Category: Books & Comics

The Worst Sci-Fi Novel Ever Written?

July 6, 2014

Over the years I’ve enjoyed purchasing old science fiction novels as gifts for my brother. I tend to specialize in, shall we say, ‘awful’ books and always try to one-up myself.

Yesterday I was browsing a local store, and picked up this gem:

I bought it for a few reasons: the terrible name, the infringing cover (it’s not a Star Trek novel), and the ludicrous premise (Captain Bronet leads his crew on an expedition to an ‘evil planet’ called Galaxy 666. Yes that’s the name of the planet.) I thought to myself “This one looks memorable. My brother will love this one”…

And then I googled it.

Before I continue, read this. Also, feel free to google ‘Galaxy 666’ or ‘Pel Torro’ or ‘Lionel Fanthorpe’ and read one of the many other articles about this novel!

So it seems, entirely by luck, that yesterday I paid less than $2 for the worst novel ever written by the worst SF author of all time!

Bernard’s going to love it 🙂

Drawing From Memory

April 24, 2014

I have recently read various articles about psychological drawing tests and drawing contests on various websites that have inspired me to test my own from-memory drawing skills. Since he was the topic of several of the drawing challenges that went around the internet, and since he is a well-known character recognizable by almost anyone, my first topic was Homer Simpson.

I had to draw him from memory, and here is my version compared to the original:

I’ll have to be very honest and say there is something very ‘off’ about my version of Homer. It’s as if the beloved character mated with Donald Duck to produce a hybrid creature, since even the fact I nailed (?) the eyes (only!) hardly compensates for the beak, degenerate ear and horsetails growing out of the top of his head.

It would seem my from-memory skills were not as good as they could be. How would I do with other, perhaps more well-known (by me) characters? To find out, KLS gave me three challenges, which I’ll now present in order.

The first was Keroro from Keroro Gunso, unquestionable one of my favourite characters. I love the design of this little frog, which is simple, clean and unforgettable, especially to a great fan like myself. Here’s how I did:

Oh my! The assembly of dozens of Keroro model kits seem to have ingrained his chest emblem into my mind, but when it came to drawing him from memory I seriously struggled to remember what his head looked like! I can hardly believe I forgot the hat and the chin, not to mention the way I destroyed his eyes. Let’s face it, I drew a light-bulb! Across from my desk I have hung a Keroro mask on my wall for many years now. To not remember what it looked like is shameful.

What about another manga character? Someone even more iconic than Keroro, known and beloved by virtually every manga fan in the world? Dear readers, I present to you – from Dragonball Z – Goku himself:

Goodness gracious! While the more generous critics may point to the fact that I somewhat captured the spirit of the character in (very) broad strokes, the more honest would say that even the hair is a pale shadow of Goku’s actual hair and no other aspect of the drawing resembles the famous character. This is a disaster, through and through.

Now at this point you’re thinking: “He’s just having us on!” And I assure you I am not. I really tried to draw these characters as closely as possible to how I remembered them. But as history has shown time and time again, I can’t draw.

So I assure you that when I sat down to sketch Mickey Mouse I tried my hardest to produce a work that closely resembled the character beloved by everyone:

It’s those teeth that will likely cause the most nightmares 😉

How Did My Resolution Go?

January 21, 2014

Last year I made a post detailing what I felt was an enormous amount of books, games and DVDs on my ‘list’ that I felt I really needed to get through. It became a resolution or sorts, to shrink all lists in 2013. How did I go?

Books

I made great progress in this category, reading the majority of the approximately 50 volumes that were sitting on my shelf this time last year. The only one I haven’t yet found time for is In The Wake Of The Sea Serpents, the 800+ page magnus-opus by Heuvelmans. In addition to those I had this time last year, I purchased and read many new books during the year, mostly manga and fantasy novels. I try and read every single night before sleep at the least.

However – and to my delight since I love books – I have to admit my ‘to read’ list is hardly smaller than it was last year, replenished as it was by a large variety of other books. Heuvelmans tome is now accompanied by 3 other cryptozoology books, and they share a shelf with about 20 novels (mostly fantasy), a handful of manga (not much I am interested in is released nowadays), and a half-dozen or so RPG manuals such as the one pictured above. Add to this a couple of Doctor Who books, an art book or two and four books on video-game and pinball history and I should have enough to keep me busy well into 2014!

Movies & TV

As with my books, I made great progress on the DVD ‘watch list’ of February 2013. Ultraseven, Lexx, Claymore – all the box sets have been watched. In fact almost every single item we owned last year has been watched months ago, and many more have now filled their place.

In fact, the ‘watch list’ as of today is actually longer than it was last year. Two items alone: the Inspector Morse DVD box set and the Monkey DVD set sum to over 100 hours! Add to these several other anime DVD sets (Spice & Wolf, Sekai de Ichiban Tsuyoku Naritai!), another Japanese sci-fi set (Ultra-Q) and about a dozen assorted DVD movies (almost all sci-fi/fantasy) and we’ve got our watching cut out for us.

Games

As with the other two categories, I made bold strides into my piles of unplayed games. As of today I have:

– 8 unplayed PSP games, only one of which was actually purchased in 2013
– 8 unopened 3DS games, most of which are less than 6 months old
– only 1 unopened Wii U game (Pikmin 3, which I may start playing today!)
– 2 unopened PS3 games (both of which I owned last February as well…)

As you may recall from the blog post a month ago, I purchased much less games in 2013 than I usually do, which allowed me to play a lot more games I already owned. I expect during this next year to ‘finish’ the PSP games as well as possible the PS3. Since I currently have no plans to obtain a PS4, I imagine this section of the list will be much reduced this time next year.

Last time I looked at the piles of unopened/unread/unwatched media and thought “Why do I even buy more stuff?!”. Now I look at the smaller piles and think “I’m looking forward to opening that!”.

In other words, I think my resolution was a success 🙂

Robot Claw