ince the publication of Shards of Honor in 1986, Lois McMaster Bujold has gained an increasing and devoted following of readers. The Bujold Nexus is the creation of those readers—fans working in concert with their favorite author to explain the complicated worlds and multifaceted individuals Bujold has created, all for the benefit of those not yet initiated. The site gathers all the facts about this award-winning SF writer and her work.
Virtually an online encyclopedia, so exhaustive is its detail, the Nexus covers every conceivable aspect of Bujold's life and career. Expected features like a biography, bibliography, foreign translations information and scans of book covers form the core content, naturally. But this dry nuts-and-bolts information co-exists with a wealth of fan creations: merchandise, art, filk lyrics, fanfic and even an index that lists the dedications of Bujold's various novels (and tells who has dedicated books to her in return). Whether a site visitor is a researcher, a hardcore fan or merely wondering about Bujold's fiction, this Web page can fully satisfy his or her curiosity.
The reason, of course, is that the Bujold Nexus is less a Web site than it is the public face of a lively Internet community. Created by an impressively large group of fans, it has an active comments section. It also conducts outreach by maintaining a hefty links section, participating in the Lois McMaster Bujold Webring, and running a mailing list for anyone whose
appetite for Bujold arcana isn't sated by the site itself.
— A.M. Dellamonica
Site of the Week—July 21, 2003
here's always more to a movie than what makes it to the screen, as Alien Legend proves with its apt dissection of the Alien quadrilogy. Starting with Ridley Scott's original Alien and concluding with 1997's Alien: Resurrection, the site folds back its subjects' cinematic skin with exacting attention to detail, extracting slivers about on-screen bloopers, behind-the-scenes information, deleted scenes and more.
Of these, the "Deleted Scenes" section for each movie provides the most surprises. While many of the coveted deleted scenes for Alien and Aliens were released with their DVD editions, most of those shot for the last two movies never made it into cinematic format. In particular, the site's treatment of Alien3's deleted scenes is stunning. Even longtime fans may not realize just how much they didn't see, such as the alien queen embryo migrating from Newt to Ripley (in the script, but not necessarily filmed), the crash of Ripley's escape ship, discussions among the prisoners of Ripley's identity, a longer Alien entrapment scene and more conversations with the Company.
Most of the deleted scenes are available as downloadable media files—visitors need to jump through a few hoops to view them, but they're worth the effort. Alien: Resurrection is the exception to this; it has detailed notes about the missing scenes, but no video.
When fans are done salivating over the deleted scenes, they can check out write-ups on each movie's storyline, awards, characters and vehicles, check out toys, games, comics and other memorabilia based on the series and sign a petition for an uncut version of Alien3.
—Ken Newquist
Site of the Week—July 14, 2003
ox may have failed to renew Futurama, but fans of Matt Groening's animated science-fiction comedy can still feed their insatiable desire for all things Bender & Co. by visiting Can't Get Enough Futurama.
The site offers everything fans expect to find, and plenty that they don't. The first stop for newbies (or for anyone who wasn't able to follow Fox's chaotic Futurama scheduling practices, which at last count was everyone) is the episode guide. The guide's broken down by season, and each episode's listing provides its formal name, production code, air date, fan rating and a brief synopsis. Rounding out the entries are convenient links to related information, including episode reviews, frame grabs and sound clips. The average fan rating—provided by site visitors—is a particularly nice touch, one that other fan sites would do well to emulate.
Like its more popular Simpsons sibling, Futurama is filled with running gags; the site itemizes them under its "Lists and References" category. Included are all of the cartoon's opening subtitles (including "This Episode Has Been Modified to Fit Your Primitive Screen" and "Touch Eyeballs to Screen for Cheap Laser Surgery"), lyrics for Futurama's various songs (like "Robot Hell Bonanza" and "Fry Crack Corn") and the official series timeline. The "Freeze Frame" category has a similar premise, but lists all of the series' in-jokes and bloopers on an episode-by-episode basis.
All of this is good stuff, but it's what folks would expect to find. What they won't expect are guitar tabs for the Futurama theme song, Nokia ring tones, ASCII artwork, Winamp skins, fan-created Flash games, fonts, interactive "choose your own adventure"-type stories, PocketPC themes and a bunch of other extras that die-hard fans will devour faster than Fry chugging a can of Slurm. The quality varies, and some of the games are works in progress, but overall these eccentric extras are enjoyable tributes.
— Ken Newquist
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