A week or two ago, we were planning out the events for the semester, and it turned out we have funding for both a “cocktail party” and a “movie night.” During the course of the discussion, I suggested that it might be interesting to brew up some beer especially for the party, and that this would be quite easy to arrange. The question was whether we could get funding for such a thing. I finally just got approval for the idea — funding for ingredients will be available, so all systems are go. But I figured I’d like to make …
Month: September 2011
The Music of Jo Hyeja Proceeds Apace
I mentioned a while back that Miss Jiwaku and I are working on a Korean adaptation of the HP Lovecraft short story, “The Music of Erich Zann,” which we’ve titled The Music of Jo Hyeja. It blows my mind to say it, since last weekend was overloaded, but… we’re shooting it this weekend. We’ve got some of the locations locked in, we have some leads for things we need, and we just held auditions last week for the main parts. I was a bit worried, as one role in particular was seeming to turn out to be difficult to cast, …
Smoky Brewday: Letters from Lichtenhain
So, I have had about 5 pounds (a couple of kilos) of smoked malt sitting around, losing their smokiness. I was kicking around the idea of trying to make some kind of experimental brew. The malt is probably six or eight months old, and so it will not be as smoky as it was when I first got it; on top of that, I only have a few kilos, so I am leery about trying to make a smoky beer unless I use 100% smoked malt. That meant a low-gravity, smaller batch, even if I do add DME. It looks …
The Iron Dream by Norman Spinrad
The Iron Dream is notorious, or at least it was at some point in the past. Those who know of it almost surely know the schtick, and those who don’t probably wouldn’t be interested, but the short version is: imagine a world where Hitler, after being rejected from art school, decided to immigrate to the United States. Imagine him falling in with the pulp sci-fi scene, first as an illustrator and, soon enough, as an author of clunky, horrid, and unfailingly popular schlock. Imagine him enjoying a long career as a pro-writer and illustrator, an important role in fandom as …
Deus X by Norman Spinrad
For those looking for the short version: I actually liked this novel, a fact which surprised me slightly. It’s not game-changing, but it is fun and hits on some interesting technosocial questions, as well as asking how the Catholic Church might respond (and struggle to formulate a response) to those technosocial questions. I was happy I read it. This is particularly notable since I read it right after finishing Little Heroes (which I gave a pretty negative review posted about here). It’s a funny thing, going into a book that way: when, say, you disliked an earlier work by the author, but feel …