Category: love death+robots.

books. love death+robots.

The Art of LD+R

Today is my birthday, so I’ll call this one a birthday gift because it arrived in the mail this afternoon. 

It’s called The Art of Love Death + Robots, and it showcases the artwork for all the episodes from the three seasons of LD+R on Netflix. My contributions to Season 1 were “Shape-shifters” and “Lucky 13”, as seen below. 

It was pretty wild to see the stories take shape on the screen and watch someone else’s interpretation of my work. (It’s mind-blowing that dozens of people worked on those animated episodes for six months or more, when each of those stories took me maybe a week or two to write.) And I could definitely get used to seeing my name in the credits.

 

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books. bullets & links. capitalism. love death+robots. shameless self-promotion.

Love Death + Robots anthology on sale this week

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If you enjoyed Love Death + Robots on Netflix and you would like to own the anthology of all the short stories that were the basis for the first season, I have good news: it’s on sale this week at Amazon for the low, low price of $2.99 for the Kindle version. Here are the links for the respective regional Amazon pages:

 

US: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0923HJQ5G

UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0923HJQ5G

Canada: https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B0923HJQ5G

Australia/NZ: https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/B0923HJQ5G

India: https://www.amazon.in/dp/B0923HJQ5G

 

The anthology includes both “Lucky 13″, which was the basis for Episode 13, aptly called “Lucky Thirteen”), and “On The Use Of Shape-Shifters In Warfare”, my Army-Werewolves-in-Afghanistan story that was the basis for Episode 10, “Shape-Shifters.”

frontlines. love death+robots. writing.

Frontlines 8, now with title!

Earlier this month, I started work on Frontlines #8. If I stick to my schedule (and so far I am), the draft should be complete by the end of July. I can’t give you a precise publication date for a novel that isn’t complete and turned in yet, obviously. But if all goes as planned, the novel should be out in the first half of next year, probably around April or May.

Oh, and Frontlines #8 has a title now. The novel will be called CENTERS OF GRAVITY.

Until then, the third novel in the Palladium Wars series, CITADEL, will be released on August 10. Things are coming to a boil in the Gaia system, and if you’re looking for a bunch of military SF action mixed in with your space opera, CITADEL has plenty of it.

Speaking of release dates: the official LOVE DEATH + ROBOTS anthology is available now. It contains all the short stories and scripts that were the basis for the first season, including my own LUCKY 13 and SHAPE-SHIFTERS. (Sadly, I am not on the list of contributors for LD+R Season 2, but I am fine with letting some of the other kids have a turn on that swing set, so to speak.)

In other news: the weather is gorgeous, all denizens of Castle Frostbite have had their Pfizer shots, and it looks like we will be able to safely get together with friends and family in the second half of the year. I’ve booked a week-long get-together with some of my close friends (who will also be fully vaccinated), and I can’t tell you how much I am looking forward to hanging out with people in person again. Thank you, science.

 

books. capitalism. love death+robots. shameless self-promotion.

Love Death + Robots anthology is live for preorder

 

The official Love Death + Robots anthology for Season 1 is up for preorder. It contains all the stories that were used as source material for the episodes, including my own “Shape-Shifters” (Episode 10) and “Lucky 13” (Episode 13).

The anthology is available on May 21 from these sources:

Amazon US: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0923HJQ5G
Amazon AU: https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/B0923HJQ5G
Amazon UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0923HJQ5G
Amazon CA: https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B0923HJQ5G

As far as I know, these will be on Kindle only, but I’ll update if I learn otherwise.

frontlines. love death+robots.

“A love story between a pilot and her drop ship”

Here’s a short YouTube clip featuring the making of the “Lucky 13” episode of Love Death & Robots on Netflix, narrated by the director Jerome Chen, and featuring lead actor Samira Wiley.

The day may come when I get tired of watching LUCKY 13 and SHAPESHIFTERS on Netflix, but it is not this day.

 

 

love death+robots. movies.

“Shape-shifters” and favorite werewolf designs

The Love Death + Robots crew has put up short YouTube videos highlighting the animation in the various segments. The one for “Shape-shifters” is here:

(CONTENT WARNING: Gore)

It’s a pretty awesome werewolf design, all in all, and the fight scene is just knock-down, drag-out violent.

I love werewolf movies, and one of my writing goals is to do a variation on the lycanthrope theme that goes against most common tropes. One day, maybe…when I have time to switch my brain from SF to urban or dark/horror fantasy for a while.

My favorite werewolf design from a movie is still this, though:

That’s the wicked “hound from hell” design for AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON, a movie that also still gets my vote for Best Transformation scene. The fact that it was all done with practical effects in 1981 and still holds up speaks to the genius of Rick Baker, who won the very first Best Make-up Academy Award for his work on that movie.

I generally dislike CGI werewolves because most of them are too fake-looking or Uncanny Valley when they’re inserted in live-action. It’s only in recent years that CGI has gotten good enough to do a convincing werewolf. (Number 2 on my list are the creepy-looking werewolves in DOG SOLDIERS, which–surprise–are also practical effects and costumes.) But when they’re CGI wolves in an all-CGI film like Shape-shifters, they can work very well indeed.

What is your favorite werewolf design on the screen? Let me know in the comments, and I’ll check them out if I haven’t seen the movie/show in question yet.

bullets & links. love death+robots.

Online sources for the LD+R stories

Andrew Liptak at The Verge has a handy post up that lists the online sources for most of the short stories serving as material for Love Death+Robots.

In related news, I’ll never get tired of seeing Samira Wiley as Lt. Colby, the pilot of Lucky 13 in the Netflix version. Yes, the original character in the short story is Halley, but they had to make a few minor changes for reasons. Just trust me on that one.

ltcolby

Regarding Shape-shifters, I want to let the veterans know that I am well aware of the fact that it has Marines address other Marines as “soldiers” (which they’d never do in real life; a Marine is a Marine and not a soldier.) But I guess they kept that bit because of the “dog soldiers” pejorative. In the original short story, Decker and Sobieski are Army, members of the 300th Special Operations Company (Lycanthrope), and the script writer for the show changed them over to the Corps without also changing the Army-specific terms in the story.

The two other goofs I noticed were Decker and Sobieski addressing the Master Sergeant as “sergeant”, and the Marines wearing their sleeves rolled while in the field. Both are details only few people outside of the Corps would notice, but every Marine would.) Rest assured that I know the differences. Regardless, it’s a kick-ass adaptation of the short story, and it’s really growing on me more and more the more I watch it. It’s even motivating me to pick up Decker’s universe again and go ahead with the series I had in mind for him. (The story was supposed to be part of his backstory.)

I’m super pleased with the way everything turned out, and the fan response has been phenomenal. Interestingly, “Shape-shifters” has tended to be either among peoples’ very favorite episodes, or all the way at the bottom of their lists. “Lucky 13” is either well-reviewed, or somewhere in the middle of the list, so Shape-shifters is the more polarizing one. (One of the viewers who hated it said it looked like bad Twilight fan fiction, which did amuse me.)

 

books. capitalism. love death+robots. shameless self-promotion.

Where to find “Shape-Shifters” and “Lucky 13”

I’ve had more than a few people asking where they can read the two stories of mine that were used for the (amazingly done) episodes in Tim Miller and David Fincher’s “Love Death + Robots” on Netflix.

Episode 10 of Love Death + Robots, “Shape-shifters”, is based on my short story “On the Use of Shape-Shifters in Warfare”, which you can find here on Amazon in DRM-free Kindle format.

Episode 13 of Love, Death & Robots, “Lucky 13”, is based on my short story “Lucky Thirteen”, a story in the Frontlines universe. You can find it here on Amazon, in Kindle and Audible formats.

Lucky Thirteen has been out since the early days of Frontlines, and many readers have downloaded and read Halley’s rookie pilot story already.

“On the Use of Shape-Shifters in Warfare” has never been published anywhere before today, but a lot of people have asked for an opportunity to get their hands on it, so I decided to make it available the same way I offered up Lucky Thirteen a few years back, via Kindle Direct. (The Kindle version is DRM-free and has lending enabled.)