This week a wonderful short film by one of my favorite director/artists has become available on iTunes – Varmints by Marc Craste of Studio AKA.

Marc has always done amazing work, I just love his designs and atmosphere. I also have the DVD of JoJo in the Stars, which I also really like. Varmints hits in all the right places it seems. About the film:

“Adapted and directed by Marc Craste, Varmints is a 24-minute film based on the award-winning book of the same name by Helen Ward and illustrated by Craste, that tells the story of one small creature’s struggle to preserve a world in danger of being lost forever through recklessness and indifference.”

For $1.99 on iTunes, you can’t beat it. We watched it last night as a family and really enjoyed it. Hat tip to Steve Ogden for pointing this out this week.

Books Again

How about some more books? I think I mentioned last week that my Grandfather had given me a box of sci-fi and fantasy books. Some of the stuff was not mainstream authors, or at least not super popular stuff and I would have probably never read it, and some of it was real wonderful stories. Here’s five that I can recall being in that box (or at least I think they were) that were stories I really enjoyed:

• Arcturus Landing by Gordon R. Dickson. A neat story about how the human race is about to reach out to the stars and they get put under quarantine by an alien federation until they can prove they can travel at the speed of light. Some mystery and intrigue and a fairly fun and simple story.
• Star Child by James P. Hogan – I think this book was my introduction to James P. Hogan. I don’t really remember much about it, and I’m going to have to get another copy and read it. But I’ve loved Hogan’s stuff ever since, and my Grandfather must have been a fan of his work.
• Inherit the Stars by James P. Hogan – Another Hogan book, this cemented him as one of my sci-fi faves. All you need to know is a manned mission to the Moon uncovers a buried human skeleton on the surface (see the book cover, again one of my favorites). This book begins the “Giants” series, which is very popular in sci-fi circles. I of course read and enjoyed the whole series.
• The Jupiter Theft by Donald Moffitt – This book had the most wonderful cover – see below this list. Here’s the summary of this book: “The Lunar Observatory on earth is picking up a very strange and unidentifiable signal from the direction of Cygnus. When the meaning of this signal is finally understood, it clearly spells disaster for earth. An immense object is rushing towards the Solar System, traveling nearly at the speed of light, its intense nuclear radiation sure to kill all life on earth within months. As it moves close the humans can discern that it is an enormous convoy of some sort, nearly as large as a planet. And there is nothing anyone can do to divert such an enormous alien object. Then, unexpectedly, the object changes course and heads toward the dead planet of Jupiter but what could an enormous alien convoy want with such a useless planet?” – Yeah, it’s a good one. Another one I’m going to have to read again.
• And thanks to Joe from Denver – The Reefs of Space by Frederick Pohl and Jack Williamson. It involves the Plan of Man, a supercomputer that runs the affairs of man. It involves the body bank, exploding collars, people becoming “risks” and all kinds of neat sci-fi stuff (thanks to the reviewer, it’s all coming back). It has to be one of the neatest sci-fi books I’ve ever read.

Jupiter Theft – The cover image I had:

Marooned News

Marooned was nominated for a 2008 Beaky award (Webcomic Beacon Podcast) for one of the best new webcomics of 2008 but did not win. Nice to be nominated though. The winners were much deserving.

I’ve already mentioned it a few times, and I updated the link on the left sidebar, but you can now purchase Marooned #1 in standard comic size from IndyPlanet.com. It’s print on demand, so when you order, they will print one up and ship it direct to you.