ites devoted to individual authors run the gamut from snazzy to dreary, from high-content to fluff. Sometimes, if you're unlucky, you get snazzy fluff, sometimes dreary high-content. Of course, the best combination is snazzy high-content, and that's pretty much what you'll find at the official William Gibson site.
Here, you'll have a chance to sample chapters from many (but not all) of Gibson's phenomenally popular books, including his fine new novel, Pattern Recognition, a first for the author, being set entirely in the present. You'll read an affecting biographical essay that details how Gibson's out-of-the-ordinary childhood shaped his mature consciousness and writings. Then there's a discussion board, where over 300 registered chatters congregate to trade quips and insights into Gibson's work—and just about any other related subject. Visiting the links page illustrates just how copious is the Web-based material on Gibson, including the complete text of his hard-to-find art-object-cum-story Agrippa.
But my favorite part of the site is Gibson's blog. Yes, Gibson has joined the ranks of bloggers, and he reveals an easygoing style and willingness to share some intimate thoughts and experiences. Learn how the novels of British experimental writer Iain Sinclair influenced a character in Pattern Recognition, or how the sight of the Golden Gate Bridge on a foggy morning inspired the squatter-inhabited bridge of Gibson's second trilogy. These behind-the-scenes revelations will have you appreciating Gibson's fiction in new and surprising ways. And you don't even have to jack in and penetrate any black ice to get there!
— Paul Di Filippo
Site of the Week—January 21, 2003
he crew of the starship Exeter have boldly gone where few fans have gone before, creating their own, homegrown episode of Star Trek: The Original Series.
Created over the course of seven years, the episode "The Savage Empire" tells the tale of the Exeter, a Federation starship crewed with men and women just out of Starfleet Academy. As the episode opens, the crew of the starship Lexington have contracted the deadly Canopus Plague and traveled to the Andorian home world where a cure awaits. But when they arrive, contact is lost with the Andorians, and the Lexington's crew is in no shape to investigate. Instead, the Exeter is dispatched to find out what happened on the planet and to save the Lexington.
The episode is available on the Exeter's Web site as a series of five QuickTime videos. Everything about the episode broadcasts authenticity, from the design of the sets to the cut of the uniforms to the whiz and hum of the special effects. The production values and acting are obviously done by fans, but talented ones. The end result is an episode that's actually better than some of the "official" Trek that's been produced, and it just goes to show what fans can do with today's
technology and a heck of a lot of determination.
The Web site supports the episode with notes about creating the props and uniforms used in filming, but unfortunately much of the rest of the site is under construction. The links section is worth checking out—it has a number of Star Trek-related Web links, as well as links to mirror sites hosting the movies.
— Kenneth Newquist
Site of the Week—January 13, 2003
onsider the fact that much of the mystical philosophy underlying George Lucas' Star Wars films derives from Oriental sources such as Taoism and Buddhism and Shintoism. Isn't it only natural then that the films would lend themselves to creative re-interpretation in other Asian media? I'm referring specifically here to the ancient art of origami.
OK, so paperfolding (or, as one Spanish Web site marvelously labels the practice, "papiroflexia") is not the first thing that comes to mind when you think high-tech spaceships, chrome robots, futuristic humans and weird aliens. But this almost pre-industrial artform can indeed accommodate SF iconography, as witnessed on the site known as Star Wars Origami. Here you'll encounter creased and crinkled representations of R2-D2, the Millennium Falcon, X-wing fighters and destroyer droids, most of them startlingly "lifelike." The irony of this low-tech handicraft being used to emulate the output of the zillion-dollar computers of Industrial Light & Magic is part of the charm of these fragile creations.
This site also guides the novice paperfolder through the basic chops of the medium, with diagrams and instructions anyone can easily follow. The handy links lead to a number of similar sites, proving that this unlikely fusion of 21st-century A.D. with 21st-century B.C. is more intuitive than you at first suspected. I was particularly taken with the Darth Vader creation by one Eileen Tan. Who ever knew a simple sheet of black paper could be so scary?!?
— Paul Di Filippo
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