As Dan Schneider asks over on the Moderate Voice, what's the difference between Santa Claus Conquers The Martians and other films in the "so bad they're good" genre like Plan 9 From Outer Space,Robot Monster and The Beast From Yucca Flats? Santa Claus Conquers The Martians was made and targeted specifically for children! So grab the kiddies, pop this film into the DVD, and expose a new generation to a true classic of cinema.
Don't give away the film's ending by actually reading the book
So the chattering Hollywood classes are all agog at Will Smith accidentally giving away the ending to the upcoming film I Am Legend. Of course, anyone who has actually read Richard Matheson's 1954 novel of the same title probably has a decent idea what the mysterious ending is (unless Hollywood has totally butchered the storyline, which would be another reason to be all agog). Why do I suspect the people worrying about keeping the film's ending secret are all people who haven't read a single book in the last ten years?
UPDATE: Of course, one also hopes the director wasn't stupid enough to give the movie a happy Hollywood ending. But I'm not betting against it.
More SFWA
In a follow-up to yesterday's post about the SWFA, I wanted to mention that Tobais Buckell has quit the organization over all this pettiness. As he says:
I know people online will fight. I know people will struggle over differing opinions. But still, I have this odd opinion that more gets done in forums where respect and civility prevail. Yeah, I've been mocked for expecting that civility and professionalism decorum prevail, and even tried my best to lead by example. But it made no difference. I would happily remain in SFWA, if there were some other way that news was communicated timely to members without my having to wade into the muck, but as it is, too many big decisions came about in there, decisions that if I were part of an organization, I wanted input on.
And if I weren’t a part of 3 professional organizations (2 writers ones) that had online civility and professional, I might even imagine that the mockers were correct. But I’ve seen how professionals can conduct themselves even with wildly differing opinions, and I know what it is.
Amen to everything Toby says in his post. Hearing about all this from people like him has convinced me to keep my hard-earned money and sanity well away from this organization.
Resnick: Too many Hugos?
The new issue of Baen's Universe is out and features Mike Resnick's essay "Breeding Like Rabbits—Or Hugos," in which the Baen editor wonders if there are too many Hugo Awards handed out each year. When the Hugos were started in 1953, there were only six categories: Best Novel, Best Magazine, Best Cover Artist, Best Interior Artist, Excellence in Fact Articles, and Best New Author. Then came the Hugo for Best Fanzine, which Locus eventually began winning year after year. To even things up, the "Worldcon committee came up with a brand-new category--Best Semiprozine--where Locus could win every year to its heart's content and traditional fanzines could once more win the Best Fanzine Hugo." Then a second dramatic category Hugo was created because TV shows couldn't compete against movies, and this year a new editing Hugo was created so book and magazine editors wouldn't have to compete against each other.
According to Resnick, "it's become a bit of demonstrable folk wisdom that if you lose enough Hugos, sooner or later you can put together enough disenfranchised (read: Hugo-losing) friends so that you can get a new Hugo category installed and maybe have a chance to win one." The end result: Of the fourteen Hugos now given out every year, only four go to actual written science fiction--what Resnick says is the reason for the Hugos existing in the first place.
But is written SF/F the only reason for the Hugos? No. I agree with Resnick that written SF/F is the heart of our genre, but the SF/F community exists well beyond that. The problem with Resnick's argument is that when I look over the Hugo categories, there are none that I would get rid of. However, Resnick is correct that whenever one person or entity wins the same Hugo over and over, there are calls for creating a new Hugo category. One example of a coming problem along these lines is the Hugo Award for Best Fan Writer, which David Langford has won for almost 20 years in a row because of his great Ansible newsletter.
I'm sure the calls are already out there for a new fan writer Hugo so others can compete (although one wonders why writers can't simply compete by, well, out-competing Langford). I wouldn't be surprised if we soon see a "best blogger" or "best blog" Hugo split off from the fan writer award. However, a better approach might be to limit the number of consecutive wins any one author or publication can have in any given multi-year time period. Such an approach might stop the cascade effect Resnick worries about while continuing to honor those who contribute so much to SF/F.
Another reason not to join the SFWA
I now qualify for associate member status in the SFWA, but every time I think about joining I read something like this post from Charles Stross. John Scalzi has a less enraged view of the matter, but my thought is why join an organization whose sole purpose appears to be creating continual tempests in a teapot among its members. I mean, there are already enough ways for life to distract me from writing without bringing in even more drama.
Best SF/F of the Year, Volume 2
John Joseph Adams has posted the line-up for The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, Volume 2, edited by Jonathan Strahan and published by Night Shade Books. While the anthology won't be out til next year, I'd suggest reserving a copy. Among the selections I've read is Ted Chiang's "The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate," which remains one of my favorite stories from the past year. Stories I haven't read but look forward to seeing include "The Witch's Headstone" by Neil Gaiman and "The Last and Only, or, Mr. Moscowitz Becomes French" by Peter S. Beagle.
Jumping the shark, SF/F style
There's been lots of discussion lately about when particular science fiction movie series jumped the shark. Jay Garmon at Sci-fi rant says the Star Trek series jumped it with the First Contact movie, while with Star War it was the Midi-Chlorians of The Phantom Menace (meaning the Jedi knights are merely a master race, not meditation masters in touch with the greater universe). I agree with Jay about the Star Trek movies--First Contact was where I lost interest in the series. But with Star Wars, I believe John at SF Signal hits the nail on the head by saying that the true shark jumping was with the Ewoks. Evidently Lucas had originally planned for the Return of the Jedi to focus on Wookies, but for merchandising reasons made a script change to "cute, cuddly Ewok toys." The rest, as they say, was shark jumping history.
In my opinion, other SF/F cinema shark jumping includes the killing off of all the best characters at the start of Alien 3. I mean, hey, when you have a great character like the android Bishop (played so perfectly by Lance Henriksen), why wouldn't the first thought of any director be "How can I get rid of this SOB?" Another shark jumping moment is the Wachowski brothers believing that their hip look at religious themes in the first Matrix movie was worth total immersion in philosophical babble during the next two films. The shark finally ate the Wachowskis when Neo was crucified in The Matrix Revolutions. After all, if you're going to jump the shark, there's no need to be subtle about your intentions.
Columbus, Ohio, lands 2010 World Fantasy Convention
The news is now out: Columbus, Ohio, won the bid for the 2010 World Fantasy Convention. The convention will evidently be held that year during Halloween weekend.Now I'm sure a few people are asking "Columbus? What the hell's in Columbus?" For all those ignorant . . . er, uneducated folk who believe the U.S.A. begins and ends with the initials NYC or LA, Columbus is the largest city in Ohio and the 15th largest in the country. The city and region boasts a large per capita number of science fiction and fantasy writers. Columbus is also a highly literary city, with a library system consistently ranked as the best in the country. I love this city even though I'm a transplanted Columbusite--don't love that term, though--and I look forward to our community showcasing both Columbus and fantasy in 2010.
David W. Hill: The most popular SF writer you've never heard of
The Nov. 2007 issue of The New York Review of Science Fiction focuses on both science fiction in China and the recent Chengdu International Science Fiction and Fantasy Festival. While there are a number of good articles in the issue--including essays about the Chengdu Festival by David Brin, Neil Gaiman, and Michael Swanwick--the most fascinating read is an interview with a science fiction writer you've probably never heard of: David Wesley Hill.
Hill has had some success with science fiction in the United States, winning second place in the Writers of the Future contest in 1998 and publishing his short fiction in Talebones, Black Gate, Brutarian Quarterly, and Aboriginal SF. However, none of that compares to Hill's success in China. A number of his stories have been published in Science Fiction World, a Chinese magazine with the largest distribution of any SF/F periodical in the world. In addition, one of his stories, an ozone depletion tale called "The Curtain Falls," hit a deep nerve ten years ago with Chinese audiences. As Science Fiction World editor Yang Xiao writes:
"The Curtain Falls ... by the American writer David W. Hill presents a vivid, touching vision of how people suffer after the ozonosphere is damaged. The story was first published in our Science Fiction World in 1993, then reprinted in Readers, China’s most popular magazine, in 1994, arousing an immediate sensation among millions of Chinese readers. Shocked by the story ... many readers wrote to our magazine, expressing their strong determination to prevent ... the fictitious tragedy of the hero and his family from becoming a reality. In addition, [the] China State Environmental Protection Office reprinted the story and spread it among the broad masses of people in Beijing on the 1995 International Day of Ozonosphere Protection."
Despite this success, odds are you've never heard of the story (which I couldn't find online). In fact, when Mikael Huss mentioned the history of "The Curtain Falls" in an essay about Chinese SF in Science Fiction Studies, he added an editor's note stating "evidently the title has been lost in translation, as there is no U.S. book of that title."
As Michael Swanwich writes in the NYRSF, David Hill "may not be well known in the U.S., but is big as big in China." With luck Hill will begin to gain more exposure in the West, especially with his new science fiction novel being represented by Shawna McCarthy. (Publishers, take note!) Anyway, the wonderful NYRSF interview with him was written by poet Carolyn Click and offers a fascinating look at both Hill and the thriving Chinese science fiction world. Pick up a copy today.
A funny thing happened on the way to the online forum
Science fiction and fantasy fans tend to be labeled as anti-social geeks, but that stereotype's unfair on so many levels. The truth is the SF/F-loving world embraces as much social interaction as any aspect of humanity, and one way both readers and writers of SF/F interact is through the large number of specialized online forums. There's a long tradition of this: anyone remember the old GEnie network, which ran for a decade plus in the 1980s and 90s? Many SF/F writers used GEnie as their online community. And before anyone takes this love of online forums as an excuse to yell "geek," know that this is yet another case where SF/F stood at the leading edge of a trend. After all, it's not a big step from online forums to social networking sites like Facebook or MySpace.
But what happens when your favorite forum shuts down? Lovers of the Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine forum found out when a spam virus took down their favorite haunt. The result: the community temporarily jumped to the Fantasy and Science Fiction forum at Night Shade Books (in particular, this thread). One participant, Clint Harris, even compared the Asimov's forum to a once-beloved bar. So I guess in the end, the Asimov's forum community has behaved as all communities do when their existence is threatened--it adapted and found a new way to live.
More on bloggers promoting SF/F
Glenn Reynolds noticed my comment the other day about Instapundit's role in promoting science fiction and fantasy (thanks for the link, Glenn). Tobias Buckell then noticed Glenn's comment and said there are three bloggers who create "great word of mouth" for SF/F: Cory Doctorow at Boing Boing, Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit, and John Scalzi at the Whatever and via Ficlets.
Buckell adds that his own books have benefited from these bloggers and that they "probably do more than the hundreds of pieces of spam by self published authors I see dotting forums, blog comments areas, and my inbox around the internet." It's impossible to disagree with this statement.
How to promote your SF/F novel: send a copy to Glenn Reynolds
The other day a science fiction author with a first novel soon to be published asked me what he should do to promote the book. I told him to send a copy to Glenn Reynolds. Him: Silence. Me: You know, the law professor who writes the extremely popular political blog Instapundit. Him: Oh. I wanted to get some real publicity.
Because of that last comment I'm not naming this naive author. For those who don't know, Instapundit is one of the biggest political blogs in the country, receiving seven million page views last month alone. And Glenn Reynolds loves science fiction and fantasy. He recently promoted the winners of the Hugo awards, highlighted an interview with William Gibson, did a podcast with Vernor Vinge, and regularly mentions new SF/F books he's reading. I wouldn't be surprised if Glenn's doing more to promote SF/F right now than anyone else in the world. So my suggestion to any SF/F writers trying to gain more attention for their novels: send a copy to Glenn Reynolds.
SF/F tidbits
Two SF/F tidbits to mention:
- The speculative genre site SFScope appears to be thriving. With an easy to use interface, clean design, and tons of regularly updated news and information, this website is worth reading on a daily basis.
- Editor and poet Mike Allen is accepting submissions for the anthology Clockwork Phoenix. As Allen says, the anthology "is a home for stories that sidestep expectations in beautiful and unsettling ways, that surprise with their settings and startle with the ways they cross genre boundaries, that aren't afraid to experiment with storytelling techniques. But experimentation is not a requirement: the stories in the anthology must be more than gimmicks, and should appeal to genuine emotions, suspense, fear, sorrow, delight, wonder. I will value a story that makes me laugh in its quirky way more than a story that tries to dazzle me with a hollow exercise in wordplay."
Zombies: The archaeological dig
For the first time in its 100 plus year history, the Archaeological Institute of America underwrites a dig the undead can really sink their teeth into: "Zombie Attack at Hierakonpolis."
As a lapsed archaeologist who once dealt with a rabid raccoon while on an isolated dig, I can attest that the trowel technique for zombie eradication is way too close contact for my comfort. Instead, I'd advise the shovel technique for all zombie and rabid creature encounters.
Review of Mike Resnick's story "Alastair Baffle's Emporium of Wonders"
The short story "Alastair Baffle's Emporium of Wonders" by Mike Resnick (in the January 2008 issue of Asimov's Science Fiction magazine) deserves to be on every award and anthology short-list next year. Not only is the story amazingly well written, it'll stab you through the heart while leaving you both sad and optimistic about humanity and our desires. This is Resnick at his very best.
The story focuses on two octogenarians who spend their remaining days reminiscing about the Chicago magic store where they first met as kids. To say that the two men have had a mixed bag in life is an understatement--they've failed in most of their careers, their families passed away before them, and they now are in poor health and waiting for death in a less-than-prime nursing home. Then they set off in search of the magic store of their youth and . . . well, you'll just have to read the rest.
Unfortunately, the January 2008 Asimov's isn't yet available. I heard Resnick read the story to a small group of people at the recent Context convention in Columbus. I usually grow irritated by author readings, especially when the story isn't worth listening to. Not this time. I literally lost track of everything but the story during Resnick's reading and for days afterward found myself reflecting on the tale.
Resnick has written many great short stories in his career, not the least of which are collected in the award-winning collection Kirinyaga: A Fable of Utopia. But I believe this story might just top them all. When the January 2008 Asimov's becomes available, I'd suggest picking up a copy. Until then, feel free to check out the interview I held with Resnick at the 2006 Context.
New review up, interview with Matthew Cook
My latest book review, of Blood Magic by Matthew Cook, is now up at Monsters and Critics along with a featured interview with the author. From the interview:
"I think that the 'hidden world' element that you mention is popular because we, as modern human beings, have a yearning for a bit more mystery in our lives. Think about it: we inhabit an ever-shrinking world where the answer to any question, no matter how esoteric or obscure, is no more than a Wikipedia article or Google search away. No wonder people are drawn to the fantasy of a world where things are a bit more mysterious and grand than the everyday reality they inhabit. The sad part is that people have taken so much of the wonder of our everyday situation for granted. For example: when I was a kid, the idea of a phone that would let you access a global information network, or the ability to have parts of your body repaired with artificial replacements, was pretty much the stuff of Sci-Fi. Now, you can buy a disposable web-enabled cell phone at a gas station for $25 or get your joints repaired with surgical steel and plastic replacements." --Matthew Cook
This is my second "countdown" interview, so named because the interviews focus on science fiction and fantasy authors and countdown to what I hope will be an explosion of insight for readers. The title's a little cheesy, but the interview are extremely fun to do and so far readers seem to like them.
Roundup on Context 20
I had a blast at Context this last weekend. I attended a a "Plotting the Novel" workshop with Guest of Honor Tim Powers and it was an amazingly compact yet insightful affair. Putting aside the fact that Powers is deadpan funny--there's nothing like humor to spice up a workshop--his knowledge of novel craft is unsurpassed.
The other workshop I attended focused on world building. Taught by Timons Esaias, this workshop was a three hour affair covering all aspects of creating unique and realistic worlds in fiction. Even though the focus was on SF/F, what Esaias covered actually applies to all fiction genres. Yet again, a wonderful and learning experience.
In all, Context is a great literary-focused convention. The attendance was up again this year and I spoke to people who came from as far away as the Bahamas to attend. I highly recommend this convention to anyone with an interest in either writing or reading science fiction and fantasy.
Context 20 this weekend
I'll be at the Context 20 convention in Columbus this weekend. Context is a small convention focusing on science fiction and fantasy literature. I've signed up for the "World-Building Workshop"with Timons Esaias and the "Plotting The Novel" seminar with Tim Powers. At last year's convention I conducted an interview with Mike Resnick, who will be back this year as the Editor Guest of Honor. Resnick is a really nice guy and a great writer. If anyone hasn't read Santiago: A Myth of the Far Future or Kirinyaga: A Fable of Utopia, surf over to your favorite online bookstore immediately and order them.
In other news, Steve Buchheit mentioned on his blog my science fiction story "Rumspringa," which was recently published in Orson Scott Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show. Glad to know there are other SF/F writers paying homage to the Amish. Buchheit also liked my interview with Tobias Buckell.