Lost: Television’s Triumph of Ambition
June 14, 2005
Popmatters.com
Hard to say, really, which moment packed the most punch. There was the kidnapping of a child by spooky sea hillbillies, or the unexpected detonation of a new character by dynamite. The landlocked slave ship. The anthropomorphic smoke demon. The crazy French chick stealing the baby. The heroin addict’s apparent relapse. Or maybe it was the bio-mechanical island monster uprooting trees and dragging people underground. Tough call. Read the rest of this entry »
Da Vinci Turns Two
April 12, 2005
The Fiction of Historical Accuracy
PopMatters.com
Dan Brown’s mystery/thriller The Da Vinci Codeis the kind of phenomenon for which the words “mammoth” and “blockbuster” were seemingly invented. Every now and again, an author manages to find the cultural sweet spot with surgical precision, and many trees are felled to print the billions of pages demanded by hungry readers.
In fact, the book has been at or near the top of the sales charts for more than two years now — the first printing hit shelves in March, 2003. At one point, Da Vinci was selling around 100,000 copies per week. Two years later, and it’s still hovering in the top five of the New York Timesbestsellers list. To date, it has sold more than 18 million copies and has been translated into at least 44 languages. Everyone I know has read this book. Everyone you know has read this book.
More Than Human: The Promise of Biological Enhancement
April 5, 2005
PopMatters.com
MORE THAN HUMAN:Embracing the Promise of Biological Enhancement
The Bright Side of Biotechnology
The only way to discover the limits of the possible is to go beyond them into the impossible. — Arthur C. Clarke
Ridley Scott’s excellent and influential 1982 film Blade Runner — based on a Philip K. Dick novel — introduces us to the Tyrel Corporation, a kind of bioengineering firm writ insanely large. Tyrel manufactures robot animals as well as humanoid Replicants, androids that equal or exceed human capabilities and are used for “off-world labor.” Slaves, in other words. The film depicts one of cinema’s great futuristic dystopias, in which out-of-control technology has stripped Earth of virtually all life forms and replaced them with ersatz machines. Tyrel’s Replicant motto: “More Human Than Human.” Read the rest of this entry »
TV Poker: Don’t Believe the Hype
March 23, 2005
Published on PopMatters.com
Among the strangest spectacles available these days is the televised poker tournament. How is this possible? Ten strange-looking guys sitting around a table and staring at each other doesn’t seem the stuff of compelling television. And yet somehow, it is.
High profile programs are now regularly aired on ESPN (The World Series of Poker), Bravo (Celebrity Poker Showdown), the Travel Channel (The World Poker Tour), and Fox Sports. The major broadcast networks have also started picking up on the trend. For instance, this year NBC produced its own poker event — the National Heads-Up Poker Championship — to counterprogram against the Super Bowl pre-game shows on Fox. ESPN even has its own drama, Tilt, fictionalizing the world of high-stakes poker in Vegas. Poker is, suddenly, serious business. Read the rest of this entry »
Novel Idea: The Book Industry And The Web
December 15, 1999
Novel Idea
The book industry has its first bona-fide Web phenomenon. Will the music industry be next?
By Glenn McDonald, December 1999 Issue – Business 2.0
When author M.J. Rose found no buyers among traditional publishers for her first novel, Lip Service, she turned to the Internet. In a very smart way.
In 1996, Rose — whose real name is Melisse Shapiro — began shopping around her manuscript. But Lip Service had a problem, Shapiro says. Editors liked the story, but the marketing departments of the various publishers she approached could not figure out what to do with it.
“It’s a thriller and it’s a love story,” Shapiro says. “But it’s also erotic and a little bit — oh, I don’t know — intelligent. It’s not a genre book, and that’s a big problem these days with markets being so pigeon-holed.” Read the rest of this entry »
