What is Originality Any...

Besides being a very talented artist and animator, Nina Paley became involved in the fight over copyright when her project Sita Sings the Blues was almost sunk when she discovered that she needed to pay a fee to use some 80 year-old songs, and ended up having to pay $50K to use what had...

The Top 11 Genre Media ...

This is Part 2. You can find Part 1 (and the introduction) HERE. 5. Twilight The runaway success of what is essentially a non-ironic vampire soap opera is vexing for fans of more traditional genre media. It also seems to come without the usual focus on deep story and “realism” that...

The Top 11 Genre Media ...

What makes something “genre media”? Anything that replaces our own world with a reality and/or characters of pure imagination, whether it’s the future, the past, or a present where the rules are slightly different than our own… What I’ve listed below are what I think were the...

Is Fantasy the New Scie...

Hanging out at Orycon over the weekend I heard a number of people saddened by the fact that fantasy has overtaken science fiction in popular culture. During the last half of the 20th century sci-fi predominated our genre fiction, with a large black monolith waiting at the end of the...

San Diego Comic-Con 201...

San Diego Comic-Con 2010 Five Day Tickets Sell Out. After five years of attending I’ve already been considering skipping San Diego next year. Getting tickets don’t matter much as I usually attend the show as a professional, but I’m starting to feel like it isn’t...