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Two of today’s acclaimed horror novelist will be making a joint appearance in San Francisco, California on July 26, signing books and reading from their various works.

Gabrielle Faust and and the Bram Stoker Finalist author Michael Calvillo appear at Borderlands Books! They will be reading from their novels ETERNAL VIGILANCE and I WILL RISE, followed by an audience Q&A session and book signing.

Here are the details for the event:
Saturday, July 26th – Borderlands Books
Time: 5PM PT
866 Valencia St.
San Francisco, CA 94110
Ph: 415.824.8203
webmail@borderlands-books.com
www.borderlands-books.com

Check out the videos for the “Empyrean Age” and “Drawn by Pain” following the Fine Bros. parody clip.

From Benny & Rafi Fine - a.k.a. The Fine Brothers at RavenStake.com

We are offering a new giveaway that is co-sponsored with our friends at “The 5th Race,” a Stargate podcast. This prize will give two lucky people a chance at winning their own DVD copy of the 4th season of “Stargate: Atlantis.”

To enter the contest send an email to contest [at] sliceofscifi [dot] com and put SA-4 in the subject line.

The giveaway will run beginning Saturday July 19, 2008 through midnight Pacific time August 2, 2008.

As with all our contests: Any entries received without a name and shipping address will be automatically discarded.

Remember—only 1 entry per person per day.

Please note that while comments on the SoSF Website about our contests are appreciated, the only way to be entered for any of our giveaways is to send in your email.

If you are a Stargate fan check out “The 5th Race” podcast at the5thracepodcast.com.

What does an alien see when they gaze in the direction of our solar system and little blue orb of Earth we call home?

Scientists got their answer to that question after an Earth craft that is now 31 million miles away from us sent back pictures of the Earth and our orbiting Moon. The spacecraft is on a comet survey mission.

The view the craft sent back shows a brief video of Earth and the Moon and gives astronomers and other scientists some pretty important clues that will help humakind’s endeavor with future man and unmanned deep space missions.

“Making a video of Earth from so far away helps the search for other life-bearing planets in the Universe by giving insights into how a distant, Earth-like alien world would appear to us,” stated Michael A’Hearn, a University of Maryland astronomer who leads the project using NASA’s Deep Impact spacecraft.

“Our video shows some specific features that are important for observations of Earth-like planets orbiting other stars,” added Drake Deming of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

Video 1

Video 2

(Read more…)

Many people have been wondering why the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) refused to accept the new contract offered by producers, especially after the deal was sweetened with an additional incentive number in the millions of dollars ($250 million). SAG leadership and its 120,000 members have been mum on the issue until now.

On Thursday (July 17) those same members gave the union’s executive director, Doug Allen, permission to make their case publically known so that their side of the issue could be understood. In a letter from Allen each reason for rejecting the new contract was laid out in specific terms.

(Read more…)

Click on the banner for full details.

John Woo will direct comicbook adaptation “Caliber,” to be unveiled at next week’s Comic-Con in San Diego. Story takes place with King Arthur and his knights as 19th century gunslingers in the Pacific Northwest. Production not likely to begin until Woo completes “Red Cliffs - Part II.”

Hollywood producers and the Screen Actors Guild failed to reach a contract agreement Wednesday after meeting privately for two hours. The sides have no further meetings planned.

Will Ferrell ready to tackle another drama after the success of the 2006 feature “Stranger Than Fiction.” He is looking at a script titled “Two Face,” the story of a racist, who, after a prank gone awry, develops a split personality.

(Read more…)

Beginning in 2009 Nicktoons will play host to 26 animated episodes of the “Iron Man: Armored Adventures,” the new Marvel Studios Tony Stark/Iron Man series for the small screen.

Here’s your sneak peek:

Those going to this year’s San Diego Comic CON will be treated to a viewing of the entire first episode of the new series.

(Read more…)

Last month FedCon USA faded into, well, nothingness, and now word that another CON will be doing the same. JumpCON has announced it is canceling its big gathering set for Boston. Organizers of the conventions had recently closed-down their meeting in Kalamazoo, MI and Chicago. Now it’s Boston’s turn to be shut out.

The message came from organizer Shane Senter; a message that sounded somewhat familiar.

“I regret to announce the cancellation of our Boston event. Many factors that needed to come together to make it happen simply did not. We tried everything humanly possible and were unable to overcome the insurmountable obstacles. This is not to say that I don’t take the blame myself, I do. I wanted to see this succeed so badly that I was blinded to some warning signs that should have been obvious. If I have learned anything through this process it’s that running a convention business is far more intricate and fraught with peril than it seemed at the outset”

“I fully apologize to all the fans who’ve been inconvenienced by this late announcement and assure them that we’re in the process of getting you all refunds. I know there are airfare and other considerations for which you will be liable and for that I am truly sorry. I wanted to let you know today rather than keep trying to pull this off and end up like FedCon USA where the fans were already in attendance. Please accept my humble apology, but I’ll understand if you can’t.”

Sin City styled TV pilot, starring “Alien Nation” and “Star Trek: Enterprise” actor Gary Graham and featuring smoking hot babes with guns. Oh yeah, and the walking dead too. What more could you ask for.

Official website: DeadEndCityTheSeries.com

Source: Fox Sci Tech News

Newly released images from U.S. and European spacecraft support growing evidence that Mars once was a water-rich planet capable of supporting life. The new views reveal details of regions thought to contain water-bearing minerals and geological formations formed billions of years ago.

Stunning images captured by the High-Resolution Stereo Camera aboard the European Space Agency’s Mars Express show the cliffs, valleys and plateaus of Echus Chasma, thought to have been one of the largest water-source regions on Mars.

To View all images — (Read more…)

While the ruling two weeks ago from Judge Louis L. Stanton of the U.S. District Court in New York allows Viacom access to user ID’s and internet IP addresses, the media giant has opted to allow Google-owned YouTube to mask the online viewing history of the material downloaded from that video site.

This is considered a major victory for those who advocate privacy on the internet as paramount. However, Google still has to find a way to better protect that material in the future.

All this flap was brought on by a $1 billion (USD) lawsuit Viacom brought against YouTube for what it alleges to be copyright infringement taking place from the site’s online activity.

“We are pleased to report that Viacom, MTV and other litigants have backed off their original demand for all users’ viewing histories, and we will not be providing that information,” stated a spokesperson for Netco, a large internet privacy advocacy group. “In addition, Viacom and the plaintiffs had originally demanded access to users’ private videos, our search technology and our video identification technology,” it continued. “Our lawyers strongly opposed each of those demands, and the court sided with us.”

Netco and other privacy watchdog organizations have asked Google and YouTube on more than one occassion to find some way to never retain that kind of data in the first place.

Viacom, for its part, told the Daily Variety that it was pleased that Google would comply with the court’s directive to provide YouTube usage data, which it says “will highlight the way YouTube has used copyrighted material to build its business.”

Joss Whedon’s internet-only presentation of “Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog” was so popular for its opening night (Monday) online that the over 200,000 hits per hour literally crashed the Dr. Horrible Website.

It cost viewers $1.99 per download from iTunes, on which it was rated the N0. 1 video download on Monday and Tuesday, and was free on Drhorrible.com. It was that free offer that drove the site to cave-in under the weight of all the mouse clicks it received. It required a last minute scramble by Joss’ brother Jed to find a larger server capable of handling the overwhelming amount of traffic. Once that was done, the site was back up and running bright and early Tuesday morning.

Part two of the series will be online and iTunes on Thursday (July 17). “Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog” stars “Firefly”-”Serenity” Whedon alum Nathan Fillion, Neil Patrick Harris and Felicia Day.

“It’s about a low-rent super villain [Harris as Dr. Horrible] who’s trying to get into the Evil League of Evil and defeat his nemesis, Captain Hammer [Fillion] and work up the nerve to talk to the pretty girl at the laundromat [Day],” Whedon said . “It’s an idea I had a while ago, that I thought would be just right for a weird little Internet venture. I wrote it with my brothers [Zack and Jed Whedon] and my brother [Jed’s] fiancée [Maurissa Tancharoen] and somehow got the best actors I know to just jump in, which was very scary for all of us.”

[To view the Joss Whedon/Dark Horse MySpace page for “Captain Hammer Comics” click on the above image]

At this week’s E3 press conference, video-game giant Electronic Arts gave audience a glimpse their anticipated new game, “Spore.”

The game lets players begin with their own basic microbe and customize their creature to weather environmental conditions and population changes on Earth.

During the company’s E3 press conference, EA showed a brief trailer of the game and set a release date, Sept. 7, for the latest title from legendary game creator Will Wright, known for creating “SimCity” and “The Sims.”

The game was inspired by Wright’s love of science and his childhood chemistry set. (Read more…)