Ladies and Gentlemen, Death*Star has arrived. Alert listeners to Seattle Geekly will have heard us talking about Death*Star on occasion, mostly about the remarkably good quality of their live performances. Well now I’m going to do it again. Death*Star had the release party for their first full length CD, The Fandom Menace on Saturday at the Blue Moon Tavern. The arrival of the long-awaited album and the performance they gave on Saturday have moved them solidly from the “hey, these guys are pretty good” category to the “holy crap, why aren’t these guys famous” category.

The show on Saturday was opened by Ultraklystron who effortlessly kicked out a set that I imagine most performers would happily trade a major internal organ to be able to pull off and Billy the Fridge also made a brief appearance. I’ve seen Billy the Fridge live three or four times now and he just gets better every time.

The highlight of the night, though, was Death*Star. The addition of DJ Bill Beats backing up C0splay and MC-3PO pushed their sound over the top to straight up amazing. You should absolutely pick up The Fandom Menace, which Bill Beats also contributed heavily to, but if you are a serious fan of nerdcore you owe it to yourself to see Death*Star live. Songs like ‘Bounce’, ‘Quick and the Dead’ and ‘Sound of Nerdcore’, which are strong entries on the album, are brought to a whole new level when performed live. There was a large and enthusiastic crowd at the Blue Moon on Saturday but that seems to be fairly typical of Death*Star shows. Fortunately Death*Star seems to enjoy playing live so you should have plenty of opportunities to catch them if you haven’t already.

Your Monday Tuesday news is under the fold.

Books

• Wil Wheaton and John Scalzi are teaming up for an interesting cherity project. From John Scalzi’s blog;
  

  For the benefit of the Lupus Alliance of America, John Scalzi, Wil Wheaton and Subterranean Press are running a fan fiction contest, in which contestants write a 400 to 2,000 word story describing the picture above. Any form of fan fiction is acceptable except slash. The winner of the contest will be paid for their story (10 cents a word), win a prize pack of books from Subterranean Press, and will have their story published in a special electronic chapbook featuring stories about the painting, written by Scalzi, Wheaton, Catherynne Valente and Patrick Rothfuss, to be published later this year, with profits to benefit the Lupus Foundation of America. E-mail the stories with the text in the e-mail to fanfic@scalzi.com by 11:59pm Eastern, June 30, 2010. One entry per person.

  The painting in question is the image to the right, which you can click on to embiggen.

  MMO

  
  • If you’ve been waiting impatiently for more information on the development of the DC Universe MMORPG you’re in luck. Game Director Chris Cao and Creative Director Jens Anderson have put out another in the series of Inside the Studio videos in which they answer questions posed to them by fans on Facebook. They have some tantalizing information about character creation (which is always the best part of any superhero game in my opinion) including the option to create a character “inspired by” existing DC characters that you can then customize. DCUO is set for release this November, and will be launching simultaneously on the PC and PS3 platforms.

  Movies

  
  • Multiple sites across the internet are reporting that Guillermo Del Toro has stepped down as director of The Hobbit. Del Toro blamed “the mounting pressures of conflicting schedules” for his decision. MGM, the studio behind the proposed two-film adaptation, is mired in finacial trouble and the start date for shooting has been delayed multiple times. On the up side, maybe this means Del Toro will finally get around to making At The Mountains Of Madness

  Music

  
  • Jonathan Coulton has a new album in the works! He made the announcement on his blog last week. According to the post, he will be debuting new songs at a couple of live shows next month (both on the east coast unfortunately) and then heading to New York to start recording. He promises “fantastic new songs with talented musicians using high quality audio equipment” but offers no release date.
    
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