Flash Fiction Contest Final Week and see HENRi!

How are those flash stories shaping up? Tuesday, the 26th is the last day to get your entries in. Then the judging will be another two weeks. I'm anxious to see all of your great stories. I'm also very thankful that I won't have to judge them. Micah Joel will get them sans author names to give all of you an equal shot with no bias. I've long since stopped judging these things as I know too many of the people submitting entries. Fair is fair. See the last post for all the particulars and my story to set the mood.

I started another story on Saturday that will break the bonds of the flash limit. Though I didn't start out with that in mind, it will be the perfect prequel to one of my previous elephant stories. I'm back on my elephant kick.

I just watched a Kickstarter-funded short that won the Best Short at the New York Philip K. Dick Film Festival, Toronto After Dark Film Festival, and Maelstrom International Film Festival. HENRi reminded me of 2001, A Space Odyssey, David Brin's Practice Effect and Asimov's robot series. All good things.

A spaceship lives on after its crew have died. It has evolved and is lonely and craves human interaction. In an attempt to fill that need, it builds a robot to interact with, which, of course, is also "it", an extension of itself. The addition of the human brain that the ship has managed to preserve is a bit hokey, but they're not going for scientific authenticity here. It's a campy send-up to those flicks from the 70s and 80s that romanticized robots. For an Indie short, the special effects (a mixture of quarter-scale miniatures, retro in-camera effects, and computer animation) are, well, most effective. The music is decent, too. You can rent it for $1.99 or buy it for $2.99 and see what you think. I love it when I can promote a good Indie film and this one was superb. There is also a "making of" film available.

Dr. Calvin, the ship's dying captain (in a memory of the robot's), is played by Margot Kidder (Superman 1978). A human could not survive such solitude. The real question is, can a sentient robot fare any better? A robot can't even sleep part of the time. It is a rather tragic flick, but very well done. The cinematic shots and music make you care about the robot's heartache - believe that a robot can suffer from such a thing.

Here's the trailer:

HENRi from Eli Sasich on Vimeo.

UFOs behind the perception filter, SFOO growing

The National Press Club held a news conference Monday on eyewitness accounts of UFO activity around nuclear missile sites.

My husband sent me a NPC link, which had no links to the conference, so I googled for it. This was the next day, and I found nothing. How weird is that? Admittedly, I was busy and didn't persist for long, but it should have been at the top of the heap. I'm not one for conspiracy theories and I don't spend a lot of time thinking about UFOs or the possibility of intelligent life out there among the stars. Or hovering over our planet. And I'm a sci-fi writer!

Why did the press conference get buried? Why don't we think about UFOs more?

I have a theory. First of all, if all the eye witness testimony is false, if there really are no ETs, well, wouldn't we look stupid for being taken in by another hoax? We hate being duped. On the other hand, if they're real, what then? What can we possibly do about it? What defense could we possibly have that could compete with an intelligent species that has achieved space travel and is able to observe us for so long without interference? If they're hostile, it's just all over. It's just too scary. We don't like feeling vulnerable. It's like the perception filter on Dr. Who. Our eyes slide away. We can't see the evidence in front of us. We don't want to.

If they're not hostile, well, we can try to find them and communicate with them. But who represents our world? What do we say? As Robert Hastings pointed out in the conference, they may not want to interfere. Maybe they have something akin to the prime directive. Maybe we're just being observed by scientists as interesting specimens for study.

The former USAF officers and other professionals delivering testimony in the news conference believe that these extraterrestrials, or perhaps people from another dimension, may be sending us a warning to steer clear of nuclear weapons. That other dimension theory is interesting. What about from another time? Could it be humans from our future in which we have to flee our planet after destroying it with nukes?

SFGate has a lot of links, including a video of the press conference. I highly recommend watching it. You can also check out UFO Digest's report.

In the advances in science column, imagine paralyzed limbs able to move again because of light! Check out Light stimulation could restore movement to paralyzed limbs over at Gizmag. And NASA is working on a new launch system.

My review of Android Karenina is now available at Mostly Fiction.

I wrote a flash memoir (using my way-back machine) for our local YWCA's Changing Hurt to Hope program and will be reading it on one to three Fridays in October. Writing that piece was hard, but healing. It's only three pages, but it felt like thirty. My hope is that it will help someone else still struggling in the cycle of abuse. October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month.

Science Fiction and Other ODDysseys is climbing in ranking all the time. I'm currently interviewing staff bloggers to help me keep the content going. One feature I will be introducing is small press and self-published sf book reviews. We're talking slush pile here. But if I have reviewers wading through the slush, they're bound to find a gem or two. I would also like to have Indie and feature film reviews. Since both hold their screenings and premieres in NY, LA and generally where I'm not, having staff bloggers in those cities can make those reviews happen.

In addition, I'm seeking a SF news blogger who can devote more time to bringing you the best and most current sf news. If any of my readers are interested in helping out or know someone who might be interested, shoot me an email. I can only pay in free books, passes to advanced screenings and exposure. Staff members will have their pic and profile in the blog's right-hand column or possibly on an About Us page.

Mid-week sf miscellaneous

This is kind of old news, but it escaped my notice at the time. The British Fantasy Society's 2010 British Fantasy Awards Winners.

And looking to the North (at least from where I'm sitting), we have the 2010 Sunburst Awards Winners.

Literary agent and champion for science fiction and fantasy Ralph M. Vicinanza died suddenly of an cerebral aneurysm on Saturday. Read more at Locus.

I'm still getting lists sent my way. Here's one for Futurama fans: 10 Futurama Inventions That Should Be Real.

Here's a list of "10 Essential Works of Transhumanist Fiction". What I want to know is why Peter F. Hamilton's Void trilogy isn't listed. My review of The Evolutionary Void, the last in the trilogy will appear soon at Mostly Fiction. For now, let me say, Wow! Encore! Give me more!

As the premiere of JIM approaches (Oct. 8 in NY and Oct. 15 in LA), here's another clip and a facebook application.



JIM LORIGEN GENE MASHER APPLICATION

About Lorigen Gene Masher
The Lorigen Gene Masher offers a fun way to see what you would look like composited with your friends. The Lorigen Gene Masher is presented by "Jim", a new film by Jeremy Morris-Burke.

To watch the trailer and find out more about JIM visit http://www.jimthefilm.com

Indie Film Friday - IFC Midnight - BOO!

IFC Midnight features genre films. They sent me some trailers for films that are upcoming or available on-demand now. The trailer for The Human Centipede II was just the creator walking in a parking garage with his voice narrating rather than him actually talking. Not much to see or hear, but from the interview that follows, it sounds pretty gross: a mad doctor sews people together head to but - twelve of them. I can most definitely live without it.

The other movies are all edge of your seat horror. I wish they'd actually include science fiction like they say they do, but these start with a standard plot - young men and women trapped in the wilderness with "it" or young outcast gets powers and must save the world, but can't save his soul - but they go way beyond the formulas and the acting, from what I can tell on the trailers, is not bad at all. These are all available On Demand right now as part of IFC's fantasticfest.



HEARTLESS is the tale of a man with a birthmark across his face. For a chance to have a normal face, and what he thinks will be a normal life to follow, he makes a deal that he soon regrets. Neighborhood thugs are not human and only he can see them for what they truly are. He is called upon to kill. His happy-ever-after turns into a nightmare. Sneak Preview is available now on-demand. It hits theaters in November.

PRIMAL begins with a group of young people exploring ancient places in a remote area of Australia. Something finds them before they find it, transforming them one by one into vicious killers with lots of pointy teeth.



In HIGH LANE, a group of young hikers unknowingly encroaches on a killer's territory.



RED, WHITE & BLUE features Buffy the Vampire Slayer star Amanda Fuller who plays an emotionally wounded nymphomaniac who meets a mysterious Iraq Vet who doesn't want to immediately jump in bed with her. When one of her past lovers comes back things go as far south as they can get. This is by far the goriest.

Indie film Friday

Big things are happenin' with Browncoat Big Damn Fan Films' Browncoats: Redemption, a fan-made flick. The producers gained the sponsorship of Ustream for its premiere Sept. 4 at 7PM EDT at www.ustream.tv/browncoatsmovie and at the film's facebook page.

You can view a trailer and two more trailers and my interview with director Michael Dougherty and lead actress Heather Fagan in the meantime. Proceeds from the DVD go to the charities set up by Joss Whedon, creator of the Firefly, Buffy the Vampire and Dollhouse series. Browncoats: Redemption picks up where Joss Whedon's Serenity left off. Never heard of Serenity and don't know what a Browncoat is? >gasp< Well, if you don't have plans tonight, now you do. Run out and rent Serenity and Firefly. Most folks in the 'verse come out Browncoats on the other side. ;)

Next month, we have JIM premiering in New York (Oct. 8) and Los Angeles (Oct. 15). Here's the synopsis from the press release:

"Being steadily crushed under the weight of debt, unemployment, and increasing isolation, Jim reaches a breaking point. Over a game of solitary Russian roulette he contemplates an unspeakable act of violence as a way of leaving his mark. He is stopped short by a vision of his deceased wife who convinces him that he should instead focus his remaining resources into an act of creation. Armed with his wife's frozen eggs and a new resolve, Jim secures the services of a large biotech firm to help him create an heir who will be engineered to overcome the obstacles of common men.

"Meanwhile in the distant future Niskaa, the leader of a group of genetically modified beings, controls a race of worker clones in a super-industrialized, post-human Earth. As he tries to restore his decrepit empire he comes face to face with a young clone that shows an unprecedented capacity for reason and empathy. Somehow connected to Jim via dreams, the clone manifests secrets of nature that Niskaa has not accounted for…"



Find out more at www.jimthefilm.com.

Still Films' Rogue Moon is in the funding stage over at kickstarter. The science fiction film is based on the classic 1960 novel by Algis Budrys. I hear there are goodies to be had for your micro-investments.


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