The Solution: Using a patent-pending technology involving space-age polymers, I produced several clones of myself. These clones, virtually indistinguishable from the real me, descended upon Comic-Con. Their mission: Collect data. Collect Schwag. Analyze. Report.

Here are the images they returned:

I arrived at Comic-Con, fresh, full of excitement and ready to begin the weekend.

Ah, the floor of Comic-Con. So many comics to browse. Where should I start?

How about Larry Nemecek’s Next Generation companion?

Here I am, taking a moment to freshen up in the mirror. Yep, everything seems in place, although my stalker in the background is unamused.

I didn’t have the heart to tell him that I prefer my Transformers Generation-1-style. But I’m sure he gets that all the time.

I don’t have a PS3 (I’m a PC gaming guy myself), but Little Big Planet 2 looks undeniably cute.

Also, in case you didn’t know it, I had a part in a little movie you probably haven’t heard of yet. It’s called “The Expendables,” and it’s going to be this generation’s “Star Wars.”

After realizing that “Stormtrooper Slut” perhaps made me look too easy, I decided to go with “thorny and unapproachable.” I dare you to try now, Stormtroopers!

How could you go to Comic-Con, and not attend an overcrowded panel? Here I am watching Wil Wheaton… I think.

And, of course, the highlight of my Comic-Con journey — getting to hang with Eddie McClintock, who I’ve decided may be a rich man’s Ben Browder after all. He’s a classy guy, even if he did get a little handsy.

What would a good Comic-Con trip be if I slept in a bed? Exhausted, I passed out long before I made it to my room. What a great trip!

The most specialest thanks imaginable go to my bevy of clone handlers, most notably PhysicistLisa, Bkquinn, Geek6Christy and StarfleetMom. One lucky handler will be mailed an “Art of Star Trek” book as soon as I get back from vacation and have time to cull through all of the entries.

SQUEEEEEE!!!! I’ve always been torn between wanting to be the first female Dread Pirate Roberts, or just making out with the current Wesley version of him…

Somehow I think having a replica of his sword will not help me in my decision.

BUT! The same company, Factory Entertainment is making a Inigo Montoya sword.  Obviously so my husband and I can recreate the best.sword fight.ever.

Though I’m a little worried of what would happen if I fought left handed.  I’m kinda a bumbling bookish sort of warrior.  Don’t let me tell you that story about the cannon and my right big toe, people might make fun of me.

So, we just finished the last episode of Legend of the Seeker.  The entire episode was a curtain call to nearly all the characters they’ve brought from the books, which led me to think about how many story lines and characters we’ll never get to see. A sampling -

The Boy Army – Kahlan lead a bunch of green soldier boys to defeat a horde of evil men known as the Imperial Order.  I’ve seldom gotten that excited while reading a novel.  I’ll always be a little wistful that we’ll never get to see how truly epic Kahlan was (even though she was sufficiently epic in the series). Now my heart has grown all cold thinking about the sacking of Ebinissia…

Richard Becomes a Wizard and Lord Rahl - while touched on in the TV series, it would have been fulfilling to see him accept his gifts along with his responsibility.  Plus it hurts to see how Nicci had started to become epic, so close to being a trustworthy and awesome member of the team (jI realize she had about a half a season of character development to get to that point, but it was in the works!), only to have the series end.  Le sigh.  At least we still have the books.

The Mud People – They were kinda important.  And yeah, I guess you don’t REALLY need them, but they had a lot of interestin’ developments among them folks.

Warren, Nathan Rahl and Benjamin Meiffert - Warren was one of the greatest characters in the book, in a “you get em nerdy dude” sorta way.  Nathan would have been a very entertaining add to the series and Benjamin, well, I just want to see Cara happy.  (Although one of my favorite parts of the series was when Leo died and my husband went “man, don’t fall in love with Cara, you’ll get burned.” Get it? Cause of how he…got…burned..)

Emperor Jagang – so. much. evil.  The series really isn’t complete without Jagang sitting at his table eating, cloudy eyes staring cruely out to some enslaved Sisters of the Dark as animal fat drips onto his bulging chest muscles.  gross.  awesome.  Also, we need some game of life action, am I right?

Sculpting – we got a tantalizing hint when Kahlan’s father is revealed to be a sculptor before his confession, but man I need to see the unwashed masses be moved by a piece of artwork post haste!

Redwall – I’d say one of my biggest introductions to modern fantasy was not Lord of the Rings, or The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (I wasn’t a fan of the Hobbit and couldn’t get into Prince Caspian, things have changed since I got older, but at the time, no).  Redwall, however, had all the adventure and excitement and awesomeness of high fantasy, with the accessibility of fuzzy animals.  Let’s just say 11 year old Autumn was sold.  Maybe I had my own rat at the time. Maybe she had a cape.  Maybe that was especially awesome because rats can leap, and a leaping rat in a cape is a sight to behold.  I can neither confirm nor deny.

Wrinkle in Time Series – ok, so pretty much everyone has read The Wrinkle in Time, but that book has nothing on some of it’s sequels.  A Wind in the Door still gives me the shivers and Many Waters is beyond amazing.  I don’t want to spoil it, never does an author combine science, fantasy and human nature with such grace as L’Engle did here. 

Momo – This story is insanely popular outside of the US (there’s even an opera, also written by the author) but never got much attention here, it’s by Michael Ende, who also wrote “The Neverending Story” (pictured above, as I don’t have my own copy of Momo).

Voyage of the Dawn Treader – I recently read all of The Chronicles of Narnia and this one BY FAR is my favorite (though I don’t recommend reading them out of order).  It’s got a boat, what can I say.  It’s kinda like the road trip story of the Narnia series, and there are some absolutely beautiful passages along the way.  Plus I guess I have a thing for sword fighting mice…

Boy Proof – I highly recommend reading everything by Cecil Castellucci, but most especially Boy Proof.  It’s the story of a young nerdling living in LA who’s obsession over the latest Sci Fi movie has led her to take on the persona of the main character.  It’s an outer symptom of inward turmoil that comes with the territory of being a nerdy girl.  Plus I totally made Cecil’s day when I asked her to sign my copy in line for Star Wars.  Also check out her “Plain Jane” graphic novels.  If you’ve read The Guild comic the artwork is done by the same guy, Jim Rugg. 

A Great and Terrible Beauty - This one is also about a young girl, but this one living in 18th century England.  A modern take on the Gothic novel that makes me giggle with awesomeness while I read.  I’m already a fan of the genre, having read all the classics, so it was fun to read a modern version of the same type of novel.  It’s part of a trilogy, and I still haven’t read the third one, looking forward to it!  Nothing like a little boarding school witchcraft!

What’d you recommend?

The Hobbit – If you’re going to read it, read the annotated version by Douglas A. Anderson.  When I first read this when I was 12 I didn’t like it at all.  Bilbo was a pansy and I preferred my heroes to be, well, more heroic.  I read this version in my late teens and it really helped me understand where he was coming from, plus has a side by side comparison of the changes he made when he published LOTR.

The Sword of Truth Series – If you enjoy Legend of the Seeker, go read the books it’s based on! As someone who came upon the books after watching the first season I didn’t have the frustration a lot of the fans of the books had about the TV show.   The books are gritty, pulpy fantasy at it’s finest.  My favorite is probably “Faith of the Fallen” (note I do NOT recommend reading them out of order) mostly because it is so very much not like a normal fantasy quest.  Plus there is sculpting with chisels, which is one of my favorite things to do, so I might have been a tad bit biased.

Ursula LeGuin – She’s a master of both fantasy and science fiction.  One of the finest novels I’ve ever read was “The Left Hand of Darkness” and I say fine because the story has stuck with me.  I’ll find myself recalling certain scenes years after I’ve read the book, it’s definitely a mood piece, which I always enjoy.  If you’re craving magic, go with “The Wizard of Earthsea”  I just finished it myself.  I think it’s style jarred me a little because I’d been reading the “Song of Ice and Fire” series prior and “Earthsea” is very much written as a fable, whereas

Song of Ice and Fire – is a twisted political/family/character drama set in the realm of fantasy.  It will tear your gut out with it’s awesomeness.  There were times where I was gripping the pages the action was so intense, and waking up from dreams inspired from the tale.  It felt real and it felt pertinent, which is the best kind of escapism.  Read it, and then join the masses who are pissed off the new one isn’t out yet.

The Baroque Cycle – This three novel series by Neal Stephenson is one of the most intense science fiction pieces I’ve ever read – because instead of existing in some future plain the writer can make up, it exists entirely in our past, encompassing everything from the black death to binary.  For serious.  Also, there are pirates which immediately makes me biased.  It also does something nifty by going completely around the world during the baroque era instead of focusing on one country or continent, setting the stage for the world to come which just a hint fantasy to get my nerdy heart pumping.  Fun Fact – he wrote the manuscript on paper using a pen, the entire stack is at the Sci Fi Museum in Seattle, I seen it!

Next post I’ll do young adult fantasy that endures!

Valyrian Steel has officially licensed replicas from the series.  The part of me that gets giddy over a fine sword was particularly tickled by the fact that Martin sent the replica of Needle to the girl who plays Arya.  They have pictures up on the site, check it out!  They also have a replica of Longclaw and will soon be doing King Robert’s warhammer.

You know what I say to that?  Hip hip huzzah.

Where the crap did that come from?  I checked my twitter feed right before bed and Felicia had dedicated her Streamy to all the geeky girls and apparently I shouldn’t read heartwarming tweets before bed.

I also shouldn’t watch LOST, as I recently had a the most epically nerdy dream that I woke myself out of just so I could remember it.

In it the extras/plane survivors were actually Starfleet members trying to take down the smoke monster who was in actuality R2-D2.  They trap him in the polar bear cage but he’s got his rockets going and OH NO he’s actually a T-1000 he’s turned to his liquid form and is coming for us!  I think I woke up once they were getting their blasters readied.

Bryan, stop closing your eyes!

I asked around and I’m not the only one with this phenomenon

BFF Amy’s sister often told Amy she was talking to Star Trek characters in her sleep.  Amy claims she has no memories of the dreams but I’m betting they revolve around one Ensign Wesley Crusher.

I broached the subject to twitter -

Tracy said when the LOTR movies were in production she had bad dreams that they were terrible.

Ruth said she often dreams she is trying to write code and it’s not working at all (nightmare!  eep!)

Different Amy dreamt that she was Mrs. Adrian Veidt.  She had a purple jumpsuit and was deeply convinced he’d done the right thing.  This disturbed her.  I don’t blame her.

Oh, and one more classic from my childhood – i was dreaming I was in the Star Trek – TNG ready room and red alert was going on, which turned out to be my alarm clock.  It was extra frustrating going to school that morning, I had space emergencies to attend too!

Note – Bandmate Bryan was an extra in the new star trek and can be seen with his eyes closed in the above picture.  If you want in on the joke.

Note – Never explain an inside joke with a celebrity, it invariably leads to awkwardness and dream haunting.

Share your dreams!

Cori showing off her awesome

After much debating (we decided that Caprica Six and Helo would make to bizarre of a couple, for one) we settled on having Richard and Kahlan from Legend of the Seeker to be our cake topper.  But there are no LOTS action figures to be found!  What’s a girl to do?  Why, have the same magic friend make some custom fondant figures!  And so she did!

It's a combination of me and Drew and Kahlan and Richard, hence the different hair color

Details are as follows: the sword that Drew is holding is painted with real edible silver, edible 14K Gold, and is adorned with a real Swarovski crystal.  Ever the attention to detail Cori  also made the tooth necklace seen on his neck.

Details on Kahlan are the sleeves, the chest area, with the lacing detail on the front, and the hood in the back, and  detailing had the 14K gold on the arms.

Never mind the Medal of Yavin Drew has on, that's a post for a different day

Let me know if you’d like to see more of Cori’s stuff, it’s all on facebook.  Pictures courtesy my fantabulous photographer Christina Domingues.

You can't touch us. Don't even try. We are golden gods.

I was sitting around the house other day as my wife was in another city on business and my son was asleep. I was tired of Wii and have not had the internet hooked up yet.

That meant I got to dive into the DVD collection. Really it meant unpacking the DVD collection finally after moving in, but I was watching something as I did.

I settled on Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring.

All I know is that it was the right choice and it will always be the right choice. And it was as I watched the first disc of the collector’s edition that I realized that all fantasy movies from this point forward have to try and touch what The Lord of the Rings trilogy did.

Forgive this being…oh…about eight years old, but even at this point, nothing has touch what LotR has done. But here are my quick points of why this is in my head.

• The score for the entire trilogy is amazing. This piece of the equation is easily my most favorite. From the highs of heroes to the dark of evil to the lows of sad passing, each piece is a perfect fit to go with what is going on during the movie. And it doesn’t even need cinematography find its way into my everyday listening. This by itself is why I continue to lobby my local symphony to dedicate a program to The Lord of the Rings. Or heck, even bring in The Radio City LotR Concert. Thank you Howard Shore.
• Whoever did the costuming for the show should be hired for every movie made from here on out. It took what was in my brain and stitched it for the actors to wear.
• I am not a big CGI fan. It is definitely why I really don’t want to see Avatar (though I have been told I am going Sunday). And I for one am damn happy they took the less is more route with LotR. They had plenty of opportunity to light up the screen with twinklies and didn’t. Instead they relied on camera angles and playing with scale to make things work. Thank the gods
• The feel of the entire movie felt real. Yes this is a fantasy world. Yes walking trees and scabby little goblins don’t walk around the streets where we live. But damned if they didn’t make me feel like they should be. Still not sure if I want to go traipsing around the woods of New Zealand for fear of running into an orc. Here you compare what feels real and what does not.

or

One of these things is not like the other.

And for fear of incurring wrath, I do have to say that the LotR trilogy supplanted the original Star Wars trilogy as the trilogy of choice. I knew there was a reason that once a year we have an LotR marathon complete with themed meals.

I have my Browncoats. That itch I scratched last Thursday with our local Can’t Stop the Serenity screening.

Then I have my Wheel of Time. You might have noticed the overkill of posts over the last two months leading up to the release of The Gathering Storm, the twelfth book in The Wheel of Time books series. The series was started by Robert Jordan who passed away and is being finished by Brandon Sanderson.

And that Wheel of Time itch I got to scratch Monday night while serving as a Storm Leader at a Sanderson book signing for The Gathering Storm. It was an honor given to me by Tor Books and Dragonmount.com. It basically meant I helped with the signing event itself, moving people around, passing out schwag and surrounding myself with other fans.

The real treat of the night was being able to sit down with Sanderson for dinner. My fellow Storm Leaders and myself were able to run questions and theories by Sanderson during the dinner and dessert. He was open when he could be, held back on the spoilers when he could and was guarded when it came to the integrity of the secrets of the series.

But aside from that dinner with Bran the Man, here are just a couple of things I enjoyed about the night.

• It has been some time since have been surrounded by my fellow WoT fans. A couple of years at least. And something of this magnitude? That would have to harken back to when players on Wheel of Time Mud would get together for weekend campouts and general geekery.
• I love that as I walked up and down the line, handing out schwag, that the range in the age of those in line went from the young to the old. For some of those standing in line, the first book in the series had to have been released before they were even born.
• I realized that my WoTbrain is inferior to many of those out there. Being honest with myself, I knew this was going to be the case. It had been far too long since I had read the series to be current with everything. I had left my theory guessing behing me. And there were those there would would just blow you mind with minute facts drawn from a single passage in the fourth book. It was awesome. A bit rejuvenating even. And drives me to finish the reread of the series that I failed on before The Gathering Storm was released.
• Sanderson is a full on geek just like the rest of us. You can tell he loved this series before he was even asked to finish it. So he has something invested in it. And he will routinely talk about Magic: The Gathering with fellow fans. He can strike up a conversation about many other fantasy writers as well. And he is a fan of conventions, with Salt Lake City’s local CONduit coming up quite frequently.
• Sanderson toed the line and lasted until the very end as well to make sure everyone there, including the Storm Leaders. And then he left a plethora of signed copies at Sam Weller’s (a very cool independent bookseller in Salt Lake City) for those who may just wander in.
• Many fans were there not only for themselves but others as well. Going out of the way to get a friend’s book signed is one thing. But getting a brand new book signed for someone you hope to introduce the series to? That is just plain sweet.

So after a great night with Sanderson, my fellow Storm Leaders and all the fans, I consider myself lucky to be part of this particular fandom. Thank you for scratching my itch.

As for my review of The Gathering Storm? You will have it when I finish. I curse you work!