So Long MERP-dot-Com and Thanks for all the Essays

When I stopped writing Tolkien and Middle-earth essays for Suite101 many years ago my friend Hawke Robinson asked me to continue writing for his Website, MERP.com. Dedicated to Middle-earth role-playing gamers, MERP.com served as a springboard community for about 30 Tolkien-related Websites through the years.

Read the Latest Articles on SF-Fandom

It has been a few months since this blog was updated with information about happenings on SF-Fandom. Sorry for that. Among other things we have devoted much of the summer to fighting off spammers and hackers. The brute force dictionary attacks appear to have calmed down (for now). The spammers keep splattering their proxy IP addresses and email addresses against our brick wall defenses.

Fan reviews of the Avengers on the Web

I have written a review of "The Avengers" for the SF-Fandom forums. "My Take - 'The Avengers' rocks but 3-D is out of focus" is where I'm telling people what I think about the movie and Disney's disastrous attempt to adapt it to 3-D.

Fans of John Carter Planning a Second Movie

So when a major studio makes a movie for $350 million and needs to generate $600 million in box office sales, no one is surprised when the studio announces a $200 million loss after 6 weeks of good-but-not-good-enough box office sales. "John Carter" as everyone knows by now earned most of its money outside the United States, where young audiences stayed away in droves. The movie opened against "Dr. Seuss' The Lorax" and was subsequently clobbered by "The Hunger Games". With almost $300 million in ticket sales, "John Carter" has nonetheless failed to earn enough money for anyone inside Hollywood to give serious thought to making the 2 previously planned and promised sequels.

Legend of the Seeker Fans Planning April 26 Tweetathon

Fans of the cancelled TV show Legend of the Seeker continue to raise awareness of the show and to demonstrate their support for the franchise with a new Tweetathon set for Thursday, April 26. You're invited to join the fun. You can even use Web tools like Hootsuite and Tweetdeck to schedule Tweets if you cannot be online from 12 Noon Pacific Time to 2PM Pacific.