Michael Chabon teeters on the brink of genrecide

Michael Chabon, acclaimed literary writer and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for such wonderful novels as The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, appears to be killing his literary reputation with a form of seppuku known as genrecide. At least, that's the only way I can understand his decision to become an active member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (according to the fall 2007 issue of the SFWA Bulletin). I bet his literary peers and acolytes will choke on that news.

Seriously, Chabon is one of the few literary heavyweights in the U.S. who gives full credit to genre writers and works. While I disagreed with him on a minor point regarding his essay last year on Cormac McCarthy's post-apocalyptic novel The Road, we can only wish that more members of the literary elite were as open minded and talented as him.

Dozois releases selections for Year's Best Science Fiction

Gardner Dozois has released his selections for the next Year's Best Science Fiction, which will hit book stores in June or July. The discussion link above also contains some fascinating insight into his thoughts on science fiction and how he compiles the annual anthology. For example, Dozois states:

I have stuck to my guns with this series and am reprinting only stuff that I consider to be SF (Ted Chiang's "The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate" is about as far out as I go, and even that has a slight SF rationale, if you squint at it), but I wonder if it isn't eventually going to hurt me that I don't use fantasy as well, as Jonathan Strahan is doing; I get the increasing impression, particularly on the internet (and looking over the Nebula results) that nobody much cares about this distinction anymore, except me.

I also care deeply about this distinction and it is Dozois's focus on science fiction which keeps me purchasing his anthology year after year. Like Dozois, I dislike it when science fiction anthologies are filled with slipstream, fantasy and soft horror. Not that there's anything wrong with these other genres, which I also love and occasionally write in myself. But it sometimes feels as if both writers and the reading public have forgotten how the best science fiction stories easily rank among the most liberating types of fiction out there.

In the discussion Dozois also mentions new writers who popped up on his radar this year. These include Una McCormack, Jennifer Pellard, C.W. Johnson, Sarah K. Castle, Andrea Kail,  Aliette de Boddard, and Beth Bernobich, along with several writers who've been publishing for only a couple or years like Justin Stanchfield, Jason Stoddard, Vandana Singh, Ted Kosmatka, and Lavie Tidhar.

My picks from the Nebula Award preliminary ballot

The Nebula Award preliminary ballot has been released. The novels and stories I'd select from the ballot would be:

  • Novels: Ragamuffin by Tobias Buckell, The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon, and Blindsight by Peter Watts
  • Novellas:"Fountain of Age" by Nancy Kress and "Memorare" by Gene Wolfe
  • Novelettes: "The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate" by Ted Chiang and "Alastair Baffle's Emporium of Wonders" by Mike Resnick.
  • Short Stories: "Always" by Karen Joy Fowler and "Titanium Mike Saves the Day" by David D. Levine.
  • Scripts: Children of Men by Alfonso Cuaron, Timothy J. Sexton, David Arata, Mark Fergus, and Hawk Ostby; and Pan's Labyrinth by Guillermo del Toro

Pimping for that Hugo or Nebula Award

The SF/F awards season must be upon us because across the blogoshere authors are pimping their writings in hopes as catching an award nomination. As usual with online trends, John Scalzi started this ball rolling several years ago by annually listing his works which were eligible for the Hugo and Nebula Awards. Now that so many others are jumping on the award-blogging bandwagon, I thought I'd compile a list of links to the different authors and editors who are promoting their award-eligible works:

  • John Scalzi (For his novel The Last Colony, novelette "The Sagan Diary," and more.
  • Chris Roberson (For his novelette "The Sky is Large and the Earth is Small," which is slated to appear in two "best of" collections and is posted on Chris' blog.)
  • Robert J. Sawyer (For his novel Rollback, which Publisher's Weekly says "may well win another major SF award." Sawyer also promotes Stanley Schmidt as the person most deserving of the next Hugo Award for best editor.)
  • Jay Lake (For his novel Mainspring and assorted short fiction.)
  • John Joseph Adams (Mainly for his editing work under the Hugo's Special Award: Professional category; he also lists short stories by other authors for consideration)
  • David Louis Edelman (For the 2008 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Science Fiction or Fantasy Writer. Edelman also promotes Mary Robinette Kowal and Cat Rambo for the same award, which IMHO is mighty nice of him.)

For those in the dark about how the Hugo Award process works, Frank Wu offers an excellent primer (along with his ideas on nominees in the fanzine and fan writer categories).

I hope people will also check out two of my SF/F stories from the last year: "Book Scouts of the Galactic Rim" in Menda City Review and "Rumspringa" in Orson Scott Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show. I'm not trying to pimp these stories for an award because I'm realistic enough to know that neither has a snowball's chance in hell of landing a nomination. Still, I'm proud of the stories and hope readers enjoy them.

The end of the book--and the world

John Scalzi has released the ending of his new book: "And then the planet blew up and everybody died horribly. The end!" I wonder if the pressure of finishing the book is getting to Scalzi? :-)

And while I hesitate to add more pressure to one of my favorite authors, Douglas Adams beat him to that hilarious ending by about 15 years. The fifth and final book in Adam's Hitchhikers Trilogy, Mostly Harmless, ends with earth--or more precisely, all the earths across the entire multiverse--blowing up, much to Arthur Dent's everlasting relief. At which point life goes on as before, with the exception that there's now nothing on television.

The passing of a soldier and science fiction fan

Major Andrew Olmsted was killed in Irag the other day. Olmsted blogged under his own name at The Rocky Mountain News and under the name G'Kar on other blogs. The fact that Olmsted used the pseudonym of a character from the TV series Babylon 5 shows how much he loved science fiction.

Olmsted left a final message to be posted in the event of his death and it is a moving, intelligent, must read piece. My deepest sympathy go out to both Olmsted's family and the entire world, which has lost an insightful and extremely decent man.

More on the ending to I Am Legend

I've received a ton of hits on my recent post about the unsatisfying ending to the new film version of I Am Legend. As I wrote then, the studio did a last minute about-face and forced the director to craft a new ending. The problem is that audiences are leaving the movie extremely unsatisfied. People know when an ending doesn't fit with a story and they are Googling to discover what the original ending was supposed to be. I wouldn't be surprised if we eventually see a director's cut of this movie with the original ending tacked back on, along the lines of Blade Runner.

Into the science fiction event horizon

James Wallace Harris has been on a roll lately with his blog. Following up on his recent Science Fiction Short Stories State of the Union, he now offers the fascinating Science Fiction Event Horizon. Just as the event horizon of a black hole traps everything which enters it, Harris states that believing in certain science fiction cliches can trap a believer in a genre-created event horizon. To quote Harris:

"What we know about physics and astronomy puts nearly all speculative fiction about space travel inside the SF Event Horizon. If you are a true believer in Star Wars, then you are trapped inside and can’t see out. Is it any wonder that the generation after the Star Wars generation embraced Tolkien mythology and Harry Potter?

"Science fiction as true speculative fiction is going through a morbid period right now. Has science thrown most of science fiction or speculative fiction into the gravity well of fantasy?"

The real ending of I Am Legend (film)

I'm not going to bother with a complete review of the I Am Legend film, partly because many others have already done so. In short, though, the movie is excellent until the last five minutes. Will Smith does an amazing job in this moody action adventure tale about the last man on earth trying to save both humanity and his own sanity.

What really interests me, though, is the film's ending. As has been reported before, the director had to reshoot the ending because "the studio was unhappy with the film's finale, which is said to be very faithful to Richard Matheson's original story." I easily believe this report about how the movie was originally supposed to wrap up because there are numerous plot points setting up Matheson's ending. These include:

  • The fact that the film shows the Infected leader allowing himself to be burned by sunlight so he can glare at Robert Neville. This portrays the leader as moving beyond mere animal cunning, and possibly even caring about the capture of one of his fellow Infected. The incident is so unusual Neville comments about it later in the film.
  • The Infected showing increasing intelligence, including setting that snare trap for Neville. Despite what some viewers have suggested, that was not one of Neville's own snares. His snares used a black tarp to protect the captured Infected from the sunlight.
  • The "coincidence" of Anna arriving just in time to save Neville from the Infected. It's almost as if that was a set-up to discover where Neville lived. Also, why would she have been hanging out after dark in that area unless she was safe from the other Infected?
  • Anna showing disgust at how many Infected Neville killed for his experiments.

Because of these and other plot devices, the director was obviously aiming for Matheson's original ending (which would have been appropriate since it's one of the best finales in SF/F literature). Unfortunately, the studio decided that American audiences would revolt over such a bleak ending. The result is a finale which not only destroys the previous two hours of build-up and mood, but also leaves audiences feeling unsatisfied with the entire film.

Science fiction cliches to avoid

Via the always amazing SF Signal comes a link to 10 science fiction cliches to avoid. The only problem with the list is that it mainly focuses on science fiction cliches from TV and film. For a specific list of literary SF cliches to avoid, check out John VanSickle's amazing compendium. I love how he breaks the cliches down by a large number of categories, such as "items which flatly contradict the known laws of nature" and "items which were mildly interesting the first time around, but simply provoke a response along the lines of been there, done that on the re-runs."

Tobias Buckell tunes into Sly Mongoose

Tobias Buckell has created an online trailer for Sly Mongoose, the sequel to his novel Ragamuffin. The problem is that he's "having trouble finding a royalty free type of music" for the trailer. To fix this, Buckell is offering a $50 Amazon gift card to anyone who can find said music. Promotions like this are why Buckell is one of the most "web savvy" SF/F authors out there. He's also a great author and a hoot to interview.

A few items of note

A few of the things I've read or thought about today:

  • SF Signal has a great discussion with a number of SF/F authors on how the internet impacts book sales. Among the authors voicing an opinion are Matthew Jarpe, Tobias Buckell, Andrew Wheeler, Lou Anders, and David Louis Edelman.

  • The February 2008 issue of Asimov's arrived the other day and featured the final section of Allen M. Steele's Galaxy Blues serial. Titled "The Great Beyond," the conclusion is space opera on a grand scale set in Steele's increasingly fascinating Coyote universe. The rest of the issue also looks good and I'll post some thoughts as soon as I finish reading it.

  • Finally, Lee Goldberg linked to yesterday's post about the coming wreck in fan literature. While I appreciate the link, it's not accurate to count me among the "fanficcers." (Is that even a word?) While I'm sympathetic to fan writers, my personal feeling is that when one writes in another writer's or corporation's universe, you have to accept their ground rules going in. I'm also personally not a fan of fan literature. While the push may be on to call such writings transformative, I prefer the old term derivative. And in my experience, derivative works almost never equal the power or artistry of the works they are derived from.

FanFic train wreck a coming

John Scalzi has an excellent look at the new Organization for Transformative Works, which believes that fan fiction is transformative and legitimate. Like Scalzi, I'm sympathetic to the writers and lovers of fan fiction. I also agree with him that this is a looming train wreck. As he says,

If and when a fan, told by, say, NBC Universal to take down her Battlestar Galactica fanfic, decides to make the legal argument that her work is transformative and fair use, thus obliging the corporation to show up in court to make a counter argument (i.e., to throw more resources at the problem than a simple Cease and Desist) and the fan shows up in court with the assistance of an umbrella group dedicated to the proposition that all fan work is legal and transformative, I suspect the era of benign neglect or tolerance of fan activity will be at a sudden and pronounced end. Because now the fans are saying, why, yes, this really does belong to us, and corporations who have invested millions in and can reap billions from their projects will quite naturally see this as a threat. From there it’s all DMCA notices and entire fan sites going down.

This already happened with the late Marion Zimmer Bradley and her support of fan fiction based on her Darkover novels and stories. As her Wikipedia article states, "For a time, Bradley actively encouraged fan fiction within the Darkover universe, but this came to an end following a dispute with a fan over an unpublished Darkover novel of Bradley's that had similarities to some of the fan's stories. As a result, the novel remained unpublished, and Bradley demanded the cessation of all Darkover fan fiction."

If that's what happened to an individual author and her support of derived fan fiction, imagine what a big media corporation will do the first time it encounters a similar situation. Not a pretty picture.

Chad Dull: ignorant film reviewer of the week

I usually highlight a story of the week under the theory that good writing needs all the attention it can get in our increasingly less literate culture. However, bad writing also thrives these days and sometimes it also needs to be recognized. Today's example comes from a film review by Chad Dull in the Dec. 13, 2007 edition of The Other Paper. Chad's review of Will Smith's new film I Am Legend opens with these lines:

"I Am Legend's pompous and confusing title tells us a lot about what's wrong with the film itself. It's another crack at the novel The Omega Man, last brought to screen, rather laughably, in a 1971 Charlton Heston vehicle."

When a film review starts off with so many errors, it's hard to do anything but laugh at the reviewer's subsequent opinion. First, the I Am Legend film is based on a 1954 science fiction novel of the same title by Richard Matheson. Second, The Omega Man was based on Matheson's novel, one of numerous adaptations over the decades, so it's wrong to say the current film is based on the 1971 film. Third, The Omega Man was a film, not a novel. The briefest of searches on Google or Wikipedia would have enabled Chad to discover these facts for himself.

Unfortunately, Chad's review is not online so I can't share the wonderful irony as Chad dissects this "pompous" film in an equally pompous manner. Instead, I'll share this bit of advice for any writers like Chad who feel the need to be literate on a subject they nothing about: first do a bit of research.

Are online reviews worth a damn?

As someone who has written a number of online book reviews, I loved SF Signal's new interview/discussion "How Have Online Book Reviews Affected the Publishing World?" Among the editors and writers commenting are James Patrick Kelley, John Joseph Adams, Paul Raven, Niall Harrison, Ken of the blog Neth Space, and many more. Perhaps the best comment comes from David G. Hartwell, who says "Online reviewing at this point is a hopeful mess, rather than a hopeless one. A majority of it still has the validity of a late night bar conversation, or an offhanded phone call, blurting out undefended opinions, to which everyone is entitled. The hopeful sign is that a small portion of it is written to publishable print standards, and an even smaller portion is actually edited."

I agree with Hartwell that online reviews are only useful when they are written to print standards and actually provide context and insight into why a book either soared or sunk. A number of online venues publish reviews of this caliber; the trick, though, is that these places all have editors both screening and improving the reviews they publish. A perfect example of this is The Fix, which is an online short fiction review site run with the same due diligence as a print magazine.

The Last Unicorn (Deluxe Edition)

If you're looking for the perfect moderately priced Christmas gift, I'd suggest the recently released deluxe edition of The Last Unicorn. Published by ROC, this edition includes the definitive text of Peter S. Beagle's classic novel, his Hugo and Nebula Award-winning novella sequel (coda?) "Two Hearts," introductions to both works, an interview with Beagle, and more. However, the kicker is that Barnes and Noble is carrying a specially priced version of the deluxe edition priced at only $9.95. I purchased a copy today and it is an extremely nice hardback with dust cover. For the life of me, I can't tell the difference between this version and the deluxe edition that sells for $29.95 or more at other bookstores (if you can even find a copy).

Anyone needing a bigger Peter S. Beagle fix would do well to check out his story "We Never Talk About My Brother" from issue 5 of Orson Scott Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show. The issue also features a very good interview with Beagle by IGMS editor Edmund R. Schubert.

SFWA: Screaming Flaming Writers Association?

In a follow-up to last week's fun and screams about the SFWA, John Scalzi reports that all the outrage has caused the organization to correct the copyright committee problem. I'm sure some people will say this shows how responsive the SFWA is to criticism, but it doesn't change my view that I'm not going to waste my time by joining. While I support all the official goals of the organization, I can't get past the fact that incidents like this haven't been the exception in recent years for the SFWA but are instead the norm. Maybe they ought to rename themselves the Screaming Flaming Writers Association? Still, I'm glad they've sorted all this out and I hope it means the organization has turned a new page in its history.

SF authors pick favorite SF films (and I add a few more)

From SF Signal comes a link to the best science fiction and other related films as picked by authors such as Robert Bloch, Arthur C. Clarke, and Frederik Pohl. The only downside is that the list is from 1994; as such, it's heavily weighted with films from the middle of the 20th century while more recent films receive few mentions.

A few post-1994 SF films I'd add to the list include Gattaca (1997), Children of Men (2006), Twelve Monkeys (1995), and most importantly, Alex Proyas's masterpiece Dark City (1998).