OK, so you may have already heard that we're up for the Hugo for Best Fanzine! Journey Planet edited by James Bacon (also up for Best Fanzine for The Drink Tank AND Best Fan Writer), Chris Garcia (same as James!), Emma King and Helen Montgomery (for the Gender Parity issue!) and Pete Young for the Blade Runner issue! It was an amazing year for us, simply fantastic. If you didn't read the three issues we put out, The Blade Runner issue (http://efanzines.com/JourneyPlanet/JourneyPlanet12.pdf) is one of the most beautiful zines I've ever seen. Pete did the layout and it's spectacular. David Hartwell even said so when I gave him a copy at WorldCon! It's got writing from James, me, Pete, Graham Sleight, James Shields, C.A. Chicoine, James Mason, Tonya Adolfson, and many many more. There's issue 13 (http://efanzines.com/JourneyPlanet/JourneyPlanet13.pdf) which has something like 50 contributors including folks I'd been wishing to have words from, including Gail Carriger, Carrie Vaughn, Alisa Krasnostein, and John Picacio! The James Bond issue, the last one of 2012, has thoughts on Bond from Andy Trembley, Kevin Roche, James, Me, Lynda Rucker, J. Daniel Sawyer, Julie McMurray, Taral Wayne, Chris "Glug' Hensley, and Alissa McKersie! It's a lot of fun with an original Alan Beck cover!

Now, the first issue of Journey Planet of 2013 is up on our Weebly site, http://journeyplanet.weebly.com) and is about The Write Stuff, writing and so on, with Guest Editor Lynda Rucker. There's so Deep Cuts on this one! We've got us, the wonderful Gail Carriger, Robin Hobb, Seanan McGuire, Mike Carey, Lauren Beukes, Maura McHugh, Lynne Thomas, and many, many more! It's a lot of fun!

And the next issue is all about Philip K. Dick with Pete Young coming back on to join us! We're working with some great stuff, including a Tim Powers piece AND a couple of things that I'm pretty sure PKD himself would have enjoyed.

And again, Woohoo!
Chris
This has a lot of Spoiler-y content, so you might wanna not go through it unless you've seen Skyfall.

You see, I did a run-through of all the Bond films leading up to the Bond issue of JP (which, if you haven't read it yet, it's up at (http://journeyplanet.weebly.com/uploads/1/5/7/1/15715530/journeyplanet14bonds.pdf)
and I finally watched Skyfall a couple of times, and had a lovely chat with John The Rock Coxon (and you should be reading him at Chickensinenvelopes.net now, as he does AWESOME stuff!) and he pointed out that it was no less sexist a movie than any of its predecessors. He pointed out that the female agent couldn't hack it, was put out to pasture as an office worker to be there for Bond to hit on in the future as Miss Moneypenny. I thought for a moment and found that I both agreed and disagreed.

You see, yeah, I can see where John's coming from, that the only two strong female characters in this movie are M and Moneypenny. You know what happens to M if you've seen it, but we lose Moneypenny to the trill of the Office. This is after she performs both admirably, and less-than-admirably, in the field. Does choosing to not be a field agent make her any less of a important figure? I don't see it that way. She settled down, and I think this talks more and more to Bond's inability to settle down; his deathwish. She's smarter than Bond and knows when to get out with her life. M said it long ago: Double-0s have a short life expectancy. It is not unreasonable to leave that, no matter what gender you are, and Bond doesn't have that option, largely out of his own sense of duty. And Moneypenny stands as almost as tough an agent as Bond, especially when she tracks him down, obviously without his knowledge.

Now, what interests me the most is that we finally have a reason for the Moneypenney-Bond flirtation. Watch Skyfall and see all the points where she takes the lead, grabs Bond by the sensual short-and-curlies, and then apply that to the back-and-forth that the two shared in the various other films. It finally makes sense. The two work beautifully together in the film, and my guess is that the two of them in the future will see Moneypenny taking more of the lead. I can't wait to see what they do with it, but there are so many options!
CHris

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