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The fastest reflexes modern technology has to offer. On-board computer-assisted memory. And a lifetime of on-the-street law enforcement programming. It is my great pleasure to present to you: Robocop.

The boy insisted for months that he wanted to be a robot for Halloween. His sister was a robot when she was his age. We looked at various robot images on the computer and he was most intrigued by Robocop. After I showed him the trailer, there was no convincing him otherwise. He was going to be Robocop. Which was good, because Detroit has a Cancer. That Cancer is Crime
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AP – Christie's employee Caitlin Graham poses with a Darth Vader costume in London, Wednesday, Oct. 27, 2010.

Tweet: @darthvader I send my suit out for dry cleaning & this is what happens. Someone will pay dearly, most likely @vaderssecretary

LONDON – The Force can be with you — for a price.
Christie’s auction house says it is selling an original Darth Vader costume from the “Star Wars” movie franchise.

The jet-black helmet, mask and armor worn by the intergalactic villain are expected to sell for between 160,000 pounds and 230,000 pounds ($250,000 and $365,000) at a sale of pop culture memorabilia next month.
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WOW! the details in this knit sculpture by fiber artist Ben Cuevas are divine!
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via twitter.com/NASA ISS 10th anniversary programming on NASA TV throughout the day http://www.nasa.gov/ntv

1. This author seems to have an October fixation, giving us such books as The Halloween Tree, Something Wicked This Way Comes, and The October Country. Name him.
2. In this Star Trek episode written by Robert Bloch, the Enterprise encounters aliens Korob and Sylvia, who menance the crew with the trappings of Earth’s Halloween.
3. In this dark fantasy by Fritz Leiber, Norman Saylor strains the limits of conjugal love when he learns that his own wife is a practicing sorceress.
4. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein can be viewed as the progenitor of modern SF. But “Frankenstein” is the name of the doctor. What was the name of the monster?
5. In Stephen King’s The Stand, a U.S. military facility accidentally releases a deadly mutation of what illness?
6. This Song of Kali author’s penchant for horror shows up in his SF as well, giving us dark visions such as the Shrike. Name him!
7. This 1997 movie starring Laurence Fishburne and Sam Neill tells of an experimental spaceship which has literally gone to Hell and back.
8. Which of these creatures is not one of H.P. Lovecraft’s creations?
   A) Tsathoggua
   B) Mi-Go
   C) Nyarlathotep
   D) Yog-Sothoth
   E) Sotsugyou
9. This collection of short stories was inspired by a filk song of the same name. Whose ghost is haunting Space Station Three?
10. This prolific SF writer gave us such works as Venus Plus X (not to mention an important literary Law), but also wrote Some of Your Blood, a nicely horrific vampire novel.

(Answers below the fold)

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Steampunk is many things to many people. It is a literary style. An aesthetic movement. A way of life to some. It was with all this in mind I decided to ask more than a dozen people what they thought Steampunk is. I told them all a sentence would suffice as I wanted an off-the-cuff reaction, but many went much longer. The answers run the gamut from textbook to a bit silly, which seems about right.
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what came first, the sugar skull or the sugar panoramic easter egg? i have no idea. but they are constructed out of the same sugar mixture. calaveras de azúcar as they are correctly known, start with sugar, meringue powder and a tad of water.
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What could possibly bring together a 450 pound vampire slayer, a drunken, acid-tongued detective, a good natured carpenter, bureaucratic vampires, giant anacondas, mutant vampire bats, Ho Hos, Twinkies and more one-liners than a night at the comedy club? Dunkin, the vampire slayer blends all this discordance and more into a hilarious adventure that moves from the muggy heat of Florida to the muggier heat of the Amazon. ….If Carl Hiaasson, Tim Dorsey and Dave Barry collaborated on a vampire story, it may have turned out like this absurd romp…. This is part one of a trilogy.
Available at podiobooks.com

It’s an embroidery pattern – but it’s an octopus! on an exploration, no less…

by corvustristis