Author Archives: Tim Byrd

Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band = Pure Unadulterated JOY

Sunday night, my ex, mother of my child, treated me to Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band at Phillips Arena. Pretty damn cool considering we’re still in the middle of a custody fight, but we still get along very well, overall…even though we’re still in the middle of a custody fight.

We were standing on the floor, about sixty feet in front of Bruce, and the show was phenomenal. I’ve seen him four times with the E Streeters, once with the Seeger Sessions Band a couple years ago (we actually drove up to Jersey for that one), and once solo acoustic on the Ghost of Tom Joad tour, and there is simply no one who puts on a better show.

Aside from being a volcano of energy and charisma, Bruce gives you a hell of a lot of rock and roll for your money. Back in the day, he would sometimes play over four hours a night (as he did the first time I saw him, on the Tunnel of Love tour), and Sunday he played for right around three hours. That’s with no intermission, too. The man clearly loves his job, and every minute is turbo-charged.

Also, no Springsteen show is ever the same. He changes the set list every night, and you never know what he’s going to play next. This tour, he’s taken this a step further: at one point in the show, he paced around the stage, reaching into the crowd and taking the signs people had made requesting songs, and he played those requests. Not only is the set-list ever-changing, it’s now dynamic. Even Bruce and the band don’t know everything they’re going to play in a show. Continue reading →

Regarding Doctor Who

doctor-roseI was about twelve or thirteen when I first found out about Doctor Who. The Doctor, though he’s nearly a thousand years old, is also only about four months older than I am, having made his debut in Nov. 1963 (I debuted in March 1964). But his adventures were on the BBC, and I was stuck in Bumfu Jonesboro, GA, where we didn’t get much BBC except whatever nuggets got picked up by PBS.

So my first exposure came through Doctor Who paperbacks, that I think were probably just novelizations of episodes from the show. I can sort of remember the covers, and I enjoyed them enough as a young teen that I lamented the fact I couldn’t see the actual series.

Later, and I have no idea how much later, I got to see an actual episode. Maybe it was being shown on PBS, maybe I saw it at a science fiction convention…I’m not sure. All I recall is that I was seriously disillusioned, because the show had really cheesy special effects and was, I think, campier than I’d expected. And I really don’t care for camp as a general rule. Even as a kid I disliked it.

So for most of my life, that was my Doctor Who experience. And I remember instances where I cited the show when joking about low budget genre productions that were really cheesy.

Doctor Who is the longest running science fiction show in the world. The original series ran from 1963 till 1989, there was a TV movie in 1996 that was a failed attempt at relaunch, then the show successfully relaunched in 2005 and is going strong. At this writing, there are 753 episodes. There are also two spinoff shows involving characters who originated on Doctor Who (Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures), with a third in the works focusing on The Doctor’s robot dog K-9 from the 1970s.

I watched the TV movie in 1996, and for the first time since reading those paperbacks I enjoyed Doctor Who. I don’t remember anything about it now (I’m going to rewatch it soon to see if it holds up to my older, more jaded standards), but at the time I was disappointed it didn’t go to series.

Then, recently, I started watching the rebooted series that began in 2005, and it’s simply one of the most marvelous television shows there’s ever been. Continue reading →

Bruce Springsteen: Further On Up The Road

Saw Bruce Springsteen and the E. Streeters last night for my fourth time (I also saw his solo acoustic tour, and went to Jersey to see him with the Seeger Sessions Band…yes, you can touch me, especially if you’re cute). They were brilliant as ever. I’ll no doubt blog a bit more about it later, but in the meantime, here’s a great performance from the Seeger Sessions tour for you to enjoy…

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Joss Whedon Hilariously Accepts the Bradbury Award

Joss, showing yet again how freaking funny he is, as he accepts the Bradbury Award this year from the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America.It’s heartening that the Story God was so inspired by Ray Bradbury. Bradbury was the guy who made me decide to be a writer.

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Doc Wilde Has A Bookgasm

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Order Now!

Monday morning, groggy with no coffee in the cupboard, eating my oatmeal without raisins (you may figure out it’s shopping day), checking email and Facebook and Twitter…

And finding the latest review of my book, Doc Wilde and The Frogs of Doom! It’s by Bruce Grossman at Bookgasm (“Reading material to get excited about”), and it has made up for my caffeine deficiency this morning.

…Growing up, being turned on to a series like Doc Savage opened up a new world to most readers, but the problem is that those books — even reissued so nicely — might not appeal to this new generation. Kids will look at the covers and just go, “Oh, that’s old.”

Byrd has come up with a perfect idea to showcase what pulp reading is all about. He does not hide the fact one bit that he is reworking the Doc Savage template for the character of Doc Wilde. There are so many nods and winks to the old series that we oldsters will enjoy this “ribbiting” read.

Byrd’s writing never talks down to its young readers, and all his characters are well-defined, not relying on the old stereotype of children who constantly fall into danger. The kids in this book come off as little adventurers who are ready for action and smart enough to quote H.P. Lovecraft, while Wilde is a second-generation adventurer totally in the Savage vein. Wilde’s father is a version of Doc most of us read growing up, still living at the Empire State Building on the 86th floor…

I love it that people are really getting what I tried to do, and enjoying it. Read the whole review here.

Jon Stewart, National Treasure

Jon Stewart at his best, taking conservatives to task for the escalating hissy-fits they’ve been throwing since they legitimately lost an election (as opposed to illegitimately winning one)…

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A Children’s Author Ponders Doc Wilde

docwilde1

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Children’s author Gail Gauthier read Doc Wilde and The Frogs of Doom and offered up some interesting thoughts about it on her blog. She seems to have had trouble pigeonholing it as she read the first part of the story: Continue reading →

ALERT: First Doc Wilde Signing Rescheduled

Earlier, I told you folks that the Doc Wilde and The Frogs of Doom official debut event was to be held on Friday, May 15th. That is no longer the case.

Instead, it will be held the next evening:

The Day: Saturday, May 16, 2009

The Time: 7 pm

The Place: Little Shop of Stories in beautiful downtown Decatur, GA.

Little Shop is one of the finest bookstores in the Atlanta area. It lives next to the Starbucks in Decatur, GA., and is mostly dedicated to books for young people, but also has a smart selection of grown-up fare for grown up kids.

It’s one of those small bookstores that springs from a place of obvious vision and love, with a warm, knowledgeable staff and comfy couches. They’re very active in the community, working with schools and literacy programs as well as helping organize the famous Decatur Book Festival. And so much stellar talent has passed through that the wall behind the counter is like a museum, covered with wonderful sketches and notes from writers and artists who have visited.

I’m thrilled and proud to be officially debuting the Wilde’s adventures at Little Shop, and hope to see you there!

Listen To My Radio Debut

mikeI was slated to be on Alpha Waves, the Internet science fiction radio show tonight, one of three guests discussing pulp fiction, as I mentioned in this post. But I realized that I’d agreed to it without remembering that tonight was also the debut event of my friend Terra Elan McVoy’s first novel, Pure. I checked with the guys at Alpha Waves, and they cheerfully agreed to prerecord my segment. Thanks for the flexibility, guys.

So, this morning I called in via Skype and host Nick Chase and I discussed Doc Wilde  and pulp fiction for a while, and it was a good time, even though it was my first time doing this sort of thing. I just listened to the full show with my son, and I have to hand it to the hosts, they do a great job. Eric Mona of Planet Stories and writer Gareth Michael Skarka were interviewed in the segments before mine, and were both very informative and entertaining, leaving me wondering if we’d get to my bit and I’d be all like “Uhhhh…dopey me…” in comparison.

Well, I’m pleased with the way it turned out. That being the case, I’m actually going to tell you where you can find it if you want to listen to it:

Alpha Waves Radio: Pulp Fiction

How to Save Dollhouse (or whatever show floats your boat)

tv
An excellent article on “The Big Money,” which is an offshoot of Slate, breaks down the fruitlessness of trying to boost the numbers of people watching a show as it’s televised if those people are not in the microscopic subset of watchers with Nielsen boxes:

Trying to convince more people to watch a struggling show on TV is entirely useless. The television industry is not a democracy; the only votes that count—scratch that, the only people allowed to vote at all—are the 12,000 to 37,000 households that have Nielsen boxes sitting above their TVs. Nielsen boxes are poll stations for the Nielsen company—the organization that reports all of the ratings for the television industry. If Nielsen doesn’t know you exist, then neither do the TV networks. And if the TV networks don’t know you exist, then tuning in to an endangered show is a waste of everyone’s time. If a show is turned on and Nielsen isn’t there to hear it, it most definitely does not make a sound…

…But the country has only somewhere between 12,000 and 37,000 homes reporting back with data. Compare that with the more than 112 million television-equipped households in this country. Now, even if we assume that these Nielsen readings are accurate—and there are many who believe that’s not the case—the huge gap between 12,000 and 112 million means almost everyone is stripped of an actual voice in the process….The “save our show” campaigns are ill-advised because they fail to take into account this all-important gap between the sample size and the size of the sampled audience.

The way to bypass this shitty system is to watch the episodes of your beloved show online:

The alternative is to drive people where they can actually be counted—and these days that’s online. The Internet offers metrics everywhere you turn. The networks can analyze the number of streams, number of ad impressions, number of page views, number of visits, number of visitors, number of comments, etc. It’s a democratic space where the eyes and participation of fans can actually be seen by the network bosses making the decisions. Unlike with analog TV, online fans can actually speak directly to power. So whether it’s through iTunes, Hulu, or one of the networks’ proprietary streams, the smart way to campaign for a show’s renewal is to stream it after the fact…

You can also record the show on your DVR, then watch it within three days. If you do that, it gets counted. If you just watch the show live through that same DVR, you don’t count. Let me say that again, lest you missed it: if you’re watching your favorite show live, your viewing does not count. Unless you’re a Nielsen household.

So if you want to help Dollhouse stay on the air, or The Sarah Connor Chronicles or Chuck or Gene Simmons’s Family Jewels (gods forbid), do your part by either recording your show on DVR and watching it soon after, or by watching (and even rewatching) episodes online.

And, I point out to you again, the last several episodes of Dollhouse are available to watch free, right this minute, on www.hulu.com. Get thee hence.

Ronald Reagan: Douche Bag

From Time:

It was revealed last week that the future President played another role as well: as a secret FBI informant, code name T-10. According to an article published in the San Jose Mercury News, documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act indicate that Reagan and his first wife, Actress Jane Wyman, provided federal agents with the names of actors they believed were Communist sympathizers.

Well, golly, I sure am surprised.

The Truth about the Columbine Killers

An interesting article in the USA Today updates our knowledge about the two losers who shot up their classmates at Columbine, and puts the lie to much of the information that has been parcelled out over the years:

“These are not ordinary kids who were bullied into retaliation,” psychologist Peter Langman writes in his new book, Why Kids Kill: Inside the Minds of School Shooters. “These are not ordinary kids who played too many video games. These are not ordinary kids who just wanted to be famous. These are simply not ordinary kids. These are kids with serious psychological problems.“

The whole article is quite interesting, and can be read here.

Hope for Dollhouse

At the Paley Fest event dedicated to Dr Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, Joss Whedon updated folks on the Dollhouse situation with Fox:

We also talked about next season, they called me specifically to say we’ve been hearing you sound a little despondent, being very clear about this, the show is not cancelled. The numbers have been soft, but the demographic is wonderful. DVR is great, they [FOX] are big fans of the show and they’re waiting to see what happens, so now I’ve gone from a place that’s sort of ehhhhhh, they don’t even care, no one loves me, to a place of – God, I can’t believe I’m saying this…hope.

So…fingers crossed. Keep watching the show, or start watching if you’re not, it’s great (remember, you can find the last several episodes online at www.hulu.com).

Doc Wilde, Good For Boys AND Girls (re: another excellent review)

The latest review (I started to say latest good review, but so far they’re all good!) of Doc Wilde and The Frogs of Doom is from Tracy Farnsworth at Roundtable Reviews:

To be honest, I wasn’t sure what to expect from this book, but I was pleasantly surprised. I did find it reminiscent of old Johnny Quest with the snappy dialog, unusual foes and general camaraderie between the kids, their father and their father’s assistants.

I can’t say that all girls will love this series, but I know quite a few who will. Meanwhile, I know for certain that boys, especially those who like Indiana Jones, Johnny Quest and adventure movies like National Treasure and The Mummy will love it!

I’m glad she made a point of saying that quite a few girls will love the Wildes, because it’s very easy for folks to slot the book into a “boys’ book” category, when actually it’s good for both genders by design. Wren Wilde is as involved and smart and capable as her older brother, Grandma Wilde is a strong and powerful woman (though exactly how strong and powerful will be revealed in later tales), and female readers thus far have enjoyed the wit and action of the book, but also the closeness and warmth of the Wilde family.

Additionally, it’s written to be sophisticated enough for adult readers, operating on multiple levels the way something like The Incredibles does, so it’s meant for everybody who can read.

The rest of the review is here.

Tim Byrd to be on Alpha Waves Radio 4/17/2009

radio
This coming Friday, April 17th, I will be on the Internet radio show Alpha Waves talking about pulp fiction and Doc Wilde:

You’ve been to Airlock Alpha, the best science-fiction news Web site on the Internet. Now listen to the online radio show that comes with it, featuring hosts Wayne Hall and Nick Chase along with great guests from all over science-fiction. Alpha Waves airs every Friday at 8 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT on BlogTalkRadio!

The theme of the evening is pulp, and other guests will be Erik Mona of Planet Stories (a publisher of classic science fiction and pulp), and writer Gareth Michael Skarka, whose love of pulp fiction resulted in the roleplaying games Thrilling Tales and Mars (which recreates old-fashioned sword & planet adventures ala Edgar Rice Burroughs’s John Carter of Mars tales), as well as the pulp anthology also called Thrilling Tales (which features a new adventure of classic serial hero Commando Cody, precursor to The Rocketeer). Gareth’s also a friend.

So if you want to listen and see if I can actually converse in an intelligent manner, remember: Friday, April 17th, 8 pm EST, at this link. [NOTE: As I write this, the listing on their site has me as “Tim Boyd.” But really, honest, it’s supposed to be me, Tim Byrd. I’m only known as Tim Boyd in Brooklyn. I’ve emailed them to let ’em know.]

Joss Whedon Speaks

Story God

Story God

Joss Whedon went to Harvard to accept the 2009 Lifetime Achievement Award in Cultural Humanism, and science fiction site io9 was there. A few highlights: Continue reading →

Another Great Doc Wilde Review!

Uber-reviewer Harriet Klausner has posted a review of my novel Doc Wilde and The Frogs of Doom. The first part of it is a plot summary that contains some major spoilers, but the meat of the review is all good:

DOC WILDE AND THE FROGS OF DOOM is a fun pulp adventure that pays homage to Doc Savage while targeting the tweener crowd. The story line is fast and lighthearted as the heroes battle mutant frogs. With literary quotes ranging from Seuss to Lovecraft and beyond, Tim Byrd avoids dumbing down his novel. Young readers will relish the escapades of the Wilde family and friends as they struggle to save the world one croak at a time.

Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse: Smart as Hell, Kicking Serious Ass

dollhouse

If you’ve been following my reactions to Joss Whedon’s new show Dollhouse, you know I was luke-warm toward it at first, then really annoyed with it, then after seeing episodes 6 and 7, I really started to like it and said it was good, but not quite Joss good yet.

Well, now I’ve seen episodes 8 and 9, and I’m loving the show.

Since episode 6, “Man on the Street,” they have fixed the anthology-show weakness that plagued the first five episodes, and each episode has focused on the Dollhouse and its people rather than on the misadventures of their clients-of-the-week. The evolution of Echo as a character is fascinating to watch, considering there’s not supposed to be a character there, but there most definitely is. Those are some still waters running very deep. And the development of relationships and character backstory gets more and more compelling; in this latest episode, “A Spy in the House of Love,” we find out the major secrets of a couple of characters, one of which is a complete surprise and leads to a much deeper understanding of that character, leaving incredible potential for the stories ahead.

There are many themes at work here. This latest episode played brilliantly with matters of trust, from the first conversation between Echo and her handler Boyd, to the implications of their final scene. And seeing the Tabula Rasa Echo step forward as an instigator of significant action was a masterstroke of storytelling and character; I literally got goose bumps.

That a character with no agency develops agency through her own innate strength, even while devoid of her past and identity, is an incredible dramatic device. This show is all about how people use people, and issues of power and responsibility and all that, but the most important thing it’s about might just be the re-enfranchisement of the disenfranchised.

Who on earth could be more disenfranchised than the dolls? Their very selves ripped out of them, programmed and reprogrammed to serve the desires of others, they are the ultimate slaves. And here we have one of them somehow growing as a person right before our eyes, and you just know there are big things ahead.

And hopefully we’ll get to see all of the big things Whedon wants to show us. Fox is playing its usual bullshit games with the show, and now for some reason has decided to show this entire season (and a tenuous “kudo” to them for doing that, at least) except the thirteenth and final episode. Apparently the 12th wraps up the season tidily, and the 13th is sort of a coda after the fact…but still. It doesn’t indicate that the network is supporting the show, and doesn’t bode well for a second season.

But, hopefully they’re watching the reviews, which have been excellent since episode 6, and will recognize they have a gem on their hands and will allow it to grow. This is not just a damn good show, after all.

This show is Joss good.

[NOTE: As of this writing, you can watch episodes 5-9 at www.hulu.com. The show started really getting good in ep. 6, but 5 is pretty good and has some impact on events in later episodes. If you haven’t seen them, catch ’em while you can.]

Doc Wilde @ The Baryon Review

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Order Now!

Another rave review for my book, Doc Wilde and The Frogs of Doom, this time from Barry Hunter at The Baryon Review. Here’s a taste:

If you remember the pulps and Doc Savage, you need to pick this one up. It’s a true delight and will be something your children will enjoy as well…

[Tim] Byrd has taken Doc Savage, added in a pinch of Robert E. Howard, a liberal dose of H.P. Lovecraft, and mixed it all together in a well done, enchanting pastiche of the pulps that will appeal to the adult audience as well as the young adult readers. It is over the top, at times, rip roaring adventure that returns us to the days of yesteryear and leaves us wanting more. I hope to see more from Tim Byrd and Doc Wilde in the future.

The rest is here.

Got an actual copy of the book yesterday, a great review today…feeling pretty good.

Be All You Can Be (Stay a Civilian)

The past decade has seen a severe resurgence of militarism in the American psyche, a wave George W. Bush surfed gleefully as he destroyed our economy and standing in the world, embroiled us in a needless war instead of pursuing the actual war on terror, and decimated a generation or three as he enriched himself and his pals. It became mandatory to pay tribute to our brave troops and their sacrifice, and any criticism of the military or Bush’s invasion was refracted back on the critics as an accusation that they “didn’t support the troops,” were unpatriotic, or even that they supported our enemies.

Thankfully, after eight years of Bush’s shit, all but the dimmest of the dim realized what a disaster he was as a president, and what a colossal fuckup the Iraq war has been. We have a new president, who is doing a pretty good job overall, though I have concerns (then again, after two terms of Bush, Obama could do nothing but stand in the sun smearing feces in his hair for a year and I’d still give him kudos for doing a better job), and hopefully sanity has mostly returned.

I have always been against the war in Iraq. When Bush “won” in 2000, I predicted that we’d invade. Being correct was not a point of pleasure. I am not blind to the inevitability of war, or the necessity to defend one’s nation “against all enemies, foreign and domestic,” and indeed I voluntarily served in the US Army in large part out of a sense of duty. I believe in fighting when you have to, or when it’s the right thing to do (like our routing of the Taliban and al Qaeda).

So, as a patriot, and a veteran, I’d like to share with you, Continue reading →