And the Eclipse postmortem begins! First up: Ten Things You Should Know About Eclipse, at Fantasy Magazine. This information might just save your life. (Or, two hours. Whichever.)

4. Howard Shore did the music.
You’ll know because whenever Bella and Edward make out, it sounds like every pervert in the Shire is creeping up on them.

His hand looks like a questing, half-hidden octopus, doesn’t it? (Go ahead, unsee it. I dare you.)

I have an article forthcoming at Tor.com about the franchise in general and the trend in cinematic quality (hint: yeeeeesh), and last up will be the line report and blow-by-blow, because seriously, you guys? YIKES.

Writing news! My story “Take Four” is in issue 9 of Kaleidotrope, alongside awesome people like Jason Heller and Rachel Swirsky. You can check out the full TOC and purchase info here.

Quick excerpt:

Marissa’s walkie-talkie hissed to life. “They know the gate’s sealed. Watch for them.”
The city was more than two miles across, but mobs always moved faster than you thought they would, and Greg barely had time to order the second-unit to film the rising dust before the townspeople burst out of the main square in the center of the city and barreled towards the gate.

Now, back to work. There’s a lot to do today before I hit the line for Eclipse. (More about this later…if I make it that long.)

Last night, while reviewing what I’ve been working on in handy graphic form (which I will be doing again, because it’s fun and prevents me from actually working), Inception was the last square.

Up at Tor.com today, I talk about what we know about Inception, and what Inception means.

Hint: it means that smart sci-fi movies are thin on the ground these days, and a movie pitched as cerebral sci-fi is an event in and of itself. (Seriously, the only thing emphasized in the trailer is dreams/ideas/the mind, and also how all these people look really great in nice clothes.) This strategy wouldn’t have worked on a movie like, say, Moon, which was one of last year’s thinkiest sci-fi movies, but too indie for its own good somehow, and it ended up coming out in about eight theatres and disappearing off the face of the earth, except for one DVD copy that I put in a time capsule to save for later.

Obviously there’s no worries about that here, because Nolan made Batman cool again, which means he can basically do what he wants, forever. However, I am really hoping that this movie does not happen to suck. A lot of movies by good directors happen to suck, but when Channing Tatum gets tapped for the lead in a dimensional-sci-fi-action-romance that got suddenly greenlit because it’s vaguely like Avatar, I bet a lot of good scripts are floating around that could really benefit from some box-office proof that smart sells.

I’m just saying, in a world where Ridley Scott is remaking his own Alien franchise, Spider-Man is getting a reboot THREE YEARS after the last one came out, and Avatar can win Golden Globes*, we could really use a win, here.

NO PRESSURE, INCEPTION.

* To be fair, many undeserving people have won Golden Globes.

Please note, I apparently don’t have time to write about anything in depth, but plenty of time to make graphics about what I’m doing. Mmm, logic!

1. Reference image for a story I’m working on; originally was used for a story I just finished, but this image had another purpose. (It’s a worker.)

2. If I am not writing a story about someone in a coat of some kind, then I am writing a story about a post-human singularity…in which robots wear coats.

3. This looks like a still from a fantastic movie. It is, in fact, a still from One Night with the King, which is an absolutely terrible movie you will be seeing more of shortly.

4. Ditto. This is from Bathory. Not pictured: Hans Matheson painting a portrait of a baby that’s been stored inside the block of ice. (Oh, it happens.)

5. This is a picture of a juggler. Technically, he’s from an Anthropologie catalog, and he’s probably just a juggler because Hans Matheson found another stand-in. In my imagination, he’s my imaginary circus boyfriend. His name is Ben. You will probably see him again.

6. The novel currently with my agent takes place in a river city. This picture was from , and the time between me seeing it and me right-click-saving cannot be measured with modern instruments.

7. My next novel is set in the 1920s. Researching dance crazes of the time is repellent, grueling work that I absolutely do not enjoy whatsoever, but it has to be done.

8. Because it’s never the wrong time to watch Gleaming the Cube.

9. Inception. I have a piece about this movie lined up for Tor.com; in the meantime, just know that Joseph Gordon-Levitt must have signed an extra wire-work clause or something.

(You have to use all the ‘o’s. Everyone in the movie does.)

Over the weekend, as ordered, I actually told a ticket taker “Jonah Hex, please!” and saw it.

We all knew it was going to be bad. But I honestly could not have predicted the scope of awfulness here. This was no ordinary awful. It was almost magically bad. I snickered uncontrollably pretty much nonstop.

I also made this face a lot.

(Michael Fassbender, you put this movie down RIGHT NOW.)

Check out the details at Tor.com, but be warned that the written word cannot do justice to how sublimely, accidentally hilarious this movie is.