Bloomsbury Hints At New ‘Potter’ Box Set

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A friend of mine found this buried in a Reuters article about Bloomsbury profits over the last fiscal year.

Bloomsbury, the publisher of the “Harry Potter” series by author JK Rowling, also said it was counting on a new Rowling three-book box set tied into the Potter series, and a non-fiction account of spies in World War II to support sales in the coming year.

This is the first I’ve heard of any three-book box set of new content in the Potter-verse. What this could be I have absolutely no idea, but deep down I’m hoping it’s a set of Marauders-era stories. A man can dream. Chances are, it’s something more along the lines of a collection of Potter universe lore stories (Tales of Beetle Bard) or the Potter Encyclopedia Rowling has said she’s working on.

Trope Tuesday: Depending on the Writer

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Case study in this trope.

Welcome back to another edition of Trope Tuesday, our weekly sojourn into the abyss that is TV Tropes. Each week we aim to look into a literary theme, device, or quirk that gives some color to our favorite entertainment. On the docket this time around: Depending on the Writer.

In some stories, a character is very different every time they appear — so different that it’s almost a different character with the same name. This is particularly common with Long Runners and comic books, due to the large number of writers on staff. But there are some characters where even the same writer makes them different every time.

This is not Character Development — nothing happens in the story to justify the personality change. Writer on Board or Creator Breakdown might, though.

Don’t get this confused with characters with some actual depth. Just because you can’t predict a character’s moves 100% of the time doesn’t mean they’re inconsistent. Now, if you can predict a character’s moves 100% of the time only when you know who’s writing, then they’re definitely inconsistent.

Different writers with different ideas and understandings of the work are also the usual culprit of Continuity Drift.

Talk about a trope that is tailor-made for the Star Wars Expanded Universe. Let’s just take a look at the last major series that wrapped up, Fate of the Jedi. In my review of the series as a whole, I hit on something that really hurt it in my mind: the stark differences in how Luke Skywalker was written. On the one hand, you had Aaron Allston who erred towards the Luke you saw in the films. Somewhat optimistic, someone who hadn’t strayed too far from his Tatooine farmboy roots. On the other hand, you had Troy Denning’s Luke Skywalker, who regularly says that family members and sixteen-year-old girls are beyond redemption. Yeah.

Two ends of the personality spectrum for one character. These are the kinds of things that happen when you have so many different authors working with pre-established characters. You might get a Allston-style Luke, who feels very grounded into the source material. You might also get a Luke that veers perhaps too much into Darker and Edgier territory. When it gets really strange is when you get these different Lukes in back-to-back books. Going from Vortex to Conviction was a relief in one sense because the latter felt significantly more like Star Wars than the former, but there’s no denying the jarring shift in tone and themes when jumping between authors in a series like Fate of the Jedi.

Falcon 9 and Dragon Module Lift Off

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At 3:44 AM EDT Elon Musk and SpaceX’s Falcon 9 finally blasted off the launchpad today and began what may be a new era in spaceflight. For the SpaceX team, it had been a long and bumpy road to get to this point. Several setbacks pushed the launch date deep into May. At the last possible moment on a launch attempt last Saturday morning, the sequence was aborted when a pressure discrepancy was spotted by the computer in the number five Merlin 1C engine.

Today, however, things went off without a hitch.

After the launch and separation, NASA and the SpaceX crew watched as the Dragon supply and crew module successfully separated from the Falcon 9 rocket and deployed its solar array, another enormous milestone for the program.

Today kicks off a roughly two-week mission for the Dragon module that, if all goes well, will lead to the first docking between the International Space Station and a private space vessel. In the macro view, a successful Falcon 9 and Dragon program means that NASA has a much more affordable crew and cargo transport vehicle that frees them from dependency on the Russian Soyuz. Success could even mean that NASA has the freedom to work on something even greater, perhaps a heavy launch vehicle that can deliver crew and cargo beyond low Earth orbit.

Replace the Catsuit: Art Entry from Gorram Girl

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We’ve got the first entry for the Replace the Catsuit Contest! Gorram Girl checks in with a lovely piece of fanart.

Now doesn’t this look way more functional than a banthahide catsuit? Love the jacket. Really, really dig the headscarf.

Thanks for submitting this entry! And remember, the new deadline to help costumers out is August 15th. That should give you plenty of time to get something put together for the late summer convention season.

Your Favorite Non-Force Sensitive Expanded Universe Characters

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One of the most popular responses, Winter Celchu

There’s no getting around it. It’s been another slow news spell and really, things have been dry since the Internet’s Bad Star Wars-Themed Pun Day. Which is why we decided to crowdsource blog content to you. Again.

This week’s Twitter List asked you to tell us your favorite non-Force sensitive Star Wars Expanded Universe characters because we firmly believe you don’t need a connection to the Force to be a badass. To the jump!

Continue reading →

Falcon 9 Launch Scrubbed, Rescheduled for Tomorrow

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Saturday’s attempted launch of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 launch vehicle and Dragon capsule looked like it was going to go off without a hitch. Until one second remained in the countdown.

Engineers have spent the last few days looking over the number five Merlin 1C engine and have determined the Falcon 9 can be cleared for another launch attempt tomorrow morning, only a few days after the latest scrub.

With any luck, at 3:44AM EDT the mission can resume and we’ll find out if we’re one big step closer towards a new crew transport vehicle.

New Her Universe Products Now Available

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All of those awesome new shirts and items that Ashley Eckstein and Her Universe have been previewing for the last several weeks officially went on sale at the site today. Some of these new products include …

Clockwise: Looking For Love In Alderaan Places tee, Sith racer back tank, Calavera Vader Scoop tee, and the Self-Rescuing Princess children’s tee.

To purchase one of the above or to check out the other new offerings, head on over to Her Universe.

Eighth Batch of ‘EG to Warfare’ Endnotes

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In this week’s batch of endnotes, author Jason Fry talks stormtroopers and women among their ranks.

A Female Stormtrooper Remembers: The femtroopers you see at cons are serious fans and work as hard on their costumes as anyone else does. Check out the work of Sith Vixen: Yes, she looks amazing in femtrooper gear, but she also looks great as Maul or a Kaleesh warrior, costumes that demanded an enormous amount of work.

That said, midriff-baring stormtrooper armor always struck me as a bit unlikely in-universe — I figured the Empire had female troopers, but I was pretty sure they weren’t wearing armor that looked like that. With this in mind, “female stormtroopers” was one of the first things I wrote down when beginning to work on the outline for Warfare.

This batch of notes has a lot of great material about stormtroopers in general. For more, head on over to Jason Fry’s Tumblr.

Live Action ‘Star Wars’ Series Still In The Works

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You can be forgiven if you’ve written off the live-action Star Wars television series.

Rick McCallum says that the project is still on the table and scripts have been written. The issue remains the cost of production. There’s an incredible amount of visual effects they want to work in, more than any of the films they’ve done in the past. Sadly, I think that this series just isn’t going to happen unless Lucasfilm is willing to scale back on the effects. Fans aren’t looking for a visual masterpiece in a television series, they’re looking for regular  installments of story and characters. You don’t have to squeeze blockbuster-grade visuals into a 45 minute television episode.

Perhaps the showrunners should call up Ron Moore for a consultation.

Via Club Jade

Avengers Sinks Universal’s Battleship

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(Shane insisted we use that title)

Marvel’s The Avengers is still flying high at the box office, claiming the top spot for a third straight week and smashing all challengers into a fine pulp. This week, it seems, it didn’t have to work very hard.

Rotten buzz and superheroic competition sunk Universal’s “Battleship” over the weekend. Costing over $300 million to make and market, Peter Berg’s “Battleship” managed to sell about $25.4 million in tickets in its first weekend in North American theaters – a second-place finish behind “Marvel’s The Avengers” (Disney), which took in an estimated $55 million for a three-week domestic total of $457 million.

While it’s been a year of incredible blockbuster successes (Hunger Games, Avengers), it’s also been a year of embarrassing flops. Battleship joins John Carter as an expensive film that has not only stumbled, but faceplanted and rolled straight off a cliff in its domestic opening. At least John Carter can claim horrific marketing as part of its problem, though it was still a mediocre film. Battleship was marketed heavily to court the summer popcorn crowd. Unfortunately, moviegoers decided that they would rather see the eye-popping and well-written Avengers for a second or third time rather than another critically panned film based off of a Hasbro product.