepare to be like Marvin . . . very depressed.”

Goodness. I just saw a trailer for The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. You know the studio is worried that they cast a movie wrong when they don’t show you what any of the characters look like in the advertisements. I am always happy to see genre writers getting work, but I really hope this adaptation of one of my favorite books of all time will not have Douglas Adams spinning in his grave.

I scored as Lucielle. What Sin City character are you? Click this quiz link to find out. Apparently I am a lesbian parole officer who would get worked up if someone ate my hand in front of me cannibal style. But nothing a good cry couldn’t fix.

If you thought you read that book cover and it said something freakish like Dungeons and Dragons for Dummies, your mind is not playing tricks on you. Yes, there is now a Dummies book for people who want to play D&D, but do not have who to teach them and can’t handle reading a bunch of books about it. I always thought half the fun was supposed to be reading the Monster Manual and fantasizing about what you would do if you ever had a friend who could DM who threw that creature at you. The convenience of the modern world now makes it so that you don’t need to go through all those time-wasting hours of fun and can get right to the nitty gritty nuts and bolts of how to be a gamer. It even comes with pregenerated characters so the reader is not confronted with any pesky challenges to his or her imagination.

Star Wars fanatical fans tend to be very very committed. They are so into their fandom focus that they can remain committed no matter how bad the Star Wars movies get. The original Star Wars was so important to cinema and culture that it seems inconceivable that Jar Jar Binks and that horrible cutesy little child could have been injected into the franchise. Nonetheless Star Wars fans will queue up months in advance of a screening. This time around, they are lining up outside Grauman’s Chinese Theatre where many movies premiere and open in Los Angeles. The studio told Variety that it does not intend to open there but at the newer state of the art Arclight a few blocks away. Star Wars fanatics don’t all believe this and swear that previous movies which did open at Mann’s were rumored to be opening elsewhere beforehand. And it would suck for them to see the movie on the second day it was out. (via CNN)

I would not have expected the web’s free encyclopedia to have an entry for the ficitonal setting for the movie Sin City, but it does.

Basin City, almost universally referred to by the nickname Sin City, is a fictional town in the American West, located somewhere in the desert, presumably in Nevada or California. It hardly ever rains, and the rain it does get is sparse. The Basin City Police are either lazy cowards or corrupt. The red-light-district “Old Town” is off-limits to police, and is home to the city’s whore population; it recently came under the control of the Twins. The rich and powerful of Basin City live in a suburb outside the city proper, a half an hour drive uphill.

Other locations of interest are Katie’s (where Nancy Callahan and Shellie work, and Marv and Dwight McCarthy hang out) and the Basin City Central Train Station, which has a direct connection to Phoenix. (via Wikipedia)

Bruce Willis was just as good as Hartigan in Sin City as I expected him to be. He makes such an excellent hardboiled good guy. I was uncomfortable with some of the themes of liking the very young in the wrong way, but still a hell of a movie. Good screen adaptations of comic books are so rare. Bruce Willis has a nude scene and appears to be in better shape than ever, but some things remained shrouded in mystery. You will have to watch Color of Night on insomniac television to see Hartigan full frontal nude. Color of Night was not nearly as violent as Sin City, but it wasn’t done in a comic book style either and was still pretty appalling.

If you are going to have the Fuckzilla robot around to deploy your sex toys, you will probably need something like The Predator. I can’t show you what that is on the end of The Predator here, but you can check it out at this link and it is most likely what you would expect from a gently thrusting automated tool. Its vital statistics are listed as:

Max RPM: 300 Horsepower: 1/5
Min Stroke: 1″ Max Stroke: 6″
Torque: 2 NM
Strengths: Fully configurable. Smooth operation and variable stroke.
Weaknesses: Could lack power in some situations.

I just noticed that searching for Sexy Fandom or SexyFandom does not bring up this site as a top result on Google any more. As you would expect, most of the things listed link to my little web magazine here, but it seems very odd. Any search engine gurus who want to email me and tell me what is wrong would be much appreciated. As I understood the technology, I thought search engines were supposed to help us find what we were looking for.

I showed the animation for this particular pleasure machine to my husband and the first thing it reminded him of was the movie Batteries Not Included. The idea of, err, Fuckzilla is that the robot will carry other sex machines around to actually do the dirty work.

Super Twink is on a mission to help guys in need get off. This site is unbelievably silly, but I actually do like the outrageous SuperTwink costume and I am rooting for him to win his battles with The Flash Fucker and The Rimmer. The actor who portrays Super Twink has an adorable punky glam thing going for him and you might genuinely enjoy this site if the thing missing from your universe has been ultraglam gay superhero porn.