Scribe Awards

Winners in bold type. Link via Lee Goldberg.

BEST GENERAL FICTION ORIGINAL

CSI NY: DELUGE by Stuart M. Kaminsky
**MR. MONK AND THE TWO ASSISTANTS by Lee Goldberg
MURDER SHE WROTE: PANNING FOR MURDER by Jessica Fletcher & Donald Bain
CRIMINAL MINDS: JUMP CUT by Max Allan Collins

BEST GENERAL FICTION ADAPTED

**AMERICAN GANGSTER by Max Allan Collins

BEST SPECULATIVE ORIGINAL

LAST DAYS OF KRYPTON by Kevin J. Anderson
**STARGATE ATLANTIS: CASUALTIES OF WAR by Elizabeth Christensen
STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION - Q&A by Keith R.A. DeCandido

BEST GAME-RELATED ORIGINAL (SPECIAL SCRIBE AWARD)

HITMAN: ENEMY WITHIN by William C. Dietz
FORGE OF THE MINDSLAYERS by Tim Waggoner
**EBERRON: NIGHT OF THE LONG SHADOWS by Paul Crilley

BEST SPECULATIVE ADAPTED

RESIDENT EVIL: EXTINCTION by Keith R.A. DeCandido
52: THE NOVEL by Greg Cox
**30 DAYS OF NIGHT by Tim Lebbon

BEST YOUNG ADULT ORIGINAL

BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER: THE DEATHLESS by Keith R.A. DeCandido
GOODLUND TRILOGY: VOLUME THREE: WARRIORS BONES by Stephen D. Sullivan
**NANCY DREW AND THE CLUE CREW #10: TICKET TROUBLE by Stacia Deutsch & Rhody Cohon

BEST YOUNG ADULT ADAPTED

**THE 12 DOGS OF CHRISTMAS by Steven Paul Leiva

Parker Goes Graphic

It's all on the Dark Forces blog.

Once Again, Texas Leads the Way

Houston lands $43 million in federal security grants | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle: "WASHINGTON — The Houston area on Friday won more than $43 million in federal assistance to help deal with potential terrorist attacks and natural disasters such as hurricanes — a whopping 72 percent increase over the year before.

'I think (the Department of Homeland Security) recognizes that Houston could be a major target,' said Dennis Storemski, director of Mayor Bill White's Office of Public Safety and Homeland Security. 'You have chemical plants that could be used as a weapon of mass destruction.'"

New Songs on the Jukebox

In honor of today's trailer, I've added a couple of Jimmy Clanton songs to the jukebox.

Let's Make Joe Lansdale a Best-Selling Author

Yeah, yeah, I know. He already is. But let's do it again. Buy your copy of Leather Maiden from Amazon or B&N on August 5, and make him #1! Failing that, show up at Murder by the Book on August 20, where you can get a signed copy and hear Kasey Lansdale and her band. What a deal!

Go, Johnny, Go

Once Again, Texas Leads the Way

Freeport man busted for licking cop's face | TOP STORIES | KHOU.com | News for Houston, Texas: "FREEPORT, Texas -- A Freeport police officer took a licking this week -- literally.

A suspect was charged with felony assault of a public servant after allegedly licking Sgt. Jay Newton on the face early Wednesday."

BigDog

Boston Dynamics: The Leader in Lifelike Human Simulation: "The Most Advanced Quadruped Robot on Earth
BigDog is the alpha male of the Boston Dynamics family of robots. It is a quadruped robot that walks, runs, and climbs on rough terrain and carries heavy loads. BigDog is powered by a gasoline engine that drives a hydraulic actuation system. BigDog's legs are articulated like an animal’s, and have compliant elements that absorb shock and recycle energy from one step to the next. BigDog is the size of a large dog or small mule, measuring 1 meter long, 0.7 meters tall and 75 kg weight."

I recommend the video at the link. Hat tip to jj solari.

I'll Bet The Aggies Are Laughing Already

Burnt popcorn prompts evacuation at UT dorm - KHOU Weird World Blog: "An entire campus dormitory was evacuated overnight Thursday after residents reported a strong odor wafting from the fourth floor.

They were unable to identify the smell, so emergency officials evacuated all 200 people inside as hazmat crews investigated, KVUE-TV reports.

That's when they discovered the devious -- but delicious -- culprit.

But it gets even better. About 45 people complained of respiratory problems as a result of the popcorn smell."

Great Opening Sentences From Science Fiction

Opening Sentences: Great Opening Sentences From Science Fiction: "You can tell a lot about a science fiction book from its first sentence."

Check 'em out. Thanks to Gerard Saylor for the link.

Once Again, Texas Leads the Way (Hooters Edition)

Thanks to Jeff Meyerson for the link.

Boy exits child care, goes to Hooters | Denton Record-Chronicle | News for Denton County, Texas | Local News: "A 5-year-old boy slipped out of the Imagination Station child care center unnoticed Tuesday afternoon, crossed two busy streets and wandered to a restaurant on the Interstate 35E service road in 100-degree heat.

Employees of Hooters found the child safe about 5:20 p.m. He left the child care center in the 2300 block of San Jacinto Boulevard, crossed the Interstate 35E northbound service road and Dallas Drive, bought a soft drink at a service station and walked to Hooters, where an employee found him in the parking lot and called police."

Gator Update (Molestation of a Gator Edition)

The Ledger: "Three South Florida men were arrested on July 12 for feeding gators in the Everglades.

The trio happened to be airboat captains feeding the gators to impress tourists they were showing around the Glades.
[. . . . ]
Two of the men - from Fort Lauderdale and Hialeah - were charged with feeding alligators, and the third man from Fort Lauderdale was charged with molesting a gator."

Forgotten Books: ASSAULT ON MING -- Alan Caillou

Alan Caillou had quite a career, not just as a writer but as a soldier, spy, actor, and writer. My favorite among his works was the Assault series, six books published by Avon in the late 1960s. Their protagonist is Cabot Cain, a genius who knows all about everything (he teaches at Stanford, among other places); stands 6 feet, seven inches tall; speaks just about any language you can think of; is quite the world traveler; and is (of course) irresistible to women.



All the books have exotic settings, and Caillou was expert in conveying the local color. The descriptions are so vivid and so crammed with specific details that it's hard for me to imagine that he wasn't sitting in Macao when he wrote Assault on Ming (which was nominated for an Edgar for best paperback).



Also, all the books are propelled by Cain's energetic first-person narration. In Ming, he's hired to find the missing daughter of a wealthy man. So far, nothing new. In fact, there's really nothing new in the book, but it's the execution that's fun. Cain doesn't just know everything. At times he's compelled to share. Working his way though a tunnel, he encounters an iron grille:



The heavy bars were welded at the cross-joints and cemented at the right-angled corners into the granite in which the vents had been cut. . . . It looked as though the cement were Portland, and the fresh waters on the coast here are heavily alkalai -- a bad combination; they should have used Portland-Pozzolana, which would have given better adhesion.



But it's the next paragraph I like best. I won't quote it, but in it Cain describes how he's going to pry the bars loose with an anchor. He gives the angle at the fulcrum, the cooefficient of shrinkage in the cement (0.0765), the pressure required at the end of the lever both with and without taking into account the curve of the bill, and more. There's stuff like this in all the books, and I found it great fun.



Caillou died only a couple of years ago, but I suspect very few fans of adventure fiction remember him at all. That's a shame, because he did several other entertaining series. Check 'em out.

Untamed Youth

Gojira!

Scientists recover complete dinosaur skeleton: "TOKYO (AP) - Japanese and Mongolian scientists have successfully recovered the complete skeleton of a 70-million-year-old young dinosaur, a nature museum announced Thursday.

The scientists uncovered a Tarbosaurus—related to the giant carnivorous Tyrannosaurus—from a chunk of sandstone they dug up in August, 2006 in the Gobi Desert in Mongolia, said Takuji Yokoyama, a spokesman for the Hayashibara Museum of Natural Sciences, a co-organizer of the joint research project.

'We were so lucky to have found remains that turned out to be a complete set of all the important parts,' he said."

The Balcony Is Closed

Roger Ebert remembers.

Once Again, Texas Leads the Way

Sticky Obama issue with McKains brings Sugar Land cops | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle: "SUGAR LAND — In case their Plantation Bend neighbors had any questions about how Doug and Wendy McKain feel about Barack Obama, the bumper sticker on their pickup could be a clue.

But when Chynethia Gragg spotted the sticker — depicting someone urinating on the name 'Obama' — Sugar Land police say, she stopped to express her disapproval, and that's when things got ugly."

Uh-Oh

MTV readies 'Rocky Horror' redux - Entertainment News, Film News, Media - Variety: "MTV is doing the time warp on a remake of 1975 cult classic 'The Rocky Horror Picture Show.'

Lou Adler, exec producer of the original film, is partnering with BermanBraun and Fox Television Studios on the new rendition.

Two-hour remake will use the original screenplay by Jim Sharman and Richard O'Brien but may also include music not featured in the original."

UFO Update

Thanks to Jeff Meyerson for the link.

Moon-walker claims alien contact cover-up | NEWS.com.au: "FORMER NASA astronaut and moon-walker Dr Edgar Mitchell - a veteran of the Apollo 14 mission - has stunningly claimed aliens exist.
And he says extra-terrestrials have visited Earth on several occasions - but the alien contact has been repeatedly covered up by governments for six decades.

Dr Mitchell, 77, said during a radio interview that sources at the space agency who had had contact with aliens described the beings as 'little people who look strange to us.'"

TV Alert

2:00 PM (Eastern) Kiss Me Deadly (1955)
Detective Mike Hammer fights to solve the murder of a beautiful hitchhiker with a mysterious connection to the Mob. Cast: Ralph Meeker, Cloris Leachman, Albert Dekker. Dir: Robert Aldrich. BW-106 mins, TV-PG, Letterbox Format

That's TCM, Turner Classic Movies.

Thanks to Doc Quatermass for the tip.