Every bus heads full-speed toward the edge of the cliff. All but one falter, and tumble to their doom. The last one flies across the chasm, landing heavily, the passengers screaming but alive. Then we do it all again next year

#1576; In which the Audience participates (Part 3 of 3)

  — October 31st, 2025

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World Science Fiction Convention

This week I’ll be in Reno for my first-ever World Science Fiction Convention! I’ll be in the dealer room with my Machine of Death co-editor Matthew Bennardo, but I’ll also be on the following panels:

Thu 16:00 – 17:00, The Science Fiction and Fantasy Canon within Comics
What are the essential science fiction and fantasy comics?
Tom Galloway (M), David Malki, Andrew Wheeler, Scott Edelman

(I will say right now that my answer to that question is “Um…aren’t 90% of mainstream comics considered science fiction?” And then I will make jokes to mask my nervousness. If you have suggestions for BRILLIANT ANSWERS I can whip out to seem learned on this panel, please leave a comment on this post.)

Thu 18:00 – 19:00, Making Wondermark: Victorian-Style Collage with a Humorous Bent
To make the celebrated comic strip “Wondermark”, David Malki repurposes illustrations and engravings from 19th-Century books into sarcastic, silly, and surreal collage-style comic strips. Come watch how it’s done and find out if he’s as funny in person as he is in comics!

(I’m somewhat more comfortable with the subject matter of this one.)

Fri 11:00 – 12:00, Ultimate Steampunk – Could the Victorians Have Built a Flying Carriage
While the Victorians built guns, trains and submarines, they never quite got off the ground. But, what if they had built a flying carriage, a spacesuit or a non-loom computer?
David Malki (M), G. David Nordley, Allison Lonsdale, Harry Turtledove, Lawrence Person

(My role as moderator of this panel will chiefly be to say, “Have you guys seen Master of the World with Vincent Price and Charles Bronson? It would’ve been like that, right? Right?”)

Fri 14:00 – 15:00, Book Design and Layout
A review of the process and challenges involved in designing and producing a book once the written word is in hand.
Tara O’Shea (M), David Malki, Sandra Tayler

Sat 15:00 – 16:00, Editing Anthologies
How do editors approach anthologies? Do they just call their friends, or do they (or their assistants) plow through slushpiles? Do the “Best ofs” present special issues?
David Malki (M), Jennifer Brozek, John Joseph Adams, Ellen Datlow

Sun 12:00 – 13:00, Humor in SF and Fantasy
Groucho Marx said that comedy is harder than drama. What are the challenges of writing humor? Who are influences — inside the field and out?
Peter J. Heck (M), David Malki, John DeChancie, Dr. Demento

I’ve also been playing with a new toy — an Eye-Fi camera card that will allow me to take pictures with a nice (non-mobile-device) camera and shoot them straight to my iPad for uploading to the Web. I’m going to try to make a habit of sharing pics all week long on my Twitter, so keep an eye out for those! Are you curious what the inside of the Reno State Convention Center looks like? No? Well, you’ll soon find out.

Machine of Death Volume 2 submission stats!

It’s taken us a while, but we’ve finally entered all the data for the story submissions we received for the upcoming second volume of Machine of Death! I wrote up a bit about it for the MOD blog:

The final few days of submissions felt, for us, in a weird way just like October 26 of last year. The flurry of activity we witnessed on Twitter, on Facebook, and on blogs as you finished writing your stories was incredibly energizing.

It’s a wonderful feeling watching people become enthused and finding reward in the thing that you asked them to do. It makes us not want to have to turn anybody down for Volume 2! But we received 6,373,643 words of submissions — if we published all of it, it would be longer than all the Harry Potter books and all the Lord of the Rings books and all the Song of Ice and Fire books and all of Stephen King’s Dark Tower books put together. You guessed it — we’re having a very busy couple of months, reading all of this!

(Read more)

For more details and all kinds of stats on the final count, as well as some neat new things we need your help with (do you know how to set up and run an academic survey? We’d very much like to pick your brain or enlist your assistance!), check out the full blog post.

Congrats to everyone who sent in a story, or three! We’re reading furiously, and I gotta say, it’s super fun. You devil, you made me have fun!

A mystery, solved.

Regarding Comic #741, that tale of the elusive goofy elk…Dave D. writes in with this to say:

David,

You have inadvertently solved a mystery that has been troubling my wife and I for years. A few years back, we picked up a dog from the boyfriend of a customer who couldn’t care for her anymore. She is a mixed breed of some sort, but we are the third owners and have only her original vet papers which claim she is a “Rottweiler/Shepherd/Lab?” She clearly has some Rottweiler in her, and most often is mistaken as a Rottie puppy since she is only 60lbs and has a lot of energy. She also has a tongue much too large for her skull and a rather silly demeanour.

Well I was reading your comic, as is my habit, and you’ve solved it! I would bet the farm that she is a Rottie/Goofy Elk cross. Although the attached picture does not show it as well as it might, she does make the exact face of the beast featured in the latest strip. It would also explain why I have been feeling more and more Marty Feldmanish … Feldmany .. Feldmanesque .. with each passing day.

Anyhow, I have always loved your comic but I hadn’t realized what an educational tool it was. Thank you.

Cheers,
Dave

Dave enclosed the photo below. To which I can only say…SEPARATED AT BIRTH???

One way to put leftovers to use

Sam S. writes in with a follow-up to Comic #717, which addressed the issue of leftover food. Sam pointed me to this article about Reed College’s culture of “scroungers”, who hang out in the cafeteria and pick over others’ leftovers:

Scrounging is definitely a social activity. There are stretches of time where there’s no food—just five or six students standing around talking. In that way, scrounging provides common ground for people who may share very few similarities other than being a Reed student who doesn’t want to pay for his or her food…

I was impressed with the communal spirit of the Scrounge. There’s plenty of sharing and no hoarding. With most items (pizza crusts are a biggie), scroungers take a bite and pass it along. Etiquette dictates that scroungers use forks, not fingers. Then again, a few scroungers are partial to spoons and at least one uses really long chopsticks.

Full article here! On what is seems to be a pretty interesting blog entirely about the subject of food waste.

I first wrote “entirely about the subject of wasting food,” which is also true, but which seemed to subtly suggest that the blog advocates the wasting of food. Tips on how to throw away tomatoes more efficiently, and so on.

Word choice matters! Or so I keep telling my first wife. (Whom I am happily married to.)

Go see Star Trek reenacted live!

Over the weekend I was in Seattle, and when I mentioned that startling fact on Twitter I received an invitation from @pdunwin to attend “Outdoor Trek,” a live “Shakespeare in the Park”-style performance of Star Trek by the theater company Hello Earth.

It was great! It’s playing one more time, this coming weekend on both Saturday and Sunday, and it’s totally free to attend. I’m only marginally a Star Trek fan myself, but it was a really, really fun show put on by folks who’re clearly having a blast doing it. Live music, hula-hoop-heavy transporter effects, and the judicious use of Silly String just add to the experience. More info here!

Hello Earth took the idea from the Portland group Atomic Arts, who’ve apparently been doing “Trek in the Park” for several years, and who will be doing their own show (the episode “Mirror, Mirror”) one last time for the season on August 27. More info on the Portland show here.

This…this makes me want to start an outdoor theater troupe. Mine will be called “Airwolf under the Stars” and will involve remote-controlled helicopters. It will be the most unmitigated fiasco in history.


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