Club Jade

Following in the hallowed footsteps of Lori Jareo, Austin P. Torney self-publishes Star Trek: The Death Wave. His cover makes Jareo’s look quite classy… and check out this summary:

An original screenplay/novelette that answers the question of how the warlike Klingons of Captain Kirk’s era came to their end and were replaced by the somewhat friendlier Klingons of the new generation; however, this story does not dwell much upon the Klingons, but upon Kirk’s forced retirement at age 65 and his return from it through a war for the galaxy in which he must become the ultimate chess master.

Might I interest sir in a period? (via)

WFMU’s Beware of the Blog features a variety of fanzine covers from back in the day, including a hefty selection of Star Wars ones. Has your embarrassment squick kicked in yet? (via)

Imadra Blue is polling for Star Wars fandom preferences on the Livejournal. It’s mainly a saga (mostly prequel) oriented poll, both because that’s Jax’s corner of fandom and because there isn’t really a huge contingent of active EU fans there. (Obligatory pimping of starwars_eu and marafics. And yes, there will be a giant EU poll sooner rather than later. As usual, I have more ideas than time to type them.)

And don’t forget to vote in our first sidebar poll! Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull has been holding a steady lead in what you want the most for 2008. Looks like I’ll have to buy JawaJames a whip!

Stephen Brust has released My Own Kind of Freedom, an unauthorized Firefly novel, on his web site for download. (via)

I’ll be very interested to see what the fanfic community has to say about this… It’s nothing new for a pro writer to have written or be writing fanfic, but usually there’s a tad more remove.

Thanks to the Stooge for this one – The Onion’s A.V. Club points out twenty pop-cultural obsessions even geekier than Monty Python. While Star Trek is #1, there’s not much about Star Wars, although there are plenty of entries about things that SW fans do and like, including BSG, Joss Whedon, roleplaying games. (namecheck!) Dr. Who… Plus something I had a lot of high school friends obsessing over for reasons I to this day do not understand, Magic: The Gathering. And for the final blow… Fanfic. Sigh. At least they acknowledge it “isn’t always relegated to weird, unnecessarily erotic original stories with awkward dialogue, plot holes, and spelling errors…” Yeah…

But man, game-show tape trading? That’s just crazy.

This is both the stupidest and most hilarious thing I have seen all day, and it’s all Pablo’s fault.

Clearly, we need to start collecting really bad fanfic for the next con, yes?

Someone actually wrote Luke/Jabba? You sick little… Oh, Sith Chicks. Pah.

Oh, and sorry folks, while Gaius Baltar/Jaime Sommers would be hilarious, slash it isn’t…

Crack Van on Livejournal needs fans to rec Star Wars fanfic by January 1st – or else the category will be retired from the community. (They spotlighted Stuff once, so they can’t be that bad.)

Sheer brilliance: The anti-fanfic bingo card. Slash gets the plum spot, surprise surprise… (via)

Attention all fanfic readers: Hie yourselves over to Snacky’s Best Fic Ever poll to recommend your all-time favorites (any and all fandoms accepted) and read what others consider the best of the best. Guidelines are pretty simple:

Occasionally, I see discussions about how this is the best damn fic ever, and you’d give it to people who weren’t even in fandom to read!

Tell me about the greatest fic, the one you’d give to people who aren’t in fandom (although, I’d think they’d need to have at least a familiarity with the source material, but that’s up to you) and say, “OH MY GOD, YOU HAVE TO READ THIS, IT’S SO GOOD!” It doesn’t have to be anything recent – it can be the first or last fic you read, however many years or months or days ago. If you can’t narrow it down, pick two. And please, feel free to discuss the fic in the comments.