Month: December 2008

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EUbits: Jedi Quest audio, interviews, comics

Surprise audiobooks! A couple days ago, Zee Zee spotted audiobook listings on the Random House catalog for the first four Jedi Quest books: Way of the Apprentice, The Trail of the Jedi, The Dangerous Games and The Master of Disguise. All four are listed as $9.99 unabridged digital downloads with spring release dates.

Audiobooks years after the fact? Plus, the original books were published by Scholastic, which isn’t a Random House imprint, though the audio versions are listed under Random House’s Imagination Studios. (Del Rey’s Star Wars audiobooks are Random House Audio.) Lucasbooks is clearly trying something new here, but we’re still awaiting some kind of confirmation…

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Gift Guide: Santa Maul thinks of the Wantons

Santa Maul's Holiday Gift GuideSanta Maul invites his many lady friends (and perhaps a few of his man friends as well) to feast their eyes on Sideshow’s new Attack of the Clones Obi-Wan figure. These 12 inches of bearded Obi-Wan can be preordered on Friday for those who qualify. Santa Maul is not familiar enough with Sideshow’s arcane practices to guess what that means, or when the figures will be shipping, but he does believe that many a fan would appreciate the gesture even if it does come down to an empty box on the day in question.

Santa Maul also recommends io9’s Gift Ideas for the Ten Major Species of Science Fiction Fan, though overall he finds their choices rather obvious.

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A publishing 411: Go buy some books

Random House is among the publishers doing some housecleaning and restructuring right now. I’m not seeing Del Rey get any mentions, even in the blogs, but the Star Wars line is a massive cash cow, so maybe the folks there will weather it out. (Wizards of the Coast, however…)

But my point: I’m going to echo Scalzi and say that now is a good time to go buy some stuff that doesn’t have the safety net of a massive franchise and a 4-year contract, i.e. all those other books. Remember, science fiction and fantasy is a niche market, and thus likely to get caught up in cuts along the bottom line. So go out and support your favorites: Every paperback helps, and the bookstores aren’t doing that hot, either.

UPDATE: Scalzi is having a suggest-a-thon.

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In the news: Samuel L. Jackson, bailouts, copyright, hotels and a criminal Chewbacca

People: Samuel L. Jackson received the American Cinematheque award earlier this week, along praise from George Lucas, Denzel Washington and Justin Timberlake .

Even Artoo and Threepio showed up!

  • Har har har: The Los Angeles Times has a bailout plan for Star Wars. My only question is, does George have a private jet?
  • Books: Looking for some light reading? Lawrence Lessig’s Remix: Making Art and Culture Thrive in the Hybrid Economy touches at least a little on Star Wars copyright issues, according to The Mercury News review. In any case, it looks like a must-read for anyone with copyright concerns.
  • Crime: Chewbacca Calvin Johnson of Georgia is racking up quite a criminal record. (Thanks, Paula.)
  • Travel: Wired takes a look at geek hotels, starting with the Sidi Driss and continuing with some places a little closer to home.
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The Complete Encyclopedia is nigh; March comics

The Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia 2.0StarWars.com features The Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia, including several sample pages that the more keen-eyed among us might actually even be able to read. The book, written by Steve Sansweet, Pablo Hidalgo and Dan Wallace, Bob Vitas, Chris Cassidy, Mary Franklin and Josh Kushins, will be in stores next week. (Santa Maul would no doubt encourage you to consider it for your holiday lists.)

Also on the official site tonight are the March 2009 comics, including upcoming issues of Legacy and Knights of the Old Republic, along with a new Clone Wars digest, The Wind Raiders of Taloraan.

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The fandom minute: Pre-battered Falcon, Jon Stewart’s geek out, Carbonite USB, green ladies

You know things are tough when… A gift for the geek that has everything – a battle-scarred Hasbro Millennium Falcon – amazingly got no bids on eBay. Well, maybe not that amazingly, but $300 doesn’t seem that bad a price considering it’ll run you only about half that brand new. (via)

  • TV: Jon Stewart is very excited about a Threepio bobblehead on Monday’s The Daily Show. I don’t have the heart to tell him that bobbleheads are kind of lame.
  • Fanmade: Finally, a Han in Carbonite USB drive! Alas, it was already sold out last week.
  • Lists: I think the green skin might have less to do with their popularity than the trend of not wearing very many clothes.
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Heilemann’s Star Wars collection is no more

His fantastic set of Star Wars images on Flickr is gone. It’s not too surprising, with the collection’s latest burst of popularity, that he got a C&D, but it’s still a big loss for the fandom. In his entry addressing the situation, he’s pretty brutal on Lucasfilm and StarWars.com, and I can’t entirely blame him:

Anyway, the take-down is a fair legal move as it were, even if I don’t (obviously) agree with it. After all, the collection was an attempt at remedying the exact _lack_ of such similar resources from Lucasfilm. Thousands of people have passed through the collection and been ecstatic at the chance to peek in behind the scenes at a mythology and a series of films that are forever, and I think that it is remarkable that even now, we all carry these films with us.

This is what starwars.com should be doing! But instead of its initial potential, it has grown into a tired, empty husk of a marketing machine, not only poorly designed technically (and a usability nightmare!), but also trying so desperately to promote the Clone Wars show that it has forgotten the very magic that once propelled the world into the stars, on May 25th, 1977.

As I said last time I linked him, I truly hope that one day LFL themselves would someday set up something similar. But in today’s economic climate, even a corporate behmouth like Lucasfilm probably isn’t supporting its website in all the ways it could. I can’t be angry at the StarWars.com folks – they do what they can, but a handful of people can only do so much.

The beauty of the internet is that we can do it ourselves, and often do – look at Wookieepedia. But then something like this happens, and we end up wondering why we bother.

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Tartakovsky – How to make friends and influence people

Genndy Tartakovsky, creator of the Clone Wars cartoon (not that one, the first one), spoke at Rhode Island School of Design this past weekend.

Club Jader (and some-day-Pulitzer Prize winner), Caroline Sedano, attended and wrote up this great summary of the event for The Brown Daily Herald.

Club Jade wishes to note that we aren’t the least bit biased about the shining examples of Star Wars reporting done by its members.