It is official. I will be appearing at Dragoncon this year as a guest. I just got my agreement in the mail.

Watch it. Love it. Go get it.

Ladies and gentlemen,

Steampunk Tales, the iPhone steampunk magazine, has gone live. I advise you all to check it out. It is full of goodness. It has ten stories of rocking excitement, adventure and mad science, including a piece by me: "The Mask of Tezcatlipoca".

You can find more details about Issue One here: http://www.steampunktales.com/issue_1.html

So go check it out and enjoy.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I have been quiet about this news until now, but I currently hold in my hand the countersigned copy of my agency agreement with Dystel & Goderich Literary Management (http://www.dystel.com). They have agreed to represent me for a Cities of Ether novel that I am presently working on, which I hope to have completed within a month or so. Wish me luck.

Anyway, that is the main news there.

In other news, I will be participating in the Fangoria fashion show on Friday, June 5th at the Javits Center in New York. More details on the flier here: http://pics.livejournal.com/beritnewyork/pic/0000akdq

More updates as they occur.

Also:

http://www.cracked.com/article_17019_5-real-life-soldiers-who-make-rambo-look-like-pussy.html

Granted, for some reason he's only number 5, but at the very least Simo Hayha is in very good company alongside the likes of "Mad Jack" Churchill.

http://www.cracked.com/article_17366_7-wtf-military-weapons-you-wont-believe-they-actually-built.html

Words cannot describe the magnificent insanity.

So, two new things.

First of all, I have a profile on the Model Mayhem site: http://www.modelmayhem.com/gdfalksen

Check it out, and see how silly I look.


Second, today I was in a bit of a car accident. The other fellow was at fault. I'm fine, and it looks like the insurance will take care of the damages. Still, it made me miss dancing and it shook me up a bit.

So... yah. Today's been an exciting day.

I have been told that I need to make a page on this: http://www.modelmayhem.com/

What is this? What does it do? Should I get one?

Please advise.

Ladies and gentlemen,

I will be present and in the Fangoria (http://www.fangocon.com) fashion show this summer in New York City. Be there! It will be amazing. I won't be amazing myself, but the fantastic models and designers will make up for it.

The details are as follows:

Friday June 5th from 9-10pm

The Jacob K. Javits Convention Center
655 West 34th Street
New York, NY 10001
http://www.javitscenter.com/

1. The Brother's Bloom (http://www.apple.com/trailers/summit/thebrothersbloom/)
This looks like a wonderful, fun vintage-style screwball comedy plus tongue in cheek heist film. I'm extremely happy that films with a vintage style are coming back, and the cast here looks fantastic.

2. District 9 (http://www.apple.com/trailers/sony_pictures/district9/)
Extreme realism sci-fi. I especially like the pseudo-documentary style of the trailer. I hope that the film itself will use that style and will do it well. The interview-style face pixelation at the end is a magnificent touch.


Special Mention:
3. Post Grad (http://www.apple.com/trailers/fox_searchlight/postgrad/)
Let me preface this by saying that I do not intend to see this film. If I did, I would probably not enjoy it in the slightest. But what makes it interesting is that it is a film that could only be made for this current generation. It is the story of a young woman who graduates college with the assumption that she will naturally get a great job and live a glamourous life; instead she fails to get the ideal position and instead of accepting a harder and less exciting home and occupation, she moves back in with her parents. This seems to be a frighteningly "normal" concept among my generation (that a person either lives "the life" or lives with their parents), and it makes this film extremely timely. I certainly wouldn't have expected to see something like this during the youth of the previous generation. However, my one big question is whether the film will treat the situation "sympathetically" (assuming that this is how life ought to be) or "objectively" (pointing out that there are far more options than "dream life" and "parents' basement"). I suspect I'll read a film summary when this comes out, but I doubt I'll watch it.

I am in desperate need of a white three-piece summer suit made out of some light material, like linen.

Does anyone know where I can get one, at an affordable rate and in my freakish size?

So, ladies and gentlemen,

Naturally, I usually keep my eyes peeled for anthologies to submit written work to, such as the Footprints anthology. But inevitably I sometimes don't know about an anthology while it's in its submissions phase. Does anyone out there know if any anthologies presently accepting submissions, or of posting boards that normally announce them? Having a larger pool of places to keep track of is always a good thing.

So, if you have spots you know of for this sort of thing, feel free to toss them my way. I will be extremely grateful.

The morning is a lie.

It is a figment of my imagination.

I deny its existence.

So, for those of you who love Richard Cheese's lounge-style rendering of modern songs, I must inform you of a gentleman I've just encountered: one Max Raabe, who does the same thing with a lovely swing jazz twist. For example, I give to you... the jazzy version of "Sex Bomb":

"Excuse me, would you care to come upstairs and see my library?"

For those of you looking for a good TV program to watch, I'd like to introduce you to the spy-fi classic "I Spy," starring Robert Culp and Bill Cosby. It is a wonderful, exciting, hip late 60s show with great acting and dialogue, fun plots, and an incredibly catchy intro. The chemistry between Culp and Cosby is fantastic and combined with the script it creates the sincere impression that the two characters really are two very experienced agents who are the best of friends.

I suppose the best way the describe the show is "like a buddy movie, but with spies."

I highly recommend it.

You can find a collection of the episodes here: http://www.hulu.com/videos/search?query=I+spy

So I was reflecting upon how different ears get fun little names to describe the particular style of themes in their fiction. Consider, for example the unique style of the Victorian scientific romances (and their later day cousins in steampunk fiction), or the characteristic styles of 20s-50s pulp. During the 1960s we have one of my favorites, the Cold War dominated "spy-fi", and the grim tech fiction of the 80s and part of the 90s is wonderfully personified in cyberpunk.

It occurred me to wonder what the "pop" fiction and sci-fi of the 2000s ought to be called. We've seen a major trend towards gritty realism and what I like to call "hard science made easy." CSI is probably the best example of this, where forensic science is made cool, hip, sexy, popular, etc., but this conceptual trend can be seen in other places as well. Consider the latest two Batman movies, which have sacrificed Batman's original comic book noir genre in favor of making it feel like CSI with super heroes. Similarly, consider the two most recent Bond films, which have moved away from the pulp-style of the earlier films and back to the gritty realism of the Bond books (although updating them appropriately to fit into the modern world).

What fun terms might we use to describe this genre?

1. Lab-fi
2. CSI-fi
3. Grit-fi
4. Real-fi
5. DNA-fi
6. Forensic-fi

As a closing note, given the recent habit of people trying to add the word "punk" to the end of everything (presumably to draw a tentative connection between it and cyberpunk), one could just as easily replace "fi" with "punk" and have the same result, and consequently I am coining "Labpunk" et al as well... but I think that adding punk to everything is very silly and potentially disrespectful to the punk subculture, so I don't intend to dwell on that too much.