Rice in the mail

"The Year of Rice and Assault" went back out in the mail this morning, first thing. We'll see Shiela Williams' opinion of the piece within a few weeks, I expect. And I expect her opinion won't be so very high. Once she says no, I'm stumped as to where to send it next. Familiarity with the news story I pointed out in my original post on the matter isn't particularly necessary to appreciate (ahem!) the dogmatic absurdity of the piece (for the record, Gordon Van Gelder was familiar with the incident in question) but it certainly helps. So it's not dependent on "Ripped from the headlines" knowledge, but it's not entirely timeless, either. I could send it to SciFiction, which wouldn't buy it, but Ellen Datlow would probably enjoy the heck out of it anyway. Beyond that, submitting becomes even more of a crapshoot. We'll see what suggests itself in the interim.

In completely unrelated joyful news, I've just learned that ADV will be releasing a boxed set of the Shusuke Kaneko Gamera films:

Join Dr. Nagamine, Inspector Osako and the lovely Asagi Kusanagi as they attempt to unravel the mysterious and deadly monster attacks of both the Gyaos and the Legion. With the “help” of the military, the survival of the human race depends on them. And the fate of the world depends on a gargantuan, aeronautic and flamably breathed reptile—Gamera, the guardian of the universe!

Gamera the Complete Collection (SRP $39.98) is a DVD-only release, including three feature length films on three discs housed in a new textured, metallic shell with a zillion extras. Disc 1: Guardian of the Universe in both English 5.1 and Japanese 2.0 language versions with English subtitles. Disc 2: Attack of Legion and Disc 3: Revenge of Iris in both English 5.1 and Japanese 5.1 language versions with English subtitles.

I saw Gamera: Guardian of the Universe a few years back, and found it extremely good and worthy of a good portion of the praise being heaped its way. I haven't seen the other two films, but understand that they are even better. As a kid, I loved watching the old Gamera films such as Destroy All Planets and Gamera vs. Baragon on Saturday afternoons. They were as much fun as Godzilla films, and I probably enjoyed them more since they were more specifically targeted toward kids. And as much as Gamera was a blatant knock-off of Godzilla, the design work and approach still showed a degree of inventiveness and creativity. I still hope to see a Godzilla vs. Gamera film one day, but I'm not holding my breath. Until then, this set will be a welcome addition to my DVD collection.

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