You are currently browsing the Dru Pagliassotti weblog archives for February, 2009.

Breaking News

Steampunk Vampires?

drupagliassotti @ February 25, 2009 # No Comment Yet

A friend sent me this link over to a Found Footage article, “Vampire Crime in an Alternate 1960s with Zeppelins and Steam Cars,” about the movie Perfect Creature. One of the weirdest vampire movies I’ve ever seen is the New Zealand cult indie, Perfect Creature. Vampires are genetically-engineered holy ninjas called “the brothers” in an [...]

More on page 495

The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes?

drupagliassotti @ February 22, 2009 # One Comment

For a variety of reasons, including being female, being the daughter of a military officer, and having a writer’s active “what if?” imagination, I’ve internalized a certain need to be able to take care of myself. My small, permanent library includes the Streetwise: An Introduction to Self-Defense, the U.S. Army Survival Manual, Tom Brown’s Field [...]

More on page 494

Snoop: What Your Stuff Says About You. Or Not.

drupagliassotti @ February 18, 2009 # One Comment

I was all set to enjoy Snoop: What Your Stuff Says About You by Sam Gosling, but in the end I was disappointed. Whereas I was expecting a book that would mesh Sherlock Holmes with FBI profiling with Erving Goffman’s dramaturgical approach with Pierre Bordieu’s Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste with [...]

More on page 493

Grammar Guardian: Turnaround is a Noun

drupagliassotti @ February 15, 2009 # No Comment Yet

Turnaround is a noun or an adjective, not a verb, so its use in the phrase “plan to turnaround their troubled companies” is incorrect. Turn around, with a space between the words, is correct when seeking to use the verb form of the phrase.  The sentence should read, “plan to turn around their troubled companies….” [...]

More on page 492

Does Steampunk Have an Ideology?

drupagliassotti @ February 13, 2009 # 5 Comments

“The future ain’t what it used to be.” — Yogi Berra Earlier this week I asked “Does steampunk have politics?” and argued that while the movement doesn’t seem to have expressed a clear political stance yet, the -punk in its name suggests that it must, in some way, be understood by its followers as opposing [...]

More on page 491

Does Steampunk Have Politics?

drupagliassotti @ February 11, 2009 # 4 Comments

The publication of Anima, by Italian manga team Dany & Dany, couldn’t help but get my attention — steampunk boys’ love? Yes, please. But Anima isn’t steampunk fiction in the most traditional sense, which, along with my own work on a Clockwork Heart sequel, has led me to think through what, exactly, determines whether something [...]

More on page 490

When Everything Goes Silent…

drupagliassotti @ February 10, 2009 # No Comment Yet

There’s a long gap between a story’s acceptance and its publication … and sometimes unfortunate things can happen in that time period. I’ve had several stories accepted by markets that have, between acceptance and publication, collapsed, leaving my work homeless once more. It looks like it may have happened to me again. Some time ago [...]

More on page 489

But Zefiro Would be Alzanan….

drupagliassotti @ February 7, 2009 # No Comment Yet

I’m working on Obstruction Currents and trying to think of a nickname for what the Ondinium government has unimaginatively dubbed O-Base-0 (Ondinium Base Zero, the first military train station outside of the capital city). Naught? Null? Zed? Obo? As I was doing my research, I discovered that zero is a Venetian term, drawn from the [...]

More on page 488

Welcome to Debt, Banks!

drupagliassotti @ February 6, 2009 # No Comment Yet

Goldman Sachs wants to return the $10 billion it was given by the government last year, according to an article on CNN.com.  The article notes, “What it really comes down to is Goldman Sachs does not have control of its own destiny,” said James Ellman, head of San Francisco-based Seacliff Capital, a hedge fund specializing [...]

More on page 487

Tongue-in-Cheek Vid from Macmillan

drupagliassotti @ February 3, 2009 # No Comment Yet

(Don’t take this too seriously!)

More on page 486