Billy the Fridge (middle) and Death*Star’s Cosplay (left) and MC3PO (right)

Just a couple of quick items before the news roundup. This Friday was Nerdcore Night at the Blue Moon Tavern in Seattle featuring performances by Billy the Fridge and Death*Star. It was a really good show and an impressively large crowd. Hopefully this means that there will be more weekend nerdcore nights in the future. We also learned that Death*Star is going to be playing a set and appearing on panels at this years Norwescon! We’ll have more pictures up on our Flickr page and some video on YouTube from Friday’s show soon.

Also this weekend was the Science Fiction + Fantasy Short Film Festival put on by the EMP|SFM. We’ll be having a full rundown on this week’s podcast but the short version was that it was an incredible slate of films and we quite happily sat in the Cinerama for close to seven hours to see everything. There was also a big announcement regarding a new exhibit coming to the Science Fiction Museum in October. Details are still sketchy but the staff at the SFM is putting together what sounds like will be an absolutely amazing Battlestar Galactica collection. EMP|SFM officials told us that the exhibit will be mostly artifacts from the new series, including a full sized Colonial Viper and a full sized Cylon Raider. What makes it especially exciting is that this is not a travelling show, this is being put together by and for the SFM. The BSG exhibit is scheduled to open October 10 and you can bet we’ll be talking more about this as additional details become available.

Finally, don’t forget to tune in this Thursday for the First Anniversary Seattle Geekly Podcast! We have an interview with a really cool guest and we’d love to hear from our listeners about how you all discovered our little corner of the geekiverse. Send us an e-mail or leave us a message on our voicemail line, 206-201-2352.

Monday News is under the fold.

Books

• Amazon suddenly and without any prior warning pulled titles from publisher MacMillan from their site late last week in a dispute over the pricing of e-books. MacMillan imprints include Tor Books, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, St. Martins Press and Henry Holt. By Sunday however, Amazon reversed themselves and restored MacMillan to its catalog. Amazon posted the following announcement of their site.
  

  “We have expressed our strong disagreement and the seriousness of our disagreement by temporarily ceasing the sale of all Macmillan titles. We want you to know that ultimately, however, we will have to capitulate and accept Macmillan’s terms because Macmillan has a monopoly over their own titles, and we will want to offer them to you even at prices we believe are needlessly high for e-books.”

  Tor author Brenda Cooper has a writer’s perspective on the dispute posted on her blog.

Comics

• Comics distributor Diamond has announced the winners of their 2009 Gem awards for sales in the comics and collectibles market. DC Comics dominated the awards, picking up ten including Publisher of the Year (Over 4% Market Share), 2009 Comic Book of the Year Under $3.00 for Batman & Robin #1 and 2009 Comic Book of the Year Over $3.00 for Blackest Night #1. Other notable winners included Dark Horse’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer which won 2009 Licensed Trade Paperback/Hard Cover of the Year and Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog DVD which won for 2009 Audio/ Visual Media of the Year. The full list of winners can be found on Diamond’s website.

Movies

• Rumors of the demise of the movie adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s Graveyard Book are apparently greatly exaggerated. The rumors began circulating because of the recent closure of Miramax by parent company Disney. Miramax had been developing the film but according to a post on Neil Gaiman’s blog the project has been moved to another studio and “everything seems to be coming together just fine”. The movie’s new studio home has not yet been announced.

TV

• The BBC series Being Human has been renewed for a third season. Being Human centers on a Ghost, Werewolf and Vampire who become roommates in order to try to fit in with the local community and restrain their more supernatural nature. It is being written by Dr. Who/Torchwood alumnus Toby Whithouse. The first season is available now on DVD and the second season is currently airing in England.