Crystal Skull

When I heard about the new title for Indian Jones IV, I thought it was a joke. This is probably why:

As announced by Shia LaBeouf during last night's silly awards show, the upcoming fourth Indiana Jones film will be called Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. In the film, the famed archaeologist will likely battle snakes and Nazis on a quest to unravel the mystery of why anyone would pay $100 million for Damien Hirst's diamond-encrusted-skull thingy.

This picture really sells it, heh:

Discussion Topics for Future Blogs

A few ideas for upcoming blog posts:

1. SF is much better than fantasy, and will save Western Civilization besides
2. Fantasy is much better than SF, and will keep society from degenerating into an Orwellian nightmare besides
3. Taxonomies of SF/F/H
4. Anything with a Venn diagram in it
5. Convention reports
6. "Literary fiction" and how awful it and its exponents are

No, wait, sorry. Those are the nonfiction topics verbotten at Clarkesworld. With all due respect to anyone trying to put together a genre magazine, what purpose exactly do these guidelines serve? You're an online magazine, served by word-of-mouth via the blogs of like-minded fans. You exist to serve an audience that would otherwise be underserved in the mainstream. Why get caught up in a bunch of corporatist rules and regulations?

You don't know how good someone's Venn diagram might be. It might be the most eye-opening Venn Diagram on Fantasy taxonomy, the awfulness of Don DeLillo, and how the Martian Chronicles saved human civilization ever.

And as a writer: wake-up! Publishing's dead. If you want to get your work published you can do it on your blog. Or invent your own magazine, get a URL, and publish to your heart's content.

One thing reading publishing guidelines does for me is help to better clarify the prejudices, assumptions, fixed ideas, and biases of others. Not much help in getting published, but a lot of help in understanding the "Fixed Attitude" throughline in Dramatica.

Good Article on William F. Buckley

New Republic redeems itself with a fascinating article on Buckley and his lack of support for Bush's Iraq war. His brand of conservatism is portrayed as that of a "Spanish Aristocrat", a blend of his Catholic upbringing and moneyed capitalism.

He's also portrayed as the only conservative with a long enough memory to include the America First Movement of Lindbergh, Roosevelt and WWII, Vietnam and the fall of Liberalism. This history gives him a unique perspective on the folly that is the Iraq War.