Five dollar friday: Chaos Royale

I like the idea of A Tiny Revolution's Five Dollar Friday. Each Friday, I'll donate $5 to someone creating stuff and giving it away on the internet.

This week's donation: Chaos Royale. A guy, or group, or something who creates really grimy, loud, thrashful dancy-type stuff. It's music from a really scary future. It makes my head explode, in a good way.

Recommended.

Film: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

This movie had some fucked-up stuff going on. And I could have lived without the last 45 seconds. But definitely worth seeing.

Spoilers below:

Funding fun

Some guy at some website proposes spending $5 every friday by giving it to someone who's doing something interesting (or worthwhile) and giving it away for free. Sounds like a great idea. I'll give it a try!

Book: Sound of Water by Sanjay Bahadur

A mining accident in India through the eyes of several different people, none of them much likable.

The author's a former mining bureaucrat, and it shows. 

Saturn's Children by Charles Stross

Humanity's extinct. The solar system's populated by its creations and their descendants. (Robots, in other words)

A great universe. The story's somewhat confusing, but certainly entertaining.

Musicals and sf

Great post by Hal Duncan at Charlie STorss's site about how he wrote a musical. And about how he wrote a screenplay, because, as he says,

the main reason I wrote it is because "gay kid" and "high school movie" don't mix in Hollywood. (I know this for a fact cause if you Google those strings the top hit is a post on my blog -- not an IMDB entry or a proper review, but a post on my fucking blog -- and I know how low my traffic is. But that's another rant.) Every last scrap of sanity in me says that trying to sell such a project is an act of utter folly. But fuck it.

Word.

Book: Metatropolis edited by John Scalzi

A group of five novellas (novelettes?) set in a shared, post-peak oil world.

This collection was initially released as an audiobook, I think. Not sure it makes a difference, though.

The works explore the future of cities after the end of expanding capitalism. Right down my alley, for sure. What do you do with skyscrapers when the concentration of labor's no longer required?

There's a lot of casting about for alternative economic and physical structures.

Recommended.