Link roundup

1. The Best Android Apps for Your Car.

2. And The Best iPhone Apps for Your Car.

3. Neal Stephenson's The Mongoliad is now active. Cory Doctorow gave it a positive write-up.

*The HTC Droid Incredible is $80 at Amazon.

Looking Glass Wars concept art

Stephan Martiniere has posted images of Alyss and the various armored suits from The Looking Glass Wars. He also has several prints on sale, including one of Hiro Protagonist from Snow Crash.

*Previously: Alice falls down the rabbit hole.

*Buy Alice in Wonderland toys at eBay.

The Wonder Book of Why and What (link roundup)

Cover for vintage book The Wonder Book of Why and What. You can see a different cover here, and there are various versions on sale at eBay and at Amazon.

And a few more links:

1. Book publisher Elsevier was caught offering $25 Amazon gift cards to professors who gave the book five-star reviews on Amazon. They now call the offer a "mistake." Via.

2. Neal Stephenson's next novel will be a thriller called REAMDE. Also, his first two novels, which were written under the pseudonym Stephen Bury, was cowritten with his uncle, George Jewsbury. Both of those Stephen Bury books are pretty good, by the way. Via.

3. "Chinese Navy Amphibious Female Scouts." These ladies will leap out of the water like dolphins and destroy you. Via.

4. Peanuts/Avengers mashup.

*Previously: If Frank Miller wrote Peanuts.

*Buy Peanuts toys at eBay.

Neal Stephenson and Edwardian martial arts

In this interview, Neal Stephenson discusses the obscure martial arts he studied while writing the Baroque Cycle, including Edwardian Bicycle Fighting. Via.

I couldn't find any photos of bicycle fighting, but I did find this:



Via.

*Previously: Black Belt Patriotism by Chuck Norris.

*Buy Neal Stephenson's parody of American politics at Amazon.

Big thumbs up for Neal Stephenson's version of Harry Potter

Neal Stephenson's "Anathem" is terrific. Anathem is basically Harry Potter, as written for adults, with "Erasmus" and string theory standing in for "Harry Potter" and magic. It's a little slow in the middle, but struggle through and you will be rewarded. I read the last 250 pages or so in one night. Perhaps because the string theory discussion is so dense, Stephenson dramatically simplified everything else about his writing - - unlike his last few books, the entire story is told from the point of view of a single narrator in a single consistent voice. You'll never start a chapter wondering what the heck's going on. There's also some remarkable similarities to Dan Simmons "Olympos," but I don't want to say more for fear of revealing spoilers. Anathem is 34% off at Amazon.


Here's some more quick reviews:


Mighty Avengers Vol. 1 was terrible. This confirms it. I hate Brian Bendis and his cute little thought bubbles. I didn't care for the art, either. Frank Cho's pencils actually looked much better before they were colored. (There's some Frank Cho desktop wallpapers here.)




Runaways: Dead End Kids was also disappointing. Was Joss Whedon's success in Astonishing X-Men dependent on John Cassaday's art?





Speaking of, I keep seeing mention of a rerelease of Cassaday's comic I Am Legion: The Dancing Faun. I read the first issue when it came out years ago. It was boring. Impossible to keep track of which character was which because they all looked alike.





Huge thumbs down to Alan Levy's Nazi Hunter: The Wiesenthal File, which I read for my book club. It should have been fascinating - - the real life story of a man who survived the concentration camps and devoted the rest of his life to hunting down Nazis. But everything about the book, from structure, to word choice, and everything in between was bad.

On the plus side, thanks to the book, I did learn about the incredible heroism of a man named Raoul Wallenberg. Wikipedia summarizes:

With the money raised by the board, Wallenberg rented thirty-two buildings in Budapest, and declared them to be extraterritorial, protected by diplomatic immunity. He put up signs such as "The Swedish Library" and "The Swedish Research Institute" on their doors and hung oversize Swedish flags on the front of the buildings to bolster the deception. The buildings eventually housed almost 10,000 people. Sandor Ardai, one of the drivers working for Wallenberg, recounted what Wallenberg did when he intercepted a trainload of Jews about to leave for Auschwitz:

... he climbed up on the roof of the train and began handing in protective passes through the doors which were not yet sealed. He ignored orders from the Germans for him to get down, then the Arrow Cross men began shooting and shouting at him to go away. He ignored them and calmly continued handing out passports to the hands that were reaching out for them. I believe the Arrow Cross men deliberately aimed over his head, as not one shot hit him, which would have been impossible otherwise. I think this is what they did because they were so impressed by his courage. After Wallenberg had handed over the last of the passports he ordered all those who had one to leave the train and walk to the caravan of cars parked nearby, all marked in Swedish colours. I don't remember exactly how many, but he saved dozens off that train, and the Germans and Arrow Cross were so dumbfounded they let him get away with it.

Incredible stuff, and I'd never even heard of him before.




Finally, if you haven't been watching the new Clone Wars cartoons, you're in for a treat. I have three words for you: Ninja Battle Droids.




*See more of my reviews here.

*Buy Star Wars sketch cards at eBay.

Snow Crash cover gallery and other Neal Stephenson-related links

First, a Snow Crash cover gallery:











And here's a few Neal Stephenson-related links:

*Stephenson describes the fight he had with William Gibson. Link.


*Stephenson considers whether a katana is a match for a rapier. Link.


*Links to Stephenson's short stories. Link.


*Description of Stephenson's medieval-style workshop. Link.


*Bizarre cover for Stephenson's Diamond Age. Link.

*Find books signed by Neal Stephenson at eBay.

In a fight between Neal Stephenson and William Gibson, who would win?

Seems everywhere I look someone's linking to another interview with William Gibson, and all of the interviews have been pretty boring (I say this as a big Gibson fan). It reminded me of a great Neal Stephenson interview on Slashdot. One question was:

In a fight between you and William Gibson, who would win?

Neal:

You don't have to settle for mere idle speculation. Let me tell you how it came out on the three occasions when we did fight.

The first time was a year or two after SNOW CRASH came out. I was doing a reading/signing at White Dwarf Books in Vancouver. Gibson stopped by to say hello and extended his hand as if to shake. But I remembered something Bruce Sterling had told me. For, at the time, Sterling and I had formed a pact to fight Gibson. Gibson had been regrown in a vat from scraps of DNA after Sterling had crashed an LNG tanker into Gibson's Stealth pleasure barge in the Straits of Juan de Fuca. During the regeneration process, telescoping Carbonite stilettos had been incorporated into Gibson's arms. Remembering this in the nick of time, I grabbed the signing table and flipped it up between us. Of course the Carbonite stilettos pierced it as if it were cork board, but this spoiled his aim long enough for me to whip my wakizashi out from between my shoulder blades and swing at his head. He deflected the blow with a force blast that sprained my wrist. The falling table knocked over a space heater and set fire to the store. Everyone else fled. Gibson and I dueled among blazing stacks of books for a while. Slowly I gained the upper hand, for, on defense, his Praying Mantis style was no match for my Flying Cloud technique. But I lost him behind a cloud of smoke. Then I had to get out of the place. The streets were crowded with his black-suited minions and I had to turn into a swarm of locusts and fly back to Seattle.

The second time was a few years later when Gibson came through Seattle on his IDORU tour. Between doing some drive-by signings at local bookstores, he came and devastated my quarter of the city. I had been in a trance for seven days and seven nights and was unaware of these goings-on, but he came to me in a vision and taunted me, and left a message on my cellphone. That evening he was doing a reading at Kane Hall on the University of Washington campus. Swathed in black, I climbed to the top of the hall, mesmerized his snipers, sliced a hole in the roof using a plasma cutter, let myself into the catwalks above the stage, and then leapt down upon him from forty feet above. But I had forgotten that he had once studied in the same monastery as I, and knew all of my techniques. He rolled away at the last moment. I struck only the lectern, smashing it to kindling. Snatching up one jagged shard of oak I adopted the Mountain Tiger position just as you would expect. He pulled off his wireless mike and began to whirl it around his head. From there, the fight proceeded along predictable lines. As a stalemate developed we began to resort more and more to the use of pure energy, modulated by Red Lotus incantations of the third Sung group, which eventually to the collapse of the building's roof and the loss of eight hundred lives. But as they were only peasants, we did not care.

Our third fight occurred at the Peace Arch on the U.S./Canadian border between Seattle and Vancouver. Gibson wished to retire from that sort of lifestyle that required ceaseless training in the martial arts and sleeping outdoors under the rain. He only wished to sit in his garden brushing out novels on rice paper. But honor dictated that he must fight me for a third time first. Of course the Peace Arch did not remain standing for long. Before long my sword arm hung useless at my side. One of my psi blasts kicked up a large divot of earth and rubble, uncovering a silver metallic object, hitherto buried, that seemed to have been crafted by an industrial designer. It was a nitro-veridian device that had been buried there by Sterling. We were able to fly clear before it detonated. The blast caused a seismic rupture that split off a sizable part of Canada and created what we now know as Vancouver Island. This was the last fight between me and Gibson. For both of us, by studying certain ancient prophecies, had independently arrived at the same conclusion, namely that Sterling's professed interest in industrial design was a mere cover for work in superweapons. Gibson and I formed a pact to fight Sterling. So far we have made little headway in seeking out his lair of brushed steel and white LEDs, because I had a dentist appointment and Gibson had to attend a writers' conference, but keep an eye on Slashdot for any further developments.

Read the rest of the interview here.