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.

Richard Horton's summary reviews of SF/F magazines

Anthologist and reviewer Richard Horton just blogged a year-long summary review of Orson Scott Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show in which he mentioned me for my short story "Rumspringa." Many thanks. More importantly, Horton loved Peter S. Beagle's "We Never Talk About My Brother" and Tammy Brown's "Original Audrey," both of which were published in the same issue of IGMS as my story.

Horton has also published excellent year-end summary reviews for a number of other SF/F magazines, including Neo-Opsis, Talebones, Black Gate, Apex Digest, Yog's Notebook, Cemetary Dance, Fantasy Magazine, Tales of the Unanticipated, Strange Horizons, and many more. To access all the summary reviews, go here or here.

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?"

Review: Feb. 2008 Fantasy and Science Fiction

Fantasy and Science Fiction has produced an incredibly strong Feb. 2008 issue which features an array of high quality stories such as "Retrospect" by Ann Miller and "If Angels Fight" by Richard Bowes (whose "There's a Hole in the City" won the 2006 Million Writers Award). My favorite story in the issue is "Balancing Account" by James L. Cambias. This old-fashioned-yet-new-feeling hard science fiction story focuses on an intelligent rocket booster named Orphan Annie in the Saturn planetary system. If you think it's difficult for writers to create a human being with whom readers can relate, try doing the same with a machine. Cambias not only pulls this off, his fast-paced tale will have you rooting against Annie's human overlords. Highly recommended.

Another good read is "Memoirs of the Witch Queen" by Ron Goulart, in which a ghost-writer works with a real witch on her memoirs. You can tell Goulart had a blast writing this story and it left me wondering how many of the ghost-writer's foils--a greedy ex-wife, idiotic editor, assorted debt-collectors--are real. Considering that Goulart is rumored to have ghost-written William Shatner's TekWar series, I also wonder if the overbearing and overweight witch isn't based on a certain actor. I should add, though, that while I enjoyed this story, it isn't equal to Goulart's best and feels forced at times. I much preferred his recent "Conversations with My Knees" from the Jan./Feb. 2008 Analog.

Overview of new SF/F magazines

A number of new SF/F magazines have graced my mailbox this holiday season. Among the items of note are:

• An excellent Feb. 2008 issue of Asimov's Science Fiction. As previously noted, the issue contains the wonderful conclusion to Allen M. Steele's Galaxy Blues serial. The issue also contains a number of other top-notch stories, including "The Ray Gun: A Love Story" by James Alan Gardner (a highly recommended story in which a teenage boy finds his life's purpose and love through an alien ray gun); "From Babel's Fall'n Glory We Fled" by Michael Swanwich (a very good story featuring amazing world creation by Swanwich, although it was harder to relate to this story's characters than in many of Swanwich's tales); and the short but sweet "Sex and Violence" by Nancy Kress (in which the grand meaning of our existence turns out to be sex, something our genes have always known).
• The Dec. 2007 issue of The New York Review of Science Fiction features explorations of C.L. Moore, R.A. Lafferty, A.E. van Vogt, and a very good interview with Nalo Hopkinson by Michael Lohr. The NYRSF remains my favorite nonfiction SF/F magazine, proving itself again and again with insightful articles and essays you will find nowhere else.
• The Jan./Feb. 2008 Analog Science Fiction and Fact features many excellent stories, including "Marsbound," the first part of a new serial by Joe Haldeman. If the next two parts keep pace with Haldeman's opening, this could end up being his best novel in years. Other very good stories in the double issue include "Conversations with My Knees" by Ron Goulart, in which a knee replacement surgery leads to all sorts of unexpected yet humorous events, and "The Man in the Mirror" by Geoffrey  A. Landis, about an astronaut's near death experience with a nearly frictionless alien mirror.

State of SF/F short stories

James Wallace Harris offers a Science Fiction Short Stories State of the Union in which he praises the many ways to read SF/F short stories through distribution methods which once would have been seen as mere science fiction. He signals out for praise Escape Pod for offering free podcast readings of short stories and Fictionwise for offering e-book versions of top SF/F magazines like Analog and Asimov's (and I should add that one of my favorite SF/F magazines, Interzone, is now available on Fictionwise).

Harris adds that SF/F short stories are what "really defines the science fiction genre in my mind. I don’t have time to keep up with SF novels, and to be honest, they seldom offer the punch as they did when I was a teenager. The short story is different, it still has sense of wonder value and presents far out visions from writers who are working with the rule that the sky is no limit."

Sly Mongoose, with music

In a follow-up to an earlier post, Tobias Buckell has found the music for his Sly Mongoose promo video, with Mike Wooley of Cult Pop creating an original score for Buckell. For the record, this trailer is better than most movie previews I've seen this year.

The best online literary magazines and journals

Scott Boyan at Thinksimian has completed a wonderful meta-analysis of storySouth's Million Writers Award to determine the best online literary journals and magazines. Basically, Scott crunched the numbers from the first four years of the award to see which online magazines placed the most stories in the notable and top ten listings. You can access Scott's complete analysis as a Google spreadsheet, but here are his top ranking online journals and magazines:

1. Pindeldyboz
2. Eclectica Magazine
3. Narrative Magazine
4. Agni
5. Identity Theory
6. Word Riot
7. FRiGG
8. Fiction Warehouse (Note: See my recent post about this journal)
9. Strange Horizons
10. Barcelona Review
11. Clarkesworld Magazine
12. Fail Better
13. Stickman Review
14. Mississippi Review
15. HOBART
16. 42opus
17. Summerset Review
18. Small Spiral Notebook (Note: no longer publishing)
19. Blithe House Quarterly
20. ChiZine
21. Thieves Jargon
22. Storyglossia
23. Barrelhouse
24. King's English
25. Gowanus
26. Drunken Boat
27. Intergalactic Medicine Show
28. Literary Mama
29. Write This
30. Danforth Review

Thanks to Scott for doing this analysis. And as a reminder, the 2008 Million Writers Award will start accepting nominations in about a month.

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.

When online magazines go bad

I keep track of a wide variety of online publications because I both enjoy reading short fiction and need to know what magazines are publishing for my work with the Million Writers Award. One magazine I enjoyed several years ago--and which also published two of my own stories--was Fiction Warehouse. Like many online publications, Fiction Warehouse petered out and eventually stopped publishing new issues. Now, though, it appears Fiction Warehouse has done more than just cease publication--their site has gone bad.

Google's search engine has a relatively new function which notifies searchers if a site may try to install malicious software on your computer. According to Google's search results for Fiction Warehouse, this is what their website now does. And if you feel lucky enough to still click on that link, you are routed to a final message screaming in bold font: "Warning--visiting this web site may harm your computer!"

I commend Google for this new feature (assuming they are accurate in their assessment of these sites). But this also made me wonder what other online magazines and publications were now "bad" per Google's warning. I'm pleased that my magazine storySouth receives an all clear, as did all the major online magazines I frequent every month. But if anyone else notices other online magazines which have gone bad, please let me know.

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.

Asimov's readers' award selections

I have now made my selections for the 2007 Asimov's Readers' Award. They are:

• Best Novella: "Recovering Apollo 8" by Kristine Kathryn Rusch (February 2007). Because Rusch's novella was far and away the best of the year, I declined to select a runner-up.
• Best Novelete: "Breeze from the Stars" by Mary Rosenblum (March 2007). Runner-up: "News from the Front" by Harry Turtledove (June 2007). I was tempted to name "Nightfall" by Isaac Asimov as a third runner-up, but decided to pass because the story has received plenty of honors in the last six decades.
• Best Short Story: "Tideline" by Elizabeth Bear (June 2007). Runner-up: "A Small Room in Koboldtown" by Michael Swanwick (April/May 2007). Third Runner-up: "Dead Horse Point" by Daryl Gregory (Aug. 2007).
• Best Cover Artist: Tor Lundvall.

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.

Blogs of the fallen

As more people post their lives online through mediums like blogs and MySpace, what will happen to all their words when they pass away? I started pondering this question after visiting the blog of Julia Campbell, a Peace Corps Volunteer murdered earlier this year in the Philippines. As a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer who survived a possibly fatal accident while serving overseas, I've always honored those Volunteers who gave the ultimate sacrifice in service to others. The Fallen Peace Corps Volunteers Memorial Project was created by the family of PCV Jeremiah Mack, who died in Niger in 1997. The Project is a touching and appropriate way to honor these Volunteers; the project is also raising funds for a permanent memorial in Washington, D.C.

Julia Campbell's blog remains online, her most recent entry written a few days before her death. There are hundreds of comments for that last entry as people create their own memorial honoring Julia. I wonder, though, what will eventually happen to blogs like this? Are they like the ribbons people tie around trees in honor of the missing and dead--markers which eventually disappear with the passing of time? Or will someone (or more likely, some archiving program) eventually save all these blogs, preserving a record for those who one day want to look back and learn about who we were?

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.

Bad writers banned from submitting to Clarkesworld

Nick Mamatas, editor of Clarkesworld Magazine, has officially banned all bad writers from submitting to his magazine. The reason: an anonymous writer complained that Nick should "have a clue" before offering feedback on Mr. Anonymous' incredibly bad submission. Since Nick doesn't know who this writer is, he figures he'll just ban all bad writers from submitting to him. My experience with working the slush pile is similar to Nick's. Writers who overreact to editorial feedback tend to the very writers whose stories suck.