You certainly don't wanna miss this link: Science Fiction and the City: Film Fest Update!

Lots of great pictures and a whole lotta links! Bldgblog is a "must read" anyway!

Black to the Future: "In this essay, Walter Mosley discusses the dearth of Black authors in the science fiction and the speculative genres, how these genres are uniquely suited to writers of color, and hope for the future."

The collection at del.icio.us / SciFi_Fantasy_Portal is growing.

Samuel R. Delaney-Links

Scans of a rare short story by Alan Moore

click here to find out

Sounds like someone is preparing a little special here.

"80s documentary hosted by Orson Welles. The end of the documentary looked into the then future: the 1990s and beyond."

Part 2 is here!

A drunken Orson Welles - The famous wine commercial

Watch your language!

A fake British documentary explores what would have happened if the South had won the Civil War.

Otherland just had it's grand new online-opening!

Also, co-owner Hannes Riffel has a new blog on his own!

boingboing: "Douglas Adams hosts his 1990 BBC documentary on hypertext, Hyperland, in which he talks about early hypertext efforts at the Media Lab, the state of the Xanadu project, the history of Vannevar bush, etc. It's quite funny, and almost entirely disconnected from the hypertext that actually took hold in the world: the Web."

Over at the phantastic Building Blog

"The novels of Jeff VanderMeer fall somewhere between science fiction, urban surrealism, dark fantasy, magical realism, and even horror comedy. VanderMeer's literary range becomes immediately apparent when you consider that he's been "a two-time winner (six-time finalist) of the World Fantasy Award, as well as a past finalist for the Hugo Award, the Philip K. Dick Award, the International Horror Guild Award, the British Fantasy Award, the Bram Stoker Award, and the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award."

In case you were wondering about that...

boingboing.net: "Slipstream may use metafictional techniques to estrange us from consensus reality, they may rewrite history, they may mash up different styles or genres. But that's the point, as we see it. Slipstream has no rules, it has only results."

Scifi.com: Award-winning authors James Patrick Kelly and John Kessel team up as editors to define a genre that ... well ... isn't

Anthology: Feeling Very Strange

Wow, check out this collection!

(directed by Mark Steensland, 80 min., TKO Productions)

If you think hardcore fans of science fiction tend to be an odd bunch, what does that say about the creators of the genre? In the case of cult favorite Philip K. Dick, best known for “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?”, the basis for “Blade Runner”, even his best friends would have to admit the man was at least a bit eccentric, if not a few sandwiches shy of a picnic. Dick’s fiction tended to center around questions of reality and identity, and the new documentary “The Gospel According to Philip K. Dick” makes it clear that these questions haunted the author himself until his death in 1982.

The bulk of “Gospel” is comprised of talking-head interviews with luminaries such as Robert Anton Wilson, author of the Illuminati trilogy, and Paul Williams, who interviewed Dick for a 1974 Rolling Stone profile that elevated the author’s reputation from the underground. These interviews are linked by animated interludes, featuring a cartoon Philip K. Dick mouthing to the writer’s actual voice, courtesy of audio clips from interview tapes made by Williams and others.

The portrait that emerges is as fascinating and unnerving as any of Dick’s fiction. We learn of a 1971 break-in at Dick’s house, during which valuable papers were apparently stolen from a safe that was blown open with explosives. Dick’s friends speculate that the safe may in fact have contained heroin, as Dick was basically hosting an open house for young druggies in the early 70’s and was quite taken with illegal narcotics himself.

There is an attempted suicide, and then the arrival of “the Xerox missive” - a letter Dick predicted would kill him. And most peculiar of all, a series of visions which consumed Dick for most of the last decade of his life, causing him to all but give up fiction in order to focus on his “Exegesis”, a 10,000+ page attempt at coming to terms with the meaning of life.

The friends who speak of Dick in the documentary are a curious bunch themselves, but they have in common a respect and affection for the late author that comes through in their stories, no matter how outlandish. The animated segments, as well as a pulsating sci-fi soundtrack, evoke a tone of paranoia that seems to mirror Dick’s worldview. “Gospel” is clearly a labor of love, designed to appeal to fans and novices alike. Its goal is summed up neatly in the title card that ends it: “Now go read some PKD.” - Scott Von Doviak (Film Threat)

Torrent (DivX AVI 535, 305 kb)

"There is relatively little respected academic work about a science of social prediction, but in the late 1940s to early 1950s science fiction authors Robert Heinlein and Isaac Asimov (who were often ahead of their time) wrote speculative stories about the concept, Heinlein referring to "social psychodynamics" (Heinlein 1941, 1953) and Asimov calling it "Psychohistory" (Asimov 1951, 1952, 1953). ("Psychohistory" has a more recent use that has nothing to do with social prediction.)"

Read on at kuro5hin

"Infinite Matrix was a webzine featuring new science fiction by major writers, reviews by respected critics, and essays by original thinkers. It was kind of monthly, kind of weekly, and kind of daily. It was published from August, 2001 to January, 2006. It revived temporarily in April 2006 for a single issue, due to zombie activity that may have been caused by the publisher's penchant for fugu sashimi."

"A ton of amazing stuff in those archives." (boingboing.net)

This looks like a great book:

This enormous volume is the first comprehensive encyclopedia of fantastic literature of the nineteenth century. From detective fiction to historical novels, from well-known authors like Jules Verne and H.G. Wells, to Russian newspaper serials and Chinese martial arts novels, THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF FANTASTIC VICTORIANA is a truly exhaustive look at every aspect of fantastic literature in the days of Queen Victoria. Readers of science fiction and fantasy will be surprised to find here the roots of genres thought to be strictly contemporary, and students of literature will be amazed at the breadth and scope of writings produced in the Victoriana era. This is an invaluable reference, and truly one-of-a-kind."

Written by Jess Nevins Introduction by Michael Moorcock

Via Warren Ellis

New Media Fiction brings together the pioneer short fiction podcasters. Experimenting from putting short-short fiction to novellas over their podcasts, these writers were the first to test the new medium for storytelling. podiobooks.com

Also: James P Kelly's "Burn" short sf novel podcast concludes More free sf-podcasts over here...