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Good Impressions

My latest project for Discovery takes me back to the Seattle Art Museum, who apparently liked my work enough to ask for me again. (Awesome, I liked them too.) It's a script for the exhibition Inspiring Impressionism: The Impressionists and the Art of the Past. This time I get to spend quality time hanging out with local artists, not to mention such fine folks as Manet, Cezanne, Monet, Cassatt, Goya, Titian, and others. It's jobs like this that make the occasional annoyances of free-lancing worthwhile.

The games are afoot

Now available from Legacy Interactive in L.A. -- and via stores such as Amazon -- say 'allo, 'allo to The Lost Cases of Sherlock Holmes, a "lavish mystery adventure game, featuring 16 unique cases of forgery, espionage, theft, murder and more." YouTube trailer. Press release.

Look for my byline for "Stories and dialog." Quoth the PR copy: "Clever storylines and spot-on dialog written in the classic Arthur Conan Doyle style and featuring well known regulars from the original stories." That's me, clever and spot-on.

The first computer game officially licensed by the Conan Doyle Estate, it was a fun, challenging project to write for, especially as the storylines and their built-in logic puzzles become more complex and sophisticated as you progress through the 16 cases -- leading to a potentially explosive showdown with Prof. Moriarty himself inside the clock tower of Big Ben. Like building ever more intricate ships inside verbal and logical bottles.

I'm very pleased with how it all turned out. The artwork is gorgeous and the game play is addictively engaging. Big props to the dev team down at Legacy.

What brought Legacy Interactive to me? This story.)

From Khe Sahn to Saigon

Just completed, again for Discovery, is a script for the U.S. Marines Command Museum in San Diego, specifically their hall devoted to the Marines during the Vietnam War.

Out Roman Around

Via Discovery for the Seattle Art Museum, I scripted the hour-long media tour through the Roman Art from the Louvre exhibition.

For weeks I got to immerse myself in Paris's Musée du Louvre's collection while researching and writing about Roman Empire history, art, culture, emperors and empresses, society, and everyday life — all encompassed in almost two hundred 2,000-years-old Imperial statues, portraits, mosaics, reliefs, military documents, funerary items, and more. Plus, working with the Seattle museum staff, and especially guest curator Dr. Peg Laird from the Univ. of Washington, was a tremendous and satisfying creative experience.

(Remind me sometime to tell you about the portion of the script that had us working with Washington's Governor Christine Gregoire in her office. If only all such sessions could go so well.)

For my previous work for Discovery, check out the Museums page.

Brokedown on the electric turnpike

My Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction story "Brokedown" is on electricstory.com's list of Top 10 Downloads. (Algis Budrys, Lucius Shepard, Terry Bisson, and Charles Dickens are there too.) Plus, MS Reader, available at electricstory when you download one of my books there, has a "Text-to-Speech Package" that can read the text of a story to you out loud. The male robo-voice isn't bad. While it stumbles over the occasional odd word, its vocabulary is surprisingly thorough and its ability to shift inflection for parenthetical phrases or quoted dialogue is pretty snazzy.

From Russia with byline

Reprints of two of my published stories, "Brokedown" and "Mustard Seed," recently arrived at my door in new spiffy (and authorized) Russian publications. Thanks much — I mean, Spasibo vam! — to all concerned.

Update: Evidently (via this Russian site) "The Case of the Detective's Smile" has also appeared in Russian. That one's news to me. Nice picture.

Hanging 'round Ray Bradbury's house

I found out that a copy of this poster, commemorating a theatrical production I directed, is hanging in Ray Bradbury's dining room. My thanks to Donn Albright, Ray's archivist, for passing that info to me. (Another copy, inscribed and autographed by Ray in silver ink, is framed on the wall right behind me here in my office.)

The OED and me

Page 121 of Brave New Words: The Oxford Dictionary of Science Fiction (Powell's • Amazon • Oxford University Press), cites my 1993 story "Being Human" as the earliest pro fiction source for "morph v. [abbr. of metamorphosis or metamorphose] to transform a physical body into another shape."

The book could have legitimately cited the same story for the noun form of the word since "Being Human" predates their citations for it, but that's a quibble in the face of such lexicographic coolness.

The reel deal

Sigh. For reasons illuminated in the final edition's front-page essay by the editor, DVD Journal has ceased publication after nearly ten years. The site and its 4,000+ reviews remain up online, archiving a transformative decade's worth of enjoyable critique and commentary. One of the first and finest, it is missed. Here are some fan favorites from my contributions:

Features: Pandora's Box • Forbidden Planet • Some Like It Hot • The Complete Monterey Pop Festival • Singin' in the Rain • The River • Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead • Patton • The Public Enemy • The Marx Brothers: Silver Screen Collection • Ed Wood • Blazing Saddles • Stage and Spectacle: Three Films by Jean Renoir • The Kid • The General / Steamboat Bill Jr. • The Adventures of Robin Hood • The Best Arbuckle/Keaton Collection • Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country • The Thing from Another World • The Great Dictator • The Day the Earth Stood Still

Compact commentary: Fantastic Voyage • The Third Man • The Spirit of the Beehive • Shortbus • Bedazzled (1967) • Captain Horatio Hornblower • The Three Musketeers (1948) • Crossing Delancey • Young Frankenstein • Kind Hearts and Coronets • Junebug • Petulia • The Virgin Spring • I Love You, Alice B. Toklas • La bête humaine • King Kong (1933) • Cat on a Hot Tin Roof • The Innocents • To Kill a Mockingbird • The Philadelphia Story • To Be or Not to Be • Captain Blood • The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit • Backbeat • White Heat • The War of the Worlds (1953) • Eyes Without a Face • Ballad of a Soldier • Freaks • The Iceman Cometh (Broadway Theatre Archive) • The President's Analyst • A Night at the Opera • A Day at the Races • Alice in Wonderland (1966) • The Four Historic Ed Sullivan Shows Featuring the Beatles • I'm All Right, Jack