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Posted by Paul Kincaid (http://ttdlabyrinth.wordpress.com/author/pkincaid/) in science fiction (http://ttdlabyrinth.wordpress.com/category/science-fiction/)


A few days ago I said I was going to do something further on Hard SF to follow up on my posts of a few days ago. Well, I'm several hundred words into it, but it looks like it might end up being longer than originally imagined, so it might be another few days before it appears. So I started casting around for another reprint to appear here and happened upon this essay about alternate history. It is clearly something I wrote, but I have no memory of writing it, I have no idea who I might have written it for, and I have no record of whether it was actually published anywhere.'Give me one firm spot on which to stand,' Archimedes once wrote, 'and I will move the earth.' The spot necessary for those who would change our past, and our present, is one not-so-firm moment in history when things might have gone either way. Such a turning point is the first requirement for anyone who would essay an alternate history, and there are plenty of them. History is remarkably fluid, and very few of the certainties which made the world turn out the way we know it are as sure as all that. Rumour has it that whenever military colleges carry out wargaming exercises that refight the Battle of Waterloo, they invariably end up with Napoleon winning.Of course, the starting point that can set an alternate history on its way does not have to be a battle. In his new novel, The Years of Rice and Salt, Kim Stanley Robinson imagines that the Black Death was even more devastating than in reality and wiped out the population of Europe. In Pasquale's AngelPaul McAuley has Leonardo da Vinci kick off the Industrial Revolution three hundred years early. And in the linked stories, collected as Agent of Byzantium, that first made his name as a writer of alternate histories, Harry Turtledove imagined that Mohammed became a Christian saint.Nevertheless, the turning point that most alternate historians choose is war or revolution. These are treacherous times: a lucky shot, a slight delay, a mislaid order, a misunderstood report can all affect the outcome not just of one battle but of an entire war, and therefore all that might flow from its result. 'For want of a nail,' the old rhyme has it, 'the battle was lost', and alternate histories are all about the want of that nail. Sometimes that nail can be the loss of an important leader at a vital moment: Keith Roberts, inPavane, has Queen Elizabeth assassinated just before the Spanish Armada sails; MacKinley Kantor, in If the South had Won the Civil War, has General Grant thrown from his horse and killed at a crucial point in his Vicksburg campaign; in The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick has Franklin Roosevelt assassinated in 1933. More often it's a change of fortune on the field of battle. John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry actually does foment the slave rebellion he dreamed of, as Terry Bisson describes it in A Fire on the Mountain; the Nazi high command heeds a premonition and does not invade Russia in 1941 in Hilary Bailey's 'The Fall of Frenchy Steiner'; and vital orders are not lost on the eve of Antietam in Harry Turtledove's How Few Remain.But there is another reason why so many alternate historians choose war or rebellion as their turning point. Alternate history needs more than just a twist in time; it needs something to depend upon that twist. There have to be consequences spinning out from that moment of change so that in some significant way the resultant world is different from the one we know. What is the point of finding a dramatic turning point, only for it to make no difference whatsoever? That is why, if you go to something like the Uchronia web site (www.uchronia.net (http://www.uchronia.net)) and look at their Points of Divergence (the term they use for what I call, more simply, turning points) you will see huge clusters around certain key dates, notably the 1860s and the 1940s. The American Civil War and the Second World War are gifts to the alternate historian, not just because they are stuffed with appropriate turning points (look closely at the Battle of Gettysburg, for instance, and you will find at least a dozen points during those three crucial days when the outcome could easily have gone the other way), but also because the consequences of a change in history are so great. Upon the Civil War hinged the unity of the United States (with all that implied for its future international wealth and power), and the fate of the slaves, a moral issue that still has repercussions today. Upon the Second World War hinged the independence of most of the countries that make up Europe (with all that implies for our current well-being), and the fate of the Jews, a moral issue of unimaginable importance. In other words, one horseshoe nail lost during either of those wars could totally overturn everything we take for granted in the world around us, and all the moral certainties we possess.The way that alternate history highlights the fragility of the past and the spectacular consequences that might result from a very small change has always fascinated historians. That is why so many of them have experimented with the sub-genre, from the contributors to J.C. Squire's If It Had Happened Otherwise in 1931 (G.M. Trevelyan, A.J.P. Taylor, Winston Churchill) via William L. Shirer's 'If Hitler had Won World War II' to the contributors to Robert Cowley's What If? in 1999 (John Keegan, David McCullough, James M. McPherson). Though it has to be said, few enough of them have been able to turn their speculations into compelling narratives. Of course, you don't need to be an historian to find a simple, significant turning point and examine the consequences that have flowed from it. Terry Bisson, after all, wrote a biography of the slave rebel Nat Turner, while MacKinley Kantor researched the Civil War for decades, resulting in the award-winning novels Long Remember and Andersonville, before he turned to the alternate historical speculation of If the South had Won the Civil War. But this is where Harry Turtledove wins out, for he is an historian with a great storytelling ability, a combination of talents which, if not exactly unique, has at least made him pre-eminent in the field of alternate history.His PhD was in Byzantine history, an area of expertise that comes out in his first venture into alternate history, Agent of Byzantium, and also provides the setting for his excellent straight historical novel, Justinian, published under the not exactly opaque pseudonym of H.N. Turteltaub. In collaboration with the actor Richard Dreyfuss he has also played with the American Revolution as a turning point in The Two Georges. The second edition of the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction says of Turtledove: he 'has never failed to be exuberant when he sees the chance', and this light-hearted book which makes fun of technology and historical figures while keeping up a fast-paced mystery plot illustrates the point precisely. Other than this, though, most of his attention has been focused on rewriting the last 150 years, particularly those two great nodes of alternate historical speculation, the Civil War and the Second World War. The resultant string of novels – The Guns of the South, How Few Remain, the four Worldwar novels, the three Colonisation, the three Great War and now the beginning of a new sequence, American Empire: Blood and Iron – have revealed both strengths and weaknesses in Turtledove's approach to alternate history. The weaknesses include a tendency to use ahistorical turning points – time-travelling Afrikaaners, alien invaders – and a perhaps overly exuberant love of teasing out the consequences of change to the extent that seven novels have so far been needed to consider the effects of an alien invasion in World War II; five, with more to come, to consider the effects of a Confederate victory in the Civil War. His strength is the way Turtledove can use such apparent weaknesses to his own advantage.The 1993 edition of the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction concluded its entry on Harry Turtledove by saying: 'he has not yet written any single book that has unduly stretched his very considerable intellect.' But the year before, in 1992, he had done just that with the publication of The Guns of the South. It is a novel which shows, at every juncture, it was written by an historian. There is the precisely chosen moment of change, the eve of Grant's Virginia campaign in early 1864 when the Confederacy had no realistic hope of victory, but when the judicious introduction of a new weapon – the AK47s provided by our time-travelling Afrikaaners – could still turn the tables. There's an historian's sensibility obvious in the first small but notable effect of these weapons, which lies not in their killing power but in their lack of sparks. One of the most horrific incidents in the war occurred during the Battle of the Wilderness, the first battle in the Virginia Campaign and Lee's first opportunity to put the AK47s to use. It was fought in dense, tinder-dry woodland that was set alight by sparks from the muskets in use at the time. In the night, after the first day of fighting, wounded soldiers between the lines were burned to death by the fire. With the AK47 contributing no sparks, in this history there is no fire.The point of any alternate history is not the moment or nature of the change; that's a matter for more academically-minded counterfactuals. The point is what happens after the change. If the two issues that make the Civil War such an obvious choice for the alternate historian are the disunity of the States and the moral dilemma of slavery, then one really must examine how authors have dealt with these issues. Turtledove's distinguished predecessors in the field have tended mostly to focus on the issue of disunity. Winston Churchill, in 'If Lee had not Won at Gettysburg', imagines a divided America which does not dominate the world stage. His curious essay-story is actually very little about the effects upon America, but rather how British political history is changed: the great Tory Prime Minister Disraeli becomes a leader of the radicals, the great radical Gladstone becomes the leader of the Conservatives. Ward Moore, in Bring the Jubilee, imagines an impoverished North until his hero travels in time and effectively puts history right. MacKinley Kantor imagines North and South being gradually drawn back together through their involvement in world events, until on the centenary of the war they are reunited. Turtledove is the only alternate historian of any note to focus on the South after the war, and in so doing makes the issue of slavery, or rather of black emancipation, the central issue of his book. This is emphasised by the device which puts his plot into motion: the Afrikaaners have travelled back in time to establish a state in which blacks continue to be subservient. Once the war is over, therefore, the drama centres upon the struggle between the White Supremacists, the Afrikaaners and their ally Nathan Bedford Forrest (the genius of the Confederate cavalry who, in our history, went on to found the Ku Klux Klan), and Lee, inevitably swept into the Confederate presidency, and his allies who are trying to create a modern and viable Confederate state. Churchill had Lee free the slaves, and so does Turtledove. Again this is the mark of an historian: the real Robert E. Lee freed his family slaves, was never more than ambivalent about the institution, and late in the war incurred the wrath of his political masters by suggesting that slaves be freed in order to recruit blacks into the Confederate army.(For further evidence that this is the work of a serious historian fully engaged with his period, just turn to the back of the book where you will find a detailed, state-by-state breakdown of the popular and electoral college votes in the first post-war presidential elections North and South. The figures are plausibly extrapolated from actual voting patterns before, during and after the war, and provide the sort of detail only an historian would think to provide.)The exuberance that the Encyclopedia spoke of might also be termed playfulness. Even in so serious and powerful a work as The Guns of the Souththere is an element of play, the sense of an historian having fun with the idea of turning events on their head. One such incidental pleasure in the novel is the role played by Henry Pleasants. In our history Pleasants devised a plan to tunnel under the Confederate lines at Petersburg and set off a bomb. It was a brilliant idea, spoiled by the execution. The Union officer charged with leading his men through the breech in the Confederate lines spent the entire incident drunk under a table. His men were untried coloured troops who were not told to go around the crater rather than into it, and were not equipped with any means of getting out of the hole once they were in there. The fight, known as the Crater, was a fiasco. But, of course, it happened after the point at which Turtledove's history changes and is unknown to the participants in that story, until Lee discovers a history of the war brought by the Afrikaaners. He and Pleasants are then able to replicate the Crater, successfully this time, at a crucial point in the plot. It is this sort of resonance between the alternate history and our history that is one of the chief joys of this sort of novel if it is done well. Turtledove tends to do it well.Turtledove's examinations of history have always tended to concentrate on character, and I suspect that one of the things he likes doing most in his novels is looking at how real people might have behaved in very different circumstances. The Worldwar books, for instance, use the character of Skorzeny in much the same way Pleasants was used in The Guns of the South. In our history, Skorzeny was the dashing hero of the Nazi cause responsible for a succession of daring exploits such as the rescue of a recently-deposed Mussolini from jail in 1943. In this alternate history he is equally dashing, equally devoted to the Nazi cause, but here his exploits are subtly transposed into attacks upon the alien lizards.I make no great claims for the Worldwar sequence; I think it is an example of Turtledove's natural exuberance winning out over the more sober historian. Not to put too fine a point on it, this is a romp. Turtledove loads the dice shamelessly: the aliens expect human technology to be no further advanced than Roman times and are constantly astonished by human ability to adapt to rapid change. They are further hampered by the climate (Earth is far colder than their worlds) and by a suddenly discovered addiction to ginger. Turtledove even makes his invaders the archetypal green scaly monsters. The British publisher, depicting these aliens fairly faithfully on the covers, created the sort of garish work that sensitive souls might once have wrapped in brown paper rather than be seen in public with such books. And Worldwar is a garish sort of work. It is not meant to be taken seriously. At least, I hope it isn't. But having chucked a bloody great rock into the pool of history, Turtledove then watches the ripples with careful attention. And along the way there are innumerable incidental delights for the historically minded. The distrustful relationship between the Soviet government and the Nazi high command is beautifully judged. The decision of Polish Jews to work with the aliens against the Germans is shockingly perceptive. The casual anti-Semitism experienced by a Jew in the British army is disturbing because it rings so true. It's almost jokily done, but again Turtledove tackles the great moral dimensions highlighted by this change in history.This curiosity about what might have changed and what might have stayed the same is, I think, the driving force behind all of Turtledove's work. It can lead him, as I think it has done in Colonization, the sequel to Worldwar, into something not much different from militaristic soap opera. But it can also lead him into glorious perceptions of the nature of history and of historical characters. That is what you find in Turtledove's return to the Civil War, How Few Remain. This is a genuine alternate history with no trace of time travel, his turning point is an historians' delight, one of those curious incidents that chroniclers of the war love to recount. In the days preceding the battle of Antietam, a couple of Union soldiers found three cigars in a field. The cigars were wrapped in an order issued by Lee which described in detail how he had divided up his army. History does not record what happened to the cigars, but the orders went straight to General McClellan. McClellan was, at this time, the ranking field commander in the Union army, but he had a propensity for finding any excuse to avoid action. A few months before, during the series of battles known as the Seven Days, he had won all but one of the battles, but he had still retreated until he comprehensively lost the campaign. Now, for the first time in his career, he had detailed and accurate knowledge of the disposition of the enemy troops. He still delayed long enough for the Battle of Antietam to be, in strictly military terms, a draw, but Lee was forced to withdraw from the field so Lincoln could claim the victory and issue the Emancipation Proclamation which changed the nature of the war. So those cigars made a very big difference. Turtledove imagines they were never lost.As I said before, there's no point in writing an alternate history of the Civil War if the South doesn't win; it's what comes after that matters. This time, Turtledove has North and South going to war once more in the 1880s. Again, there are the touches, the insights that only come from an historian's perspective. We have, for instance, a hyperactive Teddy Roosevelt getting into cavalry charges twenty years before San Juan Hill. More interestingly and intriguingly we have Lincoln, escaping assassination in this history, touring the West delivering lectures that are all but communist in tone, though what he says is largely and cleverly derived from what he actually said in life. Despite such wonderful moments, however, How Few Remain is not a great success as a novel, largely because it is simply there to provide a point of transition leading up to his next (and current) sequence of novels which portray an alternate First World War. But there are good reasons for a historian to provide such a point of transition.If you have ever wondered why we are positively overburdened with alternate civil wars and visions of Hitler winning World War Two, while there are virtually no alternate versions of the First World War, the answer is twofold. In the first place, apart from a couple of possible moments during the Germans' headlong dash towards Paris in the first days of war, the Great War is not over-endowed with turning points. There just aren't the possibilities for tweaking events enough to make a difference. Secondly, changing the course of the war wouldn't necessarily have had a great dramatic effect anyway. Unlike the prospects of slavery continuing or concentration camps proliferating, no great evil was defeated by the First World War, there was no huge moral dimension hanging over the static network of trenches and wasted lives. So the alternate historian is lacking the two most basic tools at his command: a place to make a change, and a difference to make. Looking back half a century gives Turtledove his necessary turning point; it also gives his novels their point: with North and South on opposite sides, he gives the First World War a chance to have a greater effect upon the character of the world. And now, carrying the story forward with American Empire, he begins to add a moral dimension to the mix: in this post-war world of the 1920s America is not a land of flappers and Hollywood, but rather of socialism in the North, fascism in the South.In The Guns of the South we have one of the finest alternate histories yet written. That achievement alone would be enough to make any author worthy of serious attention. But if Harry Turtledove's subsequent alternate histories have tended to be more exuberant, they have never shirked the serious moral questions that are raised whenever anyone tries to change the world. It is not given to everyone to be able to produce novels that are so briskly readable yet which are able to contain within them nuggets of genuine and often disturbing thoughtfulness.

I'm not sure why, but the floodgates appear to have opened.  After more than a year of struggling with my reading, I've found myself doing nothing but.  I'm not that interested in examining the situation for fear of scaring my resuscitated bibliophilia away, but I will note that this year's Tournament of Books (http://www.themorningnews.org/tob/) seems to have done well by me--I've read four of the participating novels (three of which are covered here), and though I have reservations about all of them, it's certainly an eclectic and interesting selection.  Onward to the reviews.

   
• Gone Girl (http://www.amazon.com/Gone-Girl-Novel-Gillian-Flynn/dp/030758836X) by Gillian Flynn - On the morning of their fifth wedding anniversary, Nick Dunne's wife Amy disappears in what appears to be a home invasion.  Nick's chronicle of the days following Amy's disappearance, in which a media circus develops around the case, alternates with Amy's diary entries describing the history of her and Nick's relationship.  As both narratives progress, it becomes clear that Nick has been keeping secrets from both the readers and the police--an affair with a younger woman, financial difficulties, problems in the marriage with Amy--and Amy's diary entries grow less romantic and more fearful as she approaches the day of her disappearance.  Gone Girl is a novel with a twist, which, given that it's probably the most successful and widely-discussed thriller of the last year, was pretty hard to stay ignorant of before I picked the book up (in fact, knowing the twist is the main reason I decided to read Gone Girl, since otherwise a thriller about a man who appears to have murdered his wife would be pretty far outside of my interests).
  
  
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  To my surprise, however, I found that knowing the twist made the first half of the novel, in which readers are meant to be bamboozled into suspecting Nick, a lot more fun.  Knowing that both of the narratives in this segment of the book are unreliable made it a sort of puzzle, as I tried to work out where the truth lay in the gap between Nick and Amy's increasingly conflicting accounts of their marriage.  The book actually loses a lot of energy in its second half, when the twist is revealed and that sort of active participation in the story fades away, making it easier to notice its flaws: that Flynn's plot only hangs together because the usually intelligent and calculating Amy suddenly becomes stupid and irrational just when the plot needs her to be; that the novel's descriptions of the economic deterioration of Nick's midwestern home town, or of the way the media, led by a Nancy Grace analogue, gleefully spins a narrative of his guilt, don't really connect to the central mystery plot or the examination the breakdown of Nick and Amy's marriage; and that towards the story's end, Amy engages in some stereotypical Bad Girl behavior (false rape accusations, stealing sperm) whose straight-faced, unexamined presentation left me feeling rather uncomfortable.
  
  Despite these flaws, Gone Girl is a tense, involving read, one that I gulped down and enjoyed immensely.  For that reason as well as several others, I was reminded while reading it of another massively successful, much-discussed potboiler, Lionel Shriver's We Need to Talk About Kevin.  Like Gone Girl, Kevin is an epistolary novel that revolves around a heavily publicized crime, and has a twist that everyone probably knows by now.  More importantly, Gone Girl and We Need to Talk About Kevin both seem to be using their propulsive plots to do the same thing--launch a discussion of a social institution (motherhood in Kevin, marriage in Gone Girl) that women are expected to desire and enjoy, and of the ways in which that expectation can warp and damage them.  They both also undermine that discussion in exactly the same way--by making one of their main characters a sociopath.  Gone Girl piles high the reasons for the implosion of Nick and Amy's marriage--Nick's immaturity and self-absorption, Amy's impossibly high expectations, financial difficulties, meddling parents, Nick and Amy's mutual belief that they need to assume a cool, carefree persona to please one another, and their disappointment when the other stops putting in the effort to maintain that facade.  But the more we get to know Amy, the clearer it becomes that she is incapable of love, and that even if none of these problems existed, she and Nick would still have a sham of a marriage.  Where Gone Girl improves on Kevin, however, is in not taking itself nearly as seriously as Shriver's novel, which aspires to a political significance that it can't really achieve.  Gone Girl, in contrast, is consciously shlocky, which not only makes the problems of its plot easier to swallow, but also suggests that the best way to read the novel might be as a very dark satire, in which Nick and Amy become trapped by the narrative that has been spun around them, forced to perform the perfect, effortlessly happy, Hollywood rom-com marriage for the cameras while behind closed doors the only thing keeping them together is mutually assured destruction.  If Gone Girl does have anything to say about the institution of marriage, it is this deeply cynical conclusion, that the only way to achieve this romantic fantasy is to be insane.
  
• Seraphina (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Seraphina-Rachel-Hartman/dp/0552566004) by Rachel Hartman - It's hard to know where to start discussing Hartman's debut, a busy, wide-ranging story with more characters, plot strands, and worldbuilding details than such a relatively short novel should be able to support.  So perhaps I'll start with the dragons.  Hartman's dragons are coolly (https://www.znaksagite.com/diskusije/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2F3.bp.blogspot.com%2F-X33b1Aez9vc%2FUfO9LSa6p6I%2FAAAAAAAAAeA%2FUyDdwF8nTlI%2Fs200%2Fimages2.jpg&hash=48ca68f8f9d6843156fdd368235b8ba3450e8254) (http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-X33b1Aez9vc/UfO9LSa6p6I/AAAAAAAAAeA/UyDdwF8nTlI/s1600/images2.jpg)logical creatures who, when they're not amassing hoards of gold coins or devouring human flesh, enjoy math and philosophy, and neither understand nor approve of emotions.  They can also take human form, which is how the titular heroine came to be conceived.  Considered an abomination by both races--to dragons because she represents her mother's succumbing to the emotion of love, and to humans because despite a peace that has lasted decades, the dominant religion of the novel's world still teaches that dragons are soulless, inferior beings--Seraphina has spent her life hiding what she is and coping with the unpredictable effects of her mixed heritage, such as psychic contact with people she's never met, or inherited memories from her mother that overwhelm her at inconvenient times.  Despite which, and the danger of being discovered and executed, Seraphina, who is also a gifted musician, takes a position as assistant choirmaster to the royal court, where hiding her heritage presents not only practical but emotional difficulties.  Is Seraphina a bad person for lying to her new friends?  Can she ever trust someone completely?  What about the observant captain of the guard Kiggs, whose attraction to Seraphina is repeatedly hamstrung by his conviction that she is lying about something?
  
  You would think that all this would be quite enough for any author to be getting on with, but the difficulties and emotional toll of passing for human make up only one of the novel's plot strands.  In others, Seraphina helps to prepare for a visit of the dragon king marking the anniversary of peace treaty between dragons and humans, and to investigate an assassination plot spearheaded by warmongers on both side; she discovers the existence of other dragon/human hybrids, and learns more about her dragon powers and ancestry; she deepens and repairs her relationships with her human father and dragon uncle, both of whom still carry the wounds left by her mother's transgression and death; and she gives us a guided tour of her world, its politics, history, religion, geography, and culture.  The ease with which Hartman weaves together these plot strands and subplots into a narrative that never feels overstuffed, and whose pace never slackens, reminded me of the early Harry Potter books (though Seraphina is pitched at an older audience).  And like those books, the result is a world that feels fully lived in and real, and some ways more interesting in its own right than the story used to illustrate it.
  
  Just as interesting as what Hartman does with her premise is what she doesn't do with it, the YA clichés she doesn't indulge in.  Seraphina is special, but not precocious; burdened, but not angsty.  Being skilled or special, in this novel, isn't an excuse for the narrative (or the other characters) to treat you like a special snowflake, but for the people in charge to give you more work--though her musical talent is frequently commented upon, most of Serpahina's work as assistant choirmaster is logistical, and involves wrangling musicians, arranging performances, and placating her ornery boss; when her hybrid superpowers are discovered, they too are wondered at only briefly before Seraphina is conscripted to help keep the peace.  Seraphina's matter-of-factness reflects both her and the narrative's recognition that though her experiences are transformative, and will affect the rest of her life, neither they nor she are the most important part of the story she's living through.  It's a recognition that is also reflected in the refreshingly undramatic resolution of the novel's romance, in which Seraphina and Kiggs recognize that they can't be together because what's going on around them is more important, but also promise not to give up on each other.  Even the novel's most resonant theme, Seraphina's passing and the self-doubt it breeds in her, are treated with a bracing practicality that doesn't obscure how difficult it has been for her to live with the constant threat of exposure.  Though I found the resolution of this strand a little too neat--Seraphina's friends are perhaps too quickly and uniformly willing to accept that she is something they've been taught to hate and fear--that resolution doesn't undermine the work Hartman does throughout the novel to put us in Seraphina's headspace, and I suspect that the novel's sequels will complicate the seeming ease with which Seraphina's secret has been accepted.  For that reason, as well as the chance to spend more time in this wonderfully detailed and realized world, I'm looking forward to what Hartman does next.
  
• Zero History (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Zero-History-William-Gibson/dp/0670919551) by William Gibson - I had made up my mind to pass on the third volume in Gibson's Bigend trilogy, but coming across a copy of it in a used bookstore convinced me to give it a try.  I wish I could say that it turned out to be a fortuitous find, but my suspicions about Zero History proved correct.  Despite some cosmetic alterations, it is more or less a retread of the previous books in the trilogy, full of meditations about consumer culture in the post-9/11 world delivered by disaffected jet-setters who always know the exact brand name of all the objects they use, own, and see (a car isn't simply a Toyota, it's a Toyota Hilux, and always referred to by that full name).  This was new and unusual in Pattern Recognition, and overdone in Spook Country.  In Zero History it's pretty much unbearable--not to mention that the trilogy's "the future is now" slant on technology, which felt like a revelation in 2003, is practically old hat in 2013.
  
  
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  Gibson's focus this time around is on clothing, as Spook Country heroine Hollis Henry is dispatched by PR wunderkind Hubertus Bigend to find the maker of a super-exclusive, highly secretive, high-end brand of jeans, so that Bigend can commercialize and market it.  Meanwhile, former drug addict Milgrim, another Spook Country character who is now working for Bigend, is sent to do a little industrial espionage on designers of military clothing, on the grounds that these styles influence commercial streetwear.  There are some interesting ideas here--though Gibson loses me on the connection between military and street fashion when he illustrates it through a character who wears a particularly utilitarian bra and claims that it was designed by the IDF; we are now at least two decades past the point where any reasonable person could still believe that all Israeli women are Mossad commandos who can strip an Uzi in their sleep, and as a former woman in the IDF I can assure you that I, and all my fellow female soldiers, bought our bras in the lingerie store like normal people--but they end up drowned out by an action plot that reiterates the previous two books even more than Gibson's fondness for dropping brand names.
  
  Where Zero History deviates from its two predecessors is in finally coming out against Bigend, who here is presented as almost a devil, and his attempts to monetize the jeans that Hollis is looking for an act of corruption that she must protect their designer from.  Which ends up rubbing me the wrong way.  Pattern Recognition and Spook Country were filled with an appreciation for objects that transcended their love of brands, an appreciation rooted in how well those objects had been designed and made, how perfectly they fit their purpose.  When Zero History fetishizes Hollis's mysterious jeans, it does so not simply because they're well made, but because they're exclusive, and it treats Hollis's efforts to keep them that way as almost a holy quest.  There are a lot of things wrong with the global fashion industry--its reliance on cheap, near-captive labor and poor working conditions, its perpetuation of distorted body images, the damage it does to the environment--but I don't think that the near-universal availability of cheap clothing is one of them.  To valorize an object because it is exclusive, and available only to those in the know (and, implicitly, those who are rich enough to drop everything and fly to Australia on a moment's notice when the designer announces a release there) doesn't strike me as the blow against evil that Gibson clearly intends me to see it as, no matter how problematic the commercialized, homogenized alternative is.
  
• This is How You Lose Her (http://www.amazon.co.uk/This-How-You-Lose-Her/dp/0571294197) by Junot Díaz - Díaz's second collection, and his follow-up to the Pulitzer-winning The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, doesn't break new ground.  Once again, the focus is on the lives of first and second-generation Dominican immigrants to the US, and once again, the narrator is Díaz's alter-ego Yunior, a smartass with good grades and a bad attitude who can never get far enough away from the country he was born in or the neighborhood he grew up in.  As the title suggests, the topic of most of the stories here, as it was in Yunior's strand in Oscar Wao, is his inability to remain faithful, and the way that his infidelity destroys one relationship after another.
  
  (https://www.znaksagite.com/diskusije/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2F1.bp.blogspot.com%2F-JbxSE3dqxME%2FUfO9RnLWG-I%2FAAAAAAAAAeQ%2FDsKDUvap2vI%2Fs200%2Fimages4.jpg&hash=4eb25a9e62aa544bed6b7ab539e0db895b904190) (http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-JbxSE3dqxME/UfO9RnLWG-I/AAAAAAAAAeQ/DsKDUvap2vI/s1600/images4.jpg)Though Yunior's Dominican background and his family history play a role, as they did in Oscar Wao, in his behavior, Díaz isn't interested in making excuses, and indeed the point of the stories isn't to assign blame--Yunior is always willing to admit to being a fuckup.  What the stories in This is How You Lose Her try to do instead is get at Yunior's humanity, painting a portrait of a man who knows that he's the one destroying his own happiness, but still wants to be loved and forgiven, and is still heartbroken when the relationships he betrays actually do break down.  (Reading between the lines, Yunior comes off like the male equivalent of the romance heroine who doesn't know who she is without a man; he can't stop himself from cheating, but he doesn't know what to do without a woman in his life.)  Keeping all this running is, of coure, Díaz's narrative voice, a sing-song, fast-flowing blend of English, Spanish, and slang that is still, after two collection and a novel, stunning in its immediacy and vitality.  It makes the slight repetitiveness of the ideas in This is How You Lose Her--and in Díaz's career--seem worthwhile, but still I wish that Díaz would do something different--that, as promised, he'll expand his apocalypse-in-the-DR story "Monstro," from the New Yorker's science fiction issue a few years back, into a novel, and use that remarkable voice to tell us stories we haven't yet heard.
  
• Where'd You Go, Bernadette (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Whered-You-Bernadette-Maria-Semple/dp/178022124X) by Maria Semple - Told through email exchanges, newsletters, magazine articles, and the connective tissue of its teenage narrator's reminiscences, Where'd You Go, Bernadette describes the events leading up to the disappearance of Seattle housewife Bernadette Fox.  A pioneer of green architecture and MacArthur Genius Grant recipient, Bernadette built only two houses before flaming out spectacularly and retreating to the suburbs of Seattle.  As the book opens fifteen years later, Bernadette is a shut-in, living in a dilapidated mansion she'd intended but never got around to renovating with her Microsoft genius husband and their precocious daughter Bee, who is just on the cusp of working out how abnormal her life and parents are.  Most of the comedy in the novel's early chapters comes from Bernadette's snobbish disdain for her mundane neighbors, and their part-curious, part-scandalized fascination with her, a madwoman who lives on the hill and never participates in the school bake sales.  These chapters, with their skewering of suburban small-mindedness and groupthink, have a whiff of Nicola Barker about them, but there's a dark undertone to them that Semple won't quite acknowledge.
  
  
  (https://www.znaksagite.com/diskusije/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2F3.bp.blogspot.com%2F-Qaa8nvXSLsw%2FUfO9Ufyv_LI%2FAAAAAAAAAeY%2FF3gwXNX7p-c%2Fs200%2Fimages5.jpg&hash=48f852532ceb82ebf82b7b8ed38cdcd96488f5cf) (http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Qaa8nvXSLsw/UfO9Ufyv_LI/AAAAAAAAAeY/F3gwXNX7p-c/s1600/images5.jpg)
  As Dan Hartland writes in his review (https://thestoryandthetruth.wordpress.com/2013/06/05/she-didnt-get-along-with-most-people-maria-semples-whered-you-go-bernadette/), the narrative castigates Bernadette for her misanthropy, and her neighbors for being judgmental (and, since this is ultimately a benevolent comic novel rather than a satirical one, allows them to outgrow it) but it has nothing to say about her privilege.  One of Bernadette's methods for avoiding the world is to hire a personal assistant in India who handles shopping, household repair, travel arrangements, and even doctor's prescriptions for $30 a week.  This assistant is later revealed to be an identity thief who nearly clears out Bernadette's bank accounts, which absolves both her and us from having to wonder about the kind of person who sees nothing wrong with paying so little for so much work while sprinkling her emails with thoughtlessly privileged proclamations about her and her assistant's relative quality of life.  Instead, the only criticism that is expressed towards Bernadette is over her choice to give up her creative work--if you do not create, a former teacher tells her, you will become a menace to society--and if Where'd You Go, Bernadette has a message underpinning its social humor it is this examination of how to be a brilliant, creative person while dealing with the frustrating realities of a world that won't always let you do the work you were meant to do (one of the book's more interesting and subtle touches is that as she discovers her own genius--for investigating her parents' lives--the previously happy-go-lucky Bee starts to exhibit some of her mother's impatience and misanthropy).  The fact that some geniuses are never given the opportunity to exercise their creativity because they lack Bernadette's privilege is never discussed, and that, along with the slight sentimentality of the novel's resolution, undercuts what is otherwise a sharp, witty story about what it means to be special, and the obligations--to yourself and to others--that come with it.
  
• The Orphan Master's Son (http://www.amazon.com/Orphan-Masters-Son-Pulitzer-Fiction/dp/0812982622) by Adam Johnson - The premise of Johnson's novel--a bildungsroman set in North Korea--put me off as soon as I heard it, and its winning the Pulitzer prize (an award whose previous winners include Memories of a Geisha) wasn't an enticement either.  It was the repeated and consistent praise from the judges of this year's Tournament of Books (which Johnson (https://www.znaksagite.com/diskusije/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2F3.bp.blogspot.com%2F-mJpk2iKOzvk%2FUfO9XP9CHcI%2FAAAAAAAAAeg%2F3AUajD_ZgbY%2Fs200%2Fimages6.jpg&hash=a9bfb36d9abf1c7fd7ac8e71c341069d43ff48d5) (http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-mJpk2iKOzvk/UfO9XP9CHcI/AAAAAAAAAeg/3AUajD_ZgbY/s1600/images6.jpg)went on to win) that finally persuaded me to give the book a try, and though what I found certainly justifies the tournament judges' praise, it also confirms my doubts about the novel's project.  Beautifully written and expertly plotted, the novel follows Jun Do, the titular orphan master's son, as he alternately rises and falls through the strata of North Korean society, going from lowly army grunt to professional kidnapper to spy to envoy the US to prisoner to the inner circle of Kim Jong Il.  What he's searching for is an identity he can bear to call his own in a nation that doesn't give its citizens the option of living a righteous life.  At the same time, his story is repeatedly being appropriated--as propaganda, as patriotic, anti-American lies to keep himself and his colleagues out of prison, as a cover to fool his American hosts into taking him seriously, and as a means of rescuing the people he cares about from Kim's clutches.  The malleability of story and identity lie at the heart of the novel, as do their twin uses as instruments of both oppression and liberation (by the end of the novel, Jun Do is modeling himself on Rick from Casablanca, and like him, sacrificing himself so that the woman he loves can escape oppression).  So it could be said that Johnson's use of North Korea is purely symbolic (as indicated by protagonist's punning name), a backdrop of oppression against which to set his story of an individual finding freedom through reinvention.  But The Orphan Master's Son is also painstakingly researched and detailed.  Though I can't speak to its accuracy, there is an obvious sense that Johnson isn't merely writing a parable, but trying to give his readers as complete a picture of life in North Korea as he can.
  
  Which, paradoxically, is why I finished the novel feeling uncomfortable at the fact that Johnson is speaking for people who have been denied their own voices, and has been rewarded for it.  As a corrective, I followed the book up with Barbara Demick's Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea (http://www.amazon.com/Nothing-Envy-Ordinary-Lives-North/dp/0385523912), an (https://www.znaksagite.com/diskusije/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2F2.bp.blogspot.com%2F-23cU8oYZc20%2FUfO_MRHDusI%2FAAAAAAAAAew%2FJti6tY6Z6NY%2Fs200%2Fimages7.jpg&hash=335f1cffff1e3755803627162e36139c2ec966cf) (http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-23cU8oYZc20/UfO_MRHDusI/AAAAAAAAAew/Jti6tY6Z6NY/s1600/images7.jpg)oral history based on Demick's interviews with North Korean defectors.  Nic Clarke, who called my attention to the book, has already written eloquently (http://evesalexandria.typepad.com/eves_alexandria/2013/03/nothing-to-envy.html) about its power, so I'll just add that as a counterpoint to Johnson's novel, the testimonies of Demick's interviewees make for powerful reading, and helped to crystallize some of my problems with the novel.  Even taking into account the selection bias that affects the book's subjects--these are the people who had the courage, the strength of will, and sometimes though not always the resources to leave their home--I was struck, while reading their accounts, by a vitality and a will to better their lives that is missing from almost all the characters--including, sometimes, the lead--in Johnson's novel.  Even before they gave up on North Korea, Demick's interviewees were working hard to survive, even if doing so meant rejecting, in action if not in word, the dogma they'd grown up with.  They start businesses, read illicit literature, and try to contact their relatives in the South.  Their minds are free, even if their lives aren't.
  
  In contrast, the prevailing tone among most of the North Koreans Jun Do meets is one of fatalism.  They survive by not acting, and by parroting the newspeak of the day, agreeing that up is down and black is white in order to survive--as when Jun Do steals the uniform of a high ranking official who visits his prison and escapes despite looking nothing like the man, because everyone he meets is too afraid to challenge him.  This is obviously in service of Johnson's project, which mimics the absurdist fiction of Soviet writers, who tried to put the insanity of living under a totalitarian regime into words by taking it to its illogical extremes.  But unlike those writers, Johnson isn't writing about his own country; whether or not he intended it, one of the results of his choice to write a North Korea in which everyone but the hero simply accepts things as they are is that it echoes a tendency of Western writers to treat foreigners as if their strange culture makes them less human, less likely to strive for better things and to use all their intelligence and ingenuity to achieve that goal.  The Orphan Master's Son is an excellent piece of literature, but I can't be entirely happy at its success.
  
• Mr. Fox (http://www.amazon.com/Mr-Fox-Helen-Oyeyemi/dp/1594486182) by Helen Oyeyemi - Oyeyemi's most recent novel (which is the first of her works that I've read) is possibly a novel in stories, and definitely a novel about stories, and about the way that they both shape and are shaped by reality.  Mr. Fox, an author in the pre-war US, is visited by his muse Mary Foxe--who may or may not be a figment of his imagination--who complains about his penchant for killing women in his fiction.  The two--or rather versions of them--then star in a sequence of stories, in which Mary tries to show Mr. Fox the error of his ways (or just to punish him for them) while he tries to get his wayward muse under control.  Meanwhile, in the framing story, Mr. Fox's wife Daphne believes that her husband is having an affair, but is Mary Daphne's competition, or an inspiration to take up her own creative work?
  
  
  (https://www.znaksagite.com/diskusije/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2F4.bp.blogspot.com%2F-lzLwizqtg9g%2FUfTxVzOMSUI%2FAAAAAAAAAfA%2Fqu_u-jWTz_g%2Fs200%2Findex.jpg&hash=ab9049cb01eaa50b9a4e7134b64843c8b95a23ab) (http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-lzLwizqtg9g/UfTxVzOMSUI/AAAAAAAAAfA/qu_u-jWTz_g/s1600/index.jpg)
  Most of the stories in Mr. Fox take fairy tales as their starting point, in particular the title work, a variant on Bluebeard in which the storyteller is the intended wife and victim, who is able to turn the tables on her future husband and murderer by telling his story and revealing him for what he is.  One of Oyeyemi's focal points is the prevalence of wife murder in  fiction (and in real life), the way that the husband, so often the hero  in the traditional romantic narrative, can become its monster; but she  is also treating that murder as something more symbolic, the murder of  ambitions and talent, as one partner (usually the wife) sublimates their  creative drive to  please the other, sometimes without even realizing that they've done so.  That slipperiness, the shift between symbolic and actual murder, between good husband and bad, between fairy tale and modern fiction, is reflected in the stories that make up Mr. Fox, as Oyeyemi and her two storytellers/protagonists riff and extemporize on the title fairy tale in a way that makes shifting roles the central idea of the novel.  Authors become characters, animals become human, loving husbands become murderers,  supportive wives become consumed with their own work--and vice versa.  The result is a rich stew of allusions, references and parallels that chime against each other and come down not to an answer but a set of questions: can Mr. Fox be a good husband and stop killing women, both as an author and in real life?  Can Mary Foxe trust him instead of seeing him only as a monster?  Can Daphne Fox be a wife who is the equal of her husband, and an author in her own right?  What they also come down to, however, is a love story--with a particular screwball tone that suits the framing story's 30s setting very well--between three people who despite their shifting roles in it still emerge from the novel as vivid characters.  Both thought-provoking and delightful, I'm sure that Mr. Fox won't be the last of Oyeyemi's books that I will read.

Posted by  Abigail Nussbaum     at  9:47 PM

  |      Jurassic: New audio, new bundles and a mummy or two (http://www.pornokitsch.com/2013/09/jurassic-new-audio-new-bundles-and-a-mummy-or-two.html)          (https://www.znaksagite.com/diskusije/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fthecarnivoreproject.typepad.com%2F.a%2F6a00d8345295c269e2019aff47b98f970d-200wi&hash=f5f7de8711323b19ac5983a22b090d3f52fd5fe9) (http://thecarnivoreproject.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8345295c269e2019aff47b98f970d-popup)Stories in every format!
Dark Fiction Magazine (http://www.darkfictionmagazine.co.uk/episode/issue-15-one-of-us-one-of-us/) have recorded three stories for audio for their special issue on the "outsider", called "ONE OF US":

   
• Alastair Reynolds' "A Map of Mercury" (The Lowest Heaven) (http://www.darkfictionmagazine.co.uk/episode-15/a-map-of-mercury-by-alastair-reynolds/)
• S.L. Grey's "We'll Always Be Here" (The Lowest Heaven) (http://www.darkfictionmagazine.co.uk/episode-15/well-always-be-here-by-s-l-grey/)
• Sam Sykes' "Wish for a Gun" (A Town Called Pandemonium) (http://www.darkfictionmagazine.co.uk/episode-15/wish-for-a-gun-by-sam-sykes/)

They all sound magnificent and, better yet, they're completely free. (In fact, they're beyond free - they come with a cheeky discount code from Spacewitch.)
Amazon have started their Matchbook program of bundling ebooks and paperbacks. For shoppers on Amazon.com, you'll find the following books have been matched:

   
• The Lowest Heaven (http://www.amazon.com/The-Lowest-Heaven-Jared-Shurin/dp/0957646216/) (buy the paperback, get the ebook for $2.99)
• Lost Souls (http://www.amazon.com/Pandemonium-Lost-Souls-Jared-Shurin/dp/0957646208/) (buy the paperback, get the ebook for $1.99)
• A Town Called Pandemonium (http://www.amazon.com/Town-Called-Pandemonium-Will-Hill/dp/0957347545/) (buy the paperback, get the ebook for $1.99)
• Speculative Fiction 2012 (http://www.amazon.com/Speculative-Fiction-2012-reviews-commentary/dp/0957347553/) (buy the paperback, get the ebook for free)

The offer hasn't been extended outside of the US... at least not on Amazon. Our chums at Spacewitch (http://www.spacewitch.com/) have picked up the slack, and you can get those same deals through their site.
We've also uploaded 'second printing' paperbacks of A Town Called Pandemonium and The Lowest Heaven to Amazon - the primary advantage of using POD is that we (the world's tiniest press) can sell all over the world. The secondary advantage is that we can (given some breathing room) make a few tiny typo corrections when we spot them. (For those that prefer their books locally printed, we suggest getting our copies through Spacewitch or Forbidden Planet).
October is looking very busy, with three new releases. Unearthed and The Book of the Dead are looking fantastic, and we're about to start taking pre-orders for the latter (hinthint-mailinglist-hinthint (http://www.pandemonium-fiction.com/contact.html)). The hardcover is strictly limited to 100 copies, and they're... something special.
The third release is Ash (http://www.pandemonium-fiction.com/ash.html), which, against all odds, is ahead of schedule. So we're moving it up a month. The stories are great, the cover is bonkers and, as always, it'll be free on all major platforms.

oh, bice sad kontroverznih prepucavanja, letece sekire & stihovi ce teci...  xrotaeye

Science fiction author Orson Scott Card has been appointed to serve a two-year term as a trustee for UNC-TV public broadcasting network by the North Carolina state legislature.  The 22-member Board of Trustees, which meets quarterly, serves as an advisory council to the Board of Governors, which holds UNC-TV's broadcast licenses and is responsible for the organization.  UNC-TV produces many hours of original broadcasting each year.

http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2013/09/10/4303991/controversial-author-named-to.html#.UjFbU9hBuid (http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2013/09/10/4303991/controversial-author-named-to.html#.UjFbU9hBuid)

by Patrick Hester (http://www.atfmb.com/author/admin/)



Elmore Leonard passwed away this week.  (https://www.znaksagite.com/diskusije/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.atfmb.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2013%2F08%2FRaylan-197x300.jpg&hash=216f9242a39e10a12752529b763762c0c9739fc3) (http://www.atfmb.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Raylan-197x300.jpg)In his honor, I thought I'd share Elmore Leonard's 10 Rules of Writing:


1)  Never open a book with the weather
If it's only to create atmosphere, and not a character's reaction to the weather, you don't want to go on too long. The reader is apt to leaf ahead looking for people.

2)  Avoid Prologues
They can be annoying, especially a prologue following an introduction that comes after a foreword.

3)  Never use a verb other than "said" to carry dialogue
The line of dialogue belongs to the character; the verb is the writer sticking their nose in. But said is far less intrusive than grumbled, gasped, cautioned, lied.

4) Never use an adverb to modify the verb "said"
... he admonished gravely. To use an adverb this way (or almost any way) is a mortal sin. The writer is now exposing themself in earnest, using a word that distracts and can interrupt the rhythm of the exchange.

5) Keep your exclamation points under control
You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose.

6) Never use the words "suddenly" or "all hell broke loose."
This rule doesn't require an explanation. I have noticed that writers who use "suddenly" tend to exercise less control in the application of exclamation points.

7) Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly
Once you start spelling words in dialogue phonetically and loading the page with apostrophes, you won't be able to stop.

8) Avoid detailed descriptions of characters
In Ernest Hemingway's "Hills Like White Elephants" what do the "American and the girl with him" look like? "She had taken off her hat and put it on the table." That's the only reference to a physical description in the story, and yet we see the couple and know them by their tones of voice, with not one adverb in sight.

9) Don't go into great detail describing places and things
Even if you're good at it, you don't want descriptions that bring the action, the flow of the story, to a standstill.

10) Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip
Think of what you skip reading a novel: thick paragraphs of prose you can see have too many words in them... I'll bet you don't skip dialogue.
~P
Elmore Leonard's #10RulesofWriting

 :-D





(https://www.znaksagite.com/diskusije/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2F1.bp.blogspot.com%2F-bHPPXFhkLvI%2FUjD8cgHYs2I%2FAAAAAAAAFHk%2FQlbEu8r5Hyo%2Fs400%2FJerry%2Band%2BMickey%2B_n.jpg&hash=2909f22b4607496f15fc78e161f0b2bc94707cd7)


A friend sent me the above photo this morning. "You probably know more about Sci Fi and Fantasy publications than anyone I know," he wrote, "so can you possibly identify the book that Jerry Garcia is reading in the attached photo. It would mean a lot to thousands of Deadheads."

I like a challenge. The picture is of such low resolution I almost couldn't make out anything helpful about the book, but I was determined. The title seemed long and the more I stared at it, the more it looked like some sort of anthology title ... The Best something? ... maybe a best of the year collection? ... no, best of fantasy and science -- The Best from Fantasy and Science Fiction, I bet. I've got a few copies of that longrunning series of stories from the venerable magazine (http://www.sfsite.com/fsf/), but all mine are old hardcovers picked up at library sales. I'm not sure I've ever even seen one of the paperbacks, or knew that there were paperbacks of the series. But God invented ISFDB (http://www.isfdb.org/) for just such moments. I didn't know which volume of the series this was, but figured if I looked up some of the paperbacks from the 1960s, I might be able to figure it out. I tried the 18th first. No, but the text and layout looked like I was maybe in the vicinity. So I just kept trying.

And there it was. The Best from Fantasy and Science Fiction, 14th Series (http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?35721).

I was particularly amused to see that the ever-wonderful Kit Reed (http://www.kitreed.net/) had a story in the book ("Automatic Tiger"). I stuck the info on Facebook and asked her if she'd gotten a fan letter from Jerry. Alas, no. But still, it's nice to find direction around some corner where it's been waiting to meet you. 
Posted by Matthew Cheney http://mumpsimus.blogspot.com/ (http://mumpsimus.blogspot.com/)

Aj molim te kači i linkove odakle si preuzela, ovo forumsko rasformatiranje ubiva čitanje dužih tekstova...

pa kacim... link je na dnu posta.

In 1989, when "climate change" had just entered the public lexicon, 63 percent of Americans understood it was a problem. Almost 25 years later, that proportion is actually a bit lower, at 58 percent.


The timeline of these polls defines my career in science. In 1982 I was an undergraduate physics major. In 1989 I was a graduate student. My dream was that, in a quarter-century, I would be a professor of astrophysics, introducing a new generation of students to the powerful yet delicate craft of scientific research.


Much of that dream has come true. Yet instead of sending my students into a world that celebrates the latest science has to offer, I am delivering them into a society ambivalent, even skeptical, about the fruits of science.


This is not a world the scientists I trained with would recognize. Many of them served on the Manhattan Project. Afterward, they helped create the technologies that drove America's postwar prosperity. In that era of the mid-20th century, politicians were expected to support science financially but otherwise leave it alone. The disaster of Lysenkoism, in which Communist ideology distorted scientific truth and all but destroyed Russian biological science, was still a fresh memory.


The triumph of Western science led most of my professors to believe that progress was inevitable. While the bargain between science and political culture was at times challenged — the nuclear power debate of the 1970s, for example — the battles were fought using scientific evidence. Manufacturing doubt remained firmly off-limits.


Today, however, it is politically effective, and socially acceptable, to deny scientific fact. Narrowly defined, "creationism" was a minor current in American thinking for much of the 20th century. But in the years since I was a student, a well-funded effort has skillfully rebranded that ideology as "creation science" and pushed it into classrooms across the country. Though transparently unscientific, denying evolution has become a litmus test for some conservative politicians, even at the highest levels.


Meanwhile, climate deniers, taking pages from the creationists' PR playbook, have manufactured doubt about fundamental issues in climate science that were decided scientifically decades ago. And anti-vaccine campaigners brandish a few long-discredited studies to make unproven claims about links between autism and vaccination.


The list goes on. North Carolina has banned state planners from using climate data in their projections of future sea levels. So many Oregon parents have refused vaccination that the state is revising its school entry policies. And all of this is happening in a culture that is less engaged with science and technology as intellectual pursuits than at any point I can remember.


Thus, even as our day-to-day experiences have become dependent on technological progress, many of our leaders have abandoned the postwar bargain in favor of what the scientist Michael Mann calls the "scientization of politics."


What do I tell my students? From one end of their educational trajectory to the other, our society told these kids science was important. How confusing is it for them now, when scientists receive death threats for simply doing honest research on our planet's climate history?


Americans always expected their children to face a brighter economic future, and we scientists expected our students to inherit a world where science was embraced by an ever-larger fraction of the population. This never implied turning science into a religion or demanding slavish acceptance of this year's hot research trends. We face many daunting challenges as a society, and they won't all be solved with more science and math education. But what has been lost is an understanding that science's open-ended, evidence-based processes — rather than just its results — are essential to meeting those challenges.


My professors' generation could respond to silliness like creationism with head-scratching bemusement. My students cannot afford that luxury. Instead they must become fierce champions of science in the marketplace of ideas.


During my undergraduate studies I was shocked at the low opinion some of my professors had of the astronomer Carl Sagan. For me his efforts to popularize science were an inspiration, but for them such "outreach" was a diversion. That view makes no sense today.


The enthusiasm and generous spirit that Mr. Sagan used to advocate for science now must inspire all of us. There are science Twitter feeds and blogs to run, citywide science festivals and high school science fairs that need input. For the civic-minded nonscientists there are school board curriculum meetings and long-term climate response plans that cry out for the participation of informed citizens. And for every parent and grandparent there is the opportunity to make a few more trips to the science museum with your children.


Behind the giant particle accelerators and space observatories, science is a way of behaving in the world. It is, simply put, a tradition. And as we know from history's darkest moments, even the most enlightened traditions can be broken and lost. Perhaps that is the most important lesson all lifelong students of science must learn now.


Adam Frank, a professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Rochester, is the author of "About Time: Cosmology and Culture at the Twilight of the Big Bang" and a founder of NPR's 13.7 Cosmos and Culture blog.




link  (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/22/opinion/welcome-to-the-age-of-denial.html?nl=todaysheadlines&adxnnl=1&emc=edit_th_20130822&adxnnlx=1377180537-XsUyi67PBN5INEQz4IAE7g&_r=2&)

nego, kad smo već kod "climate change" kontroverze iz prethodnog posta: sećam se kako me šokirao otvoreni animozitet (to uglavnom prema naučnicima koji tu teoriju zastupaju) u Crihtonovom romanu State of Fear. On u apendiksima elaborira taj animozitet u detaljnom rušenju te "histerije", kako je on naziva, sve u podršku svom stavu da je popularizacija nauke zapravo sinonimna sa njenom politizacijom. Recimo, povlači detaljnu paralelu sa ne tako davnašnjom teorijom eugenike i njenim plasmanom koji je bio kamufliran u popularizaciju nauke ali uglavnom preko ne-naučnug establišmenta, to uglavnom političara i umetnika.
Enivejz, interesantno je to štivo, ili bar znatno interesantnije nego sam roman.  :mrgreen:

http://www.jackiemorris.co.uk/blog/writers-notebooks/ (http://www.jackiemorris.co.uk/blog/writers-notebooks/)


neke od ovih beležnica mi izgledaju kao propovi za sajko-triler...  :-D [size=78%] [/size]






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'Well, that's the end of the Booker prize, then'


Allowing US writers entry into the UK's most prestigious prize spells disaster, says Philip Hensher



When the news that the Man Booker prize is to be opened up to the vast and dominant fields of the American novel broke this week, I heard of a well-known London agent who remarked succinctly: "Well, that's the end of the Booker, then." When eligibility shifts from the UK, Commonwealth, Ireland and Zimbabwe to English-language novels published in the UK, it is hard to see how the American novel will fail to dominate. Not through excellence, necessarily, but simply through an economic super-power exerting its own literary tastes, just as the British empire imposed the idea that Shakespeare was the greatest writer who ever lived throughout its 19th-century colonies. The tendency was already at work in this year's Booker shortlist, where a superficial multicultural aspect concealed a specifically North American taste. Jhumpa Lahiri's Lowland had fascinatingly airport-bestseller features, including the favourite trope of two brothers divided by the currents of history. NoViolet Bulawayo's We Need New Names dutifully covered all the external and societal concerns about African society that a creative writing student, or a devoted viewer of CNN's nightly special, might believe significant – NGO, exorcisms, corruption, the plight of the white Africans, etc. Ruth Ozeki's novel about Japan, A Tale for the Time Being, covered the cute aspect, the Salaryman aspect, the Buddhist aspect, the suicide aspect and so on in approved Murakami-esque tones. Curiously, all these novels, effectively written by American-based authors about exotic places, were unable to do so without placing the exotic places in the reassuring context of an American suburb. The novel written by an Indian, living in India, about India, without reference to his later life in Cincinnati was dead this year. From next year, the floodgates open, and we can expect never to hear again from an Indian novelist.

The Commonwealth Writers' prize provides a cautionary tale: in 2011, they made the decision to stop the main prize, and just continue with a first novel prize. Two years later, this was abolished, too. All that remains of a once very useful prize is a short story competition to which nobody pays the slightest attention, and which, in 17 years, nobody of the slightest reputation has ever won.

The Booker has done a great deal of good in its 45 years. It has given novelists from a huge range of national traditions a wider readership, and has done so by its limits. It is just about confined enough in scope to allow every judge to read every book submitted – the year I judged the prize, in 2001, it was about 120 books in total, which was probably not far from the upper limit of possibility. Reading all the books gives the judges real freedom of movement apart from conventional taste. A prize that hands over a large part of the reading to a pre-reading panel, or that divides up the reading between judges, instantly loses a large part of its authority. I spoke to AS Byatt, who won the prize in 1990 for Possession. She made an important point about what will happen when the number of submissions increases next year. "The Booker prize is the only book prize that doesn't sift – odd things crop up. It's a major undertaking, every judge reading everything. This will no longer be possible."

Readers across the globe have understood that the Booker is a recommendation about the British or Commonwealth novel. If you want a recommendation about the all-dominating American novel, there is no shortage of American prizes. But, you will say, the American novel is so much more exciting than the UK or Commonwealth novel. It deserves to be recognised. Perhaps we would be better off with the winners of the Pulitzer, rather than the winner of the Booker. Towering figures such as N Scott Momaday, Michael Shaara, James Alan Macpherson, William Kennedy, Robert Olen Butler, Geraldine Brooks and Elizabeth Strout would, in the last 45 years, have formed the pinnacle of literary achievement: winners of the Pulitzer prize for fiction, all of them. The assumption that an American input to the Booker would have resulted in the triumph of the great masterpieces of American fiction rather than the limp products of British fiction is not very sound. Perhaps, in 1969, N Scott Momaday would have won in the place of PH Newby, which doesn't seem like much of an improvement.

The fact is that prize committees sometimes get things right, and sometimes get things wrong. To increase the apparent diversity available to their choices is not necessarily to increase the final diversity; it often results in the triumph of the most dominant ideology or faction. Of course, prize committees are at the mercy of what is submitted, and the Booker specifically at the mercy of what London publishers think will sell in London. They can't work entirely against that. But it is hard to think of any prize that has gained in authority by demolishing its boundaries. The prize starts to go to any old stuff that demonstrates that the boundaries have gone. It will be a brave Booker panel in 2014 that doesn't give the prize to an American novel, and the precedent of the Booker international prize, open to Americans and consistently won by Americans, is not encouraging.

Many British novelists feel now that the prospect of things that sustained them have been held out, and then withdrawn one after the other. There was the Net Book Agreement, abolished in 1997. There was the collapse of ordinary booksellers under the weight of Amazon. There was the prospect of Google claiming copyright over their out-of-print books. There is the imminent collapse of all those pages of newspaper book reviews, paying the odd and helpful £200 to the not-very-successful writer. There was the collapse of the public library system, which even 40 years ago would guarantee a couple of thousand copies sold of the mid-list English novelist. And so on. Soon, most publishers will prefer the Fifty Shades of Grey model: publish your books yourself for nothing, and if they prove successful with the public, then we'll publish this one, and maybe even the next one. You never know. The pattern of business that produced a Beryl Bainbridge or a Hilary Mantel by supporting a career, and believing in the possibility of rewarding achievement through discrimination, is fading, and will be gone in five years. The sort of English novelists who speak to an English readership about English matters, however refined or profound their technique and subject, is gone. If they do not speak to a global readership – if their jokes give American academic critics a baffled face and elicit the expression "go figure" – then forget it. It doesn't deserve reward or recognition, because the ideal of "diversity" means that all novels, from now on, must be very much the same. Does it matter? Well, only if you want to live in a world where all the different voices of literature matter, I suppose.

No writer embarks on a career with any illusions that the world owes them a living. But I don't think I've ever heard so many novelists say, as over the last two or three days, "Well, we might as well just give up, then." It seems quite baffling to many writers that a major prize that has so successfully promoted them should move its terms so radically and for no good reason. Is there really a problem in making readers aware of the best American novels – one that a revised Booker needs to address? There is a strong danger that the Booker will become viewed as a minor American prize, of some small interest when it, as usual, goes to an American writer, otherwise bafflingly open to a lot of strange foreigners, who thankfully never win. On the other hand, there is no possibility whatsoever, I would say, of the great American prizes opening themselves up to non-Americans. They know what they're about.


http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2013/sep/18/booker-prize-us-writers-end (http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2013/sep/18/booker-prize-us-writers-end)

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http://yellowhairedreviewer.blogspot.com/2012/05/lottery-and-other-stories-by-shirley.html (http://yellowhairedreviewer.blogspot.com/2012/05/lottery-and-other-stories-by-shirley.html)


Despite being a fan of scary stories I had never read anything by the legendary horror writer Shirley Jackson until last year when I stumbled upon and was completely blown away by We Have Always Lived in the Castle. Upon finishing this wonderfully creepy novel, I felt eager to read more by Jackson, and immediately added both The Lottery and Other Stories and The Haunting of Hill House to my 'to-read' list.
The Lottery and Other Stories is a collection of strange, ambiguous and at times unsettling short stories. Many of them feature a mysterious 'Mr Harris' character; In fact it was originally published as The Lottery: The Adventures of James Harris, but he doesn't actually appear in all the stories so I'm unsure as to why this should be the case. I cannot deny that Shirley Jackson's writing is superb; she certainly has a real way with words and succeeds in creating an atmosphere and sucking you in to her tales.
However, contrary to popular opinion, I didn't enjoy this collection. As I have already said, a key element the majority of these tales share is ambiguity, which can be fine, but these particular stories take this to the extreme; so much so that many of them end abruptly without anything being resolved and oftentimes without anything having happened at all! Apart from the recurrence of James Harris, there seems to be little that ties this group of stories together. For example, on the one hand we have 'The Lottery', which is very mysterious and has a shock reveal at the end, and it keeps you hooked and intrigued about what on earth is going on in the little village. However most of the others I would barely qualify as stories at all, and are what I can only describe as random segments of life or filler scenes from a longer novel, and I found this quite infuriating since well over half of the collection is of this nature. The tales that fall into this category include: 'Like Mother Used to Make'; 'The Villager' and 'An Afternoon in Linen', amongst others. Even one of the longer ones, 'Elizabeth', which initially I thought was pretty decent and intriguing just sort of, well, ended at a really peculiar point in the story and I was left feeling thoroughly dissatisfied with it.

Despite the negatives there are some enjoyable stories in this collection: the title story 'The Lottery' was brilliant, and I would also recommend 'The Daemon Lover'; 'The Witch'; 'The Renegade' and 'Seven Types of Ambiguity'. Even so, apart from 'The Lottery' itself, these stories are not anything particularly special, and are not commendable enough as to render the entire collection as good; I felt that the poor stories certainly overshadowed the better ones.This collection of short stories is generally well reviewed, but I wouldn't recommend it. Perhaps Jackson is more skilled as a novel writer, because We Have Always Lived in the Castle was truly fantastic and I am still looking forward to the prospect of reading The Haunting of Hill House. Unfortunately though, The Lottery and Other Stories just didn't do it for me; I found I was bored for most of it, and it was a bit of a struggle to get through. I would, however, recommend reading some of her short stories individually, such as the ones I listed above, but I wouldn't bother with the entire collection. Rating: 4/10 as a collection, 9/10 for 'The Lottery' alone.


My other Shirley Jackson reviews:
]The Haunting of Hill House  (http://yellowhairedreviewer.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/the-haunting-of-hill-house-by-shirley.html)
] Posted by  The Yellow-Haired Reviewer     at  18:19

http://dirkloechel.deviantart.com/art/Size-Comparison-Science-Fiction-spaceships-398790051 (http://dirkloechel.deviantart.com/art/Size-Comparison-Science-Fiction-spaceships-398790051)

http://hieroglyph.asu.edu/project/the-tall-tower/ (http://hieroglyph.asu.edu/project/the-tall-tower/)
The tower project began when Neal Stephenson started asking a simple question: how tall can we build something? As he started working with structural engineer Keith Hjelmstad, it turned out that this question has some surprising answers. To learn more about the project or get involved, check out the Tower Group (http://hieroglyph.asu.edu/?gpages=tower-project).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXKrreaJp8k&feature=player_embedded#t=0 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXKrreaJp8k&feature=player_embedded#t=0)

U potrazi za letnja zabava / oldiz-gudiz krimi romanima, dosao red i na Parkera  :) :

(https://www.znaksagite.com/diskusije/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2F4.bp.blogspot.com%2F-4JqOYqnjCh0%2FUkTKjaGVDYI%2FAAAAAAAAW4A%2F4zH-0LWg4r0%2Fs320%2FHunter.jpg&hash=ba8fb733ff2278e75b7b361a65af171633713c67)




Parker hits the page fully formed and deep into his own story: walking across the George Washington Bridge, on a rainy day in what was probably 1962, wearing a worn-out suit and without a penny to his name. It's enough to make you feel sorry...for anyone in his way.

The Hunter (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0226770990/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=211189&creative=373489&creativeASIN=0226770990&link_code=as3&tag=theantmusofgb-20) was not just the first book credited to "Richard Stark" and the first exploit of professional heister Parker, it was the first really ambitious book written by Donald E. Westlake, coming after a long string of quickie sex books and three prior crime novels under his own name (The Mercenaries, Killing Time, and 361). From this point, Westlake's apprenticeship was over: the sex novels would end almost immediately, and the pseudonyms would be for specific series (Tucker Coe, Samuel Holt) or for one-off oddities (Judson Jack Carmichael, J. Morgan Cunningham). So, even though it came out under a different author's name, The Hunter is really the book where Donald Westlake found a compelling voice and a strong path forward for his career. He would find other voices later -- funny caper books, starting with 1965's The Fugitive Pigeon and climaxing with the Dortmunder books from 1970's The Hot Rock; and his darker psychological novels, crystallizing with 1981's Kahawa -- but Stark's voice was first.

Parker is a big, blunt man with a will like a freight train, a single-minded machine for committing big robberies and an almost-complete lack of human feeling. He doesn't like to kill, since that draws attention, but he can and does do it, whenever he needs to, as easily as flexing his fingers. His world is populated by a nationwide loose network of similar men -- heavies, drivers, fingermen, safecrackers, and others with skills best used on the dark side of the law. They're not part of organized crime; they're just all independent operators in the same line of work, who make connections for particular jobs, relying on past experience, recommendations from others, and their own gut feelings. Parker and Stark never talk about such men having a code or standards -- this is a world where your compatriots can and will double-cross you, but those men don't last long: either they do a big job and get away, or word gets out and no one will work with them again. It's a tough world made of tough men, who can rely on their own instincts, skills and knowledge, but nothing else.

And Parker is their epitome: smarter and more focused than any of the others we see, exactly as tough and ruthless as he needs to be without shading into sadism, the perfect criminal to lead a team to rob a bank or payroll truck or arms shipment or anywhere else there would be a large pile of money in the early '60s. The novels featuring him take that as a given, and then Stark tosses complications in his way, as dispassionately as Parker himself, to see how he jumps and find out how he can get himself through this time.

In The Hunter, Parker has been living this life -- doing a few big jobs a year, getting ten or thirty thousand dollars at a time, and hiding it in small banks around the country as he lives between jobs at resort hotels like a rich dilettante -- for eighteen years, since we was kicked out of the army in 1944 for dealing on the side. He's just shy of forty, then, still in the prime of life and the peak of his game. But that all fell apart in one job six months before: he was double-crossed, robbed, shot, and left for dead in a burning building. They thought he was dead, but he survived, getting picked up for vagrancy but breaking out and mostly walking his way from San Francisco to New York.

They think he's dead: Mal Resnick, who set up the double-cross to buy his way back into the Outfit, and Parker's wife, Lynn, who shot him rather than be killed by Resnick herself. But Parker finds Lynn, leaves her to kill herself, and moves on to get revenge on Resnick. But, more importantly: to get back the money that Resnick took -- he and Lynn cleared out Parker's accounts on their way back to New York, so his entire support structure is gone. And the money is at least as important to Parker as the revenge.

Stark tells the story inside-out: he leads with Parker returning broke to New York, on the trail  of Lynn and Resnick, and only flashes back to the double-cross at the end of the first section, after Lynn is dead but Resnick still hidden somewhere under mob protection. Then Stark jumps to Resnick, following him as he learns Parker is back in town, ending his section with a parallel flashback to that double-cross. And then Stark doubles back again, to explain in a third section how Parker found Resnick. But that's not the end -- for Parker, Resnick was a necessary but not sufficient end. He demands to get back his money from the mob, even though it would be safer and simpler for him to let it go and start fresh.

And that, more than anything else, sets the model for Parker: he follows his own goals, his own unshakable sense of what he's owed and how to operate, no matter where that leads him. That will drive the plots of the next several books, because he makes the Outfit take notice of him here, makes them pay him back, and has them actively looking to find and kill him. But that's still in the future: by the end of The Hunter, Parker has solved his current situation and is ready to deal with the next one: he needs a new face if he wants to slip back into his old life without worrying about the Outfit behind him every moment.


http://antickmusings.blogspot.com/ (http://antickmusings.blogspot.com/)

Good Writing vs. Talented Writing
by Maria Popova


"Talented writing makes things happen in the reader's mind — vividly, forcefully — that good writing, which stops with clarity and logic, doesn't."


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The secrets of good writing have been debated again and again and again. But "good writing" might, after all, be the wrong ideal to aim for. In About Writing: Seven Essays, Four Letters, and Five Interviews (public library), celebrated author and literary critic Samuel Delany — who, for a fascinating factlet, penned the controversial 1972 "women's liberation" issue of Wonder Woman — synthesizes his most valuable insights from thirty-five years of teaching creative writing, a fine addition to beloved writers' advice on writing. One of his key observations is the crucial difference between "good writing" and "talented writing," the former being largely the product of technique (and we know from H.P. Lovecraft that "no aspiring author should content himself with a mere acquisition of technical rules"), the other a matter of linguistic and aesthetic sensitivity:

"Though they have things in common, good writing and talented writing are not the same.
[...]
If you start with a confused, unclear, and badly written story, and apply the rules of good writing to it, you can probably turn it into a simple, logical, clearly written story. It will still not be a good one. The major fault of eighty-five to ninety-five percent of all fiction is that it is banal and dull.
Now old stories can always be told with new language. You can even add new characters to them; you can use them to dramatize new ideas. But eventually even the new language, characters, and ideas lose their ability to invigorate.
Either in content or in style, in subject matter or in rhetorical approach, fiction that is too much like other fiction is bad by definition. However paradoxical it sounds, good writing as a set of strictures (that is, when the writing is good and nothing more) produces most bad fiction. On one level or another, the realization of this is finally what turns most writers away from writing.
Talented writing is, however, something else. You need talent to write fiction.
Good writing is clear. Talented writing is energetic. Good writing avoids errors. Talented writing makes things happen in the reader's mind — vividly, forcefully — that good writing, which stops with clarity and logic, doesn't."

http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2013/05/20/good-writing-vs-talented-writing/ (http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2013/05/20/good-writing-vs-talented-writing/)

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The US military has cloned infamous serial killers in an attempt to harness the genetics of violence, and when some of the bad clones (all in their teens) escape and start doing what serial killer clones do, a retired and dented special ops hero has to track them down with the help of a sixteen-year-old Jeffrey Dahmer clone.
Where does an idea like this come from?The expected answer involves wrestling with universal expressions of human Identity and Morality and exploring Nature/Nurture, Self. Blah blah. An ethos of American and Male Violence... Blah. And the honest answer has more to do with loving books more than anything else in the world and wanting my name on the cover of one and fancying that ex-girlfriends or my parents will see CAIN'S BLOOD in the bookstore and concede aloud how awesome I am.
In either case, these answers prove too reductive. It would be like condensing the origins of YOU to that one night where mom and dad had some alone time. A whole lot more, even in the most seemingly-random circumstances of conception, and the process of WHERE/HOW/WHEN/WHY a writer first got the idea for a book or story is often long and muddled. [Note: There are some authors who claim to wake up and start writing as if inspired only by their last dream. That ain't me]. And so, I've tried to capture some of my various muses/inspirations here as I worked on CAIN'S BLOOD for five-plus years. For those readers and future-writers drawn to such things, I hope it proves helpful or interesting:
1] Creative Theft. (or 'Inspiration' if you want to be kind) I was at a writer convention in Nashville doing a panel on horror writing with an author named Jason Brannon. At some point, Jason mentioned the idea of his next book: A sideshow circus featuring legendary monsters: Bigfoot, the Chupacabra, Jersey Devil, etc. GREAT IDEA! Loved it. I'd actually written a book about The Jersey Devil and so this was right up my alley. Kinda wanted to taser Jason and steal the concept from him right then and there. But writers don't really do that to each other. So I started thinking instead. How could I commandeer the idea and appropriate something new with/from it? [Somewhere online there are pics of me sitting next to Jason... I look completely out of it because I'm thinking with every brain cell on how to make his idea MY new idea]. I got as far as a sideshow of famous serial killers. No, a museum. No... a private collection. No... Hmmmm. Why the heck would someone collect serial killers? I had no answer yet, but it lingered quietly in my mind for almost a year until I needed that answer. Oh... and is there a little Jurassic Park here? Sure. Or The Road or Sixth Sense or Huckleberry Finn. Maybe just a smidge. Thousands of people have been telling me stories for decades and there're a whole lot of toys collected in my brain to play with in new ways. [Jason's eventual book is called THE CAGE. Buy it here (http://www.amazon.com/The-Cage-Jason-Brannon/dp/0976791498)]
2] Market (Part 1). I'd become friends with the publisher of Apex Science Fiction and Horror Digest, a popular speculative magazine which specialized in, well, stories that combined science fiction and horror. Friends notwithstanding, dude hadn't bought any of my stories yet. Fair enough. My science fiction stuff lacked horror, my horror stuff lacked sci-fi. So.... Driving to an Apex book event one night, a two–hour trip, all I thought about the whole drive was a story that somehow offered the perfect blend for Apex. I'd read every issue of the magazine up to that point. Knew what their editors liked and added some goodies accordingly. Cloned serial killers. Science and horror. Toss in some evil scientists, a couple lab-produced monsters. Done. I pitched the story that same night as a 40k-word novella. Apex said yes and then serialized the tale in four installments throughout 2007. The "Cain Universe" had finally started taking shape...
3] Write What You Know. I teach high school English and one day (many years after the Apex story was published) the students got on the subject of serial killers (it comes up more than you'd think in a room of boys...) One student started quizzing the rest of us. In what city...? What is the name of...? How many... Etc. I got every question right. While my knowledge of the Shakespearean sonnet or Hemingway's influence on postmodernism was tolerated at best, I'd now proven I also knew a lot about something the guys found extremely interesting. Freaky dark stuff. Horrible stuff. But stuff I'd been following like a fan for decades. And since most of the clones would be teens, and as I taught at an all boys' high school and had two teenaged sons, and... yeah, this was something I could write about with some genuine authority I pulled out the Cain novella that same night, and started thinking what I could do with it if given another 60k words to play with.
3] Research. The first rule of writing is "Write What You Know." The second is "Know More." (The third has something to do with "not talking about Fight Club.") Research has always been my favorite aspect of writing, and I will research for six months to a year before writing a single word. Before I began CAIN'S BLOOD, I read and watched and listened. Fifty books, hundreds of web articles. I asked my sons and students what they would do "If...." Watched hours of taped interviews with actual serial killers and psychologists. Scientists. Teen counselors and social workers. Visited serial killers' personal websites (which some produce while in prison). At one point, my oldest son finally asked me to "please stop talking about Jeffrey Dahmer all the time." It was hard not to. My head swimming with facts and arguments regarding serial killers, government conspiracy, military testing, development in teens, the 'anger' gene, cloning, etc. Like a stew or soup, I guess. Tossing in everything I could find, stirring the pot again and again until I thought I had something worth serving.
4] World View. Everyone has one. What makes a "good" person? What is the cause of Evil? Sin? Is there a cure? Should there be? What is the role of government? Do we have a good one? What is the role of our military? Of science? Of a father? What function does The Past play in our lives? When is a boy a man? How responsible are we for your own actions? And so on... Literature allows writers (and, by proxy, readers!) to explore, test and maybe pronounce these worldviews. Try out some new answers. Challenge our own previous notions. Maybe tackle different sides of the same question using two characters. CAIN'S BLOOD (and it's little brother, PROJECT CAIN, a spinoff novel for teens told form the POV of Jeff Jacobson, the Dahmer clone) provided a stage with plenty of opportunity and space for these kind of considerations. This is THEME land: A place where English teachers aren't full of shit. Where writers and readers gather for a short time and get to, even if in fictional encryption, share honestly about being human.
Add all that up. Maybe you'll have an idea to start a book. I did.

Humans Are Already More "Enhanced" by Technology Than We Realize
(http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/10/04/fixed_documentary_humans_are_already_more_enhanced_by_technology_than_we.html)






Or, take the explosion of writing that Internet connected tools facilitate. Thompson approximates that through e-mail and social media alone "we're composing at least 3.6 trillion words daily, or the equivalent of 36 million books every day (http://www.amazon.com/Smarter-Than-You-Think-Technology/dp/1594204454/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1380401112&sr=8-1&keywords=smarter+than+you+think)." As a helpful point of comparison, he reminds us that the "entire U.S. Library of Congress ... holds around about 35 million books (http://www.amazon.com/Smarter-Than-You-Think-Technology/dp/1594204454/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1380401112&sr=8-1&keywords=smarter+than+you+think)."
:mrgreen:

ALL NEW PODCAST! A whole podcast about Wolverine is  Claws For Celebration! (http://revolutionsf.libsyn.com/roundtable-212-wolverine-claws-for-celebration)

Discuss: Can Cuarón's 'Gravity' Reverse Oscar's Sci-Fi Dry Spell?by Joey Magidson (http://www.firstshowing.net/author/jmagidson/)     
October 7, 2013
       By now I hope most (if not all) of you have seen Alfonso Cuaron's terrific new film Gravity at least once. Some of you have probably even seen it a bunch of times already. Not only is it an epic piece of cinema and among the year's best movies, it also represents a rare science fiction Oscar contender (and yes, I know calling it "sci-fi" is debatable, but it's close enough). That genre has had a hard going in the Best Picture field over the years, but it's possible that the days of knowing that a sci-fi flick was a surefire Academy loser might very well be over this year. I don't actually think that Gravity will take home the Oscar at this point, but it could make a stronger play than just about any other contender of its ilk over the last decade or so.

Some of you might be curious about the history of sci-fi and the Academy Awards. Well, it's not the longest history ever. Basically, of the over 500 films nominated for Best Picture to date (503, if you want the specific number), only a half dozen have ever been science fiction. Yes, only six. The first was Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange (surprisingly 2001: A Space Odyssey was not nominated for Best Picture but did win Best Effects) and the most recent was Nolan's Inception. Between those two, Avatar, District 9 (in the same year for those, a feat we may never see again), E.T., and Star Wars were also nominated for Best Picture. They all lost too. So sci-fi is zero for 503. Gravity will almost assuredly become the 504th nominee, but will it be a serious player to win? I doubt it, but it's not impossible.

To get to the bottom of that particular question and the reason for my answer, you have to look at Cuaron's Gravity both as a sci-fi masterpiece and on its own as an awards contender. What it has in common with those aforementioned sci-fi movies is that it is likely to go down as an all time classic for the genre. The trouble is, that kind of longevity takes years to establish, not months, so by the time most accept it as a classic, the Oscar ceremony will be long over, for this year at least.
Now, considering how Gravity is one of the more universally praised sci-fi outings in a long time (just look here at all that Alex had to say (http://www.firstshowing.net/2013/telluride-2013-cuarons-gravity-is-an-experience-unlike-any-other/)) and a certified blockbuster now to boot, does that improve its chances somewhat? Sure it does, but at the same time, if the Academy rejected the highest grossing film of all time, that doesn't bode well for this one here. Money is a factor here, but Oscar likes to have "their" sorts of films make money and then reward, as opposed to leaving their comfort zone to reward a financial success.

If you want something to grab on to as a reason for why the film could possibly pull the upset, you can look to how this is the rare movie of its ilk that displays a very auteur-ish bent. This feels almost more like an indie flick than a true blockbuster, so that could certainly sway some voters. Going by my predictions from a few days ago here (http://www.firstshowing.net/2013/an-october-oscar-prediction-update-american-hustle-still-on-top/), I have Gravity scoring nine nominations, but double digit nods are hardly out of the question. In fact, many have it getting a dozen noms. That would put it in play to be the most nominated film of the year, something it will need if it wants any chance to compete for the biggest prizes out there.You can mark the movie down for Best Picture, Director, Actress, and most technical nominations, so where we'll truly see if the Academy adores Gravity is in the Supporting Actor and Original Screenplay fields. If Oscar truly is on board with this flick, the Screenplay nomination should be easy, but if George Clooney can score a nod for his small part, that'll truly say something. He's a dark horse in this race now for sure.

As for wins, if only Sandra Bullock hadn't already won, this would be the spot for Gravity to dominate (she's not assured of a loss, but I wouldn't bet on her winning a second Oscar so soon). Bullock does have a chance to pull a major upset though. I'd put her in third place right now, behind Amy Adams (in American Hustle) and Cate Blanchett (in Blue Jasmine), so if the former disappoints and the latter fades during the precursors, it's possible Bullock could wind up the last woman standing. She certainly has her crusaders, as we saw with the Criticwire Critics' Poll from TIFF (http://www.indiewire.com/survey/best-films-and-performances-from-tiff-2013/) which embraced her quite a bit and the movie itself.

As it stands now, I think Gravity will take the majority of the tech categories (notably Best Visual Effects, which seems a forgone conclusion already). Should it do better than the four wins I currently predict, that could mean something for sure. For example, Avatar won three Oscars while coming in second place to The Hurt Locker. Granted that had District 9 also competing in some of the same categories and splitting votes (something Gravity won't have to deal with), but the tech categories are where the film will do its damage.

Keep this in mind... not everyone agrees with me about Gravity probably not taking Best Picture. A cursory search on Twitter (tweets here (https://twitter.com/ronniehiggins/status/386932392654417920), here (https://twitter.com/s_oldham/status/385165388276707328), and here (https://twitter.com/TysonWade/status/387335722367086592) for example) will find plenty of folks who feel strongly that this is a frontrunner for Best Director and/or Picture.  Also working in its favor is that the Academy could be warming towards sci-fi. 2010 was a pretty good year for the genre, though up until then it was sort of a wasteland for films of its ilk, so one line of thinking has this potentially groundbreaking film being the one to finally shatter this glass ceiling, as it were.
Even if Gravity doesn't wind up winning Best Picture, and again, I expect that it won't when all is said and done, fans of the movie (myself included) can take solace in the fact that this likely going to go down in the annals of sci-fi history as an all-time classic. That should mean something, right?

http://www.firstshowing.net/2013/discuss-can-cuarons-gravity-reverse-oscars-sci-fi-dry-spell/ (http://www.firstshowing.net/2013/discuss-can-cuarons-gravity-reverse-oscars-sci-fi-dry-spell/)

Read Them Now, Watch Them Later: Science Fiction & Fantasy Adaptation Watch!



The Expanse Series by James S.A. Corey

James S.A Corey is the pseudonym of the writing team of Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck, who have written a rousing space action/mystery series called The Expanse. Currently comprised of Leviathan Wakes (https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/james-corey/leviathan-wakes/), Caliban's War (https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/james-s-corey/calibans-war/), Abaddon's Gate and the recently announced Cibola Burn (with two more novels already planned), the series explores mankind's travels through our solar system and ultimately beyond it. The books have been getting rave reviews for their engrossing plots and the interesting longer story arcs. The first novel, Leviathan Wakes, was also nominated for a Hugo Award.


Chaos Walking Series by Patrick Ness

Books originally targeted at young adults (like Harry Potter and The Hunger Games series) have proven to be goldmine for Hollywood, so it shouldn't be a surprise when young adult books are optioned for film. That's what happened to the Chaos Walking series by Patrick Ness. The series is made up of three novels (The Knife of Never Letting Go (https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/patrick-ness/the-knife-of-never-letting-go/), The Ask and the Answer (https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/patrick-ness-2/the-ask-and-the-answer/) and Monsters of Men (https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/patrick-ness/monsters-men/)) and is set on a dystopian world where all living beings can hear each other's thoughts in a stream of images, words and sounds called Noise. The first book (and likely the adaptation) is about a young boy—Todd, the last boy on a planet where there are only men—who discovers something that puts him danger: a young girl named Viola.

Robert Zemeckis (Back to the Future, Forrest Gump) is the name being bandied about as the director of the film adaptation, titled Chaos Walking. Whoever it will ultimately be, let's hope that they keep one of the features that the series has been praised for: having the young protagonists deal with moral issues and with meaty themes of gender issues and the gray area between good and evil.



All Our Yesterdays (https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/cristin-terrill/all-our-yesterdays-terrill/) by Cristin Terrill

Time travel is not a new trope in fiction or Hollywood, but Cristin Terrill's All Our Yesterdays does what few of them manage to do: use time travel to good effect. The book, another one aimed at young adults, has two young main characters escaping from a totalitarian future by traveling back in time to assassinate a loved one whose death will prevent their oppressive future. This upends common young adult conventions by putting the protagonists in the role of hunters instead of prey, and also by showing a young girl who comes to appreciate herself through her own observations instead of those of others.

Not much is known about the film adaptation beyond the main stakeholders in the project, although Brian Miller, who scripted the film Apollo 18, is going to write it.


The Island of Dr. Moreau by H.G. Wells

Let's hear it for the classics! H.G. Wells wrote The Island of Dr. Moreau in 1896. The story concerns a shipwrecked man who is rescued and left on the island home of a curious individual: Doctor Moreau, a man who creates humanlike beings from animals via vivisection. Like many of Wells' novels, the books are metaphors for deeper themes, in this case moral responsibility, pain and cruelty, what it means to be human, and mankind's interference with nature.

This particular story is no stranger to film. It has already been adapted three times: in 1932 (as Island of Lost Souls starring Charles Laughton and Richard Arlen), in 1977 (with Burt Lancaster and Michael York), and a horrendous attempt in 1996 (with a clearly uninterested Marlon Brando   and Val Kilmer). I'm crossing my fingers that writers Brian McGreevy and Lee Shipman (Hemlock) will do the weighty themes justice.

https://www.kirkusreviews.com/features/read-now-watch-them-later-science-fiction-fantasy/ (https://www.kirkusreviews.com/features/read-now-watch-them-later-science-fiction-fantasy/)

I, na kraju, malo o tom velikom Doctor Who bu-ha!

Over 100 long-lost Doctor Who episodes found by dedicated fans - in Ethiopia      (http://www.mirror.co.uk/by-date/06-10-2013)
(https://www.znaksagite.com/diskusije/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi1.mirror.co.uk%2Fincoming%2Farticle2343061.ece%2FALTERNATES%2Fs615%2FWilliam-Hartnell-2343061.jpg&hash=036f3cf5f0f9fa866cc2dcd217eb6fb55b888939)     
The Sunday People can exclusively reveal that 106 BBC programmes have been  unearthed featuring the first two doctors

http://www.mirror.co.uk/tv/tv-news/106-doctor-who-episodes-uncovered-2343474 (http://www.mirror.co.uk/tv/tv-news/106-doctor-who-episodes-uncovered-2343474)

i


Doctor Who: Yeti classic among episodes found in Nigeria

(https://www.znaksagite.com/diskusije/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fnews.bbcimg.co.uk%2Fmedia%2Fimages%2F70413000%2Fjpg%2F_70413602_70413601.jpg&hash=42cab9633fc85063098fde686fe20f1d262ab90f)


Nine missing episodes of 1960s Doctor Who have been found at a TV station in Nigeria, including most of the classic story The Web of Fear.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-24467337 (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-24467337)

http://youtu.be/5Krz-dyD-UQ (http://youtu.be/5Krz-dyD-UQ)

Spominjao sam codex na ovom forumu pre par godina.

http://horrorhomework.com/blog/2013/10/amazing-pumpkin-carvings-from-villafane-studios/ (http://horrorhomework.com/blog/2013/10/amazing-pumpkin-carvings-from-villafane-studios/)




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elem, ja stvarno, ali stvaro obozavam Landona. Mislim, pogledajte samo ovaj 'rivju' pa ko ga ne bi do koske obozavao? :)



Parasite by Mira Grant (Guess who's back?)  (http://www.staffersbookreview.com/2013/10/parasite-by-mira-grant-guess-whos-back.html#more-3782)


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It's been a long time since I used this particular trick. Cheryl is back.

Why do I use Cheryl? Because I tend to finish everything I start. If I only read things that I enjoy, how will I ever stretch myself? I'm also loathe to spend 800 words eviscerating someone's baby. Thus, Cheryl was born. Cheryl is my imaginary personal assistant who helps me "review" novels I really did not like. Instead of just doggedly attacking a novel's failures, I try to have some fun with it.

What follows is a conversation I had with Cheryl about Mira Grant's new novel, Parasite.



Justin: Cheryl! Guess what?! I just finished the new Mira Grant novel!

Cheryl: What's it called? Something clever like Go to Press? Or Syndicated? Or (Word)Pressed?

Justin: Seriously? Her Newsflesh Trilogy is over, Cheryl, get with the times. It's called Parasite!

Cheryl: Let me guess. It's about parasites.

Justin: Yes! Er... how'd you know?

Cheryl: That's about as subtle as Freddie Mercury's leather pants.

Justin: You don't have to be rude. You're just jealous because she's a successful published urban fantasy author and your quirky, yet cynical novel, Vascular Viper, can't even find an agent.

Cheryl: I'm am not! All her books are the same! She's got one basic narrative structure and one voice, which she uses over, and over, and over again. I was into it with Feed, but at this point I'm all tuckered out.

freddieJustin: Tuckered out? Are you seventy? No wonder you can't get an agent.

Cheryl: Fine. Tell me all about this wonderful book that in no way treads old ground.

Justin: Well, there's this girl. Her name is Sally, but she likes to be called Sal.

Cheryl: You mean like her main character in Feed named Georgette who liked to be called George? I'm noticing a theme...

Justin: Don't interrupt! Anyway, turns out Sal was in a brutal car accident, but lived because this company developed tapeworms that provide internal medication to people. Her survival makes her something of a poster child for the company, but she's lost her memory, making her an equal liability if the tapeworm had anything to do with it.

Cheryl: Let me guess. Zombies show up.

Justin: No. C'mon. You're embarrassing yourself, Cheryl. Do you really think a best selling author could just do the same thing again and get away with it?

Cheryl: ....

Justin: Well, what happens is that people start becoming shambling unthinking things that attack people. And it's spreading. And all these bad things seem really attracted to Sal.

Cheryl: Sooo... zombies?

Justin: No, no, I mean... not really. They're like medical zombies with an explanation and stuff. It's a condition Cheryl! Not some made up shenanigans.

Cheryl: Oh give me a fucking break. Are you telling me this is another biomed thriller?

Justin: It sure is thrilling. There's even a twist.

Cheryl: Words... I have none. You mean to tell me Parasite is a biomed thriller with a female protagonist who has a shortened masculine appellation that has to solve a riddle revolving around masses of shambling human-things? And there's a huge twist at the end?

the notebook
Justin: Well, when you put it like that...

Cheryl: No, I'm not putting it like anything! Isn't that exactly what it is?

Justin: Fine. You're right.

Cheryl: It doesn't bother you that's the EXACT description of Feed?

*poof*

Justin: *groan* Look what you did Cheryl...

Fizbane: Shit, what did you do this time Cheryl?

Justin: She brought you, you idiot. What kind of product placement am I going to have to suffer this time?

Cheryl: *pointedly ignoring*

Fizbane: Actually, I'm not here with Amazon this time, although I'd point out that Francis Knight's Fade to Black is currently on sale for $2.99. No, I'm here on behalf of my client Mr. Sparks. He's very concerned that another author is challenging his rule as Overlord of Writing the Same Book Over and Over Again®. I'm here on an information gathering assignment. Is Mira Grant a threat to my client, Mr. Landon?

Justin: No! Parasite is completely different. Sal has a boyfriend, something George never had in Feed. And there's no zombies because it's a totally different mechanism that turns things into zombies.

Fizbane: I don't see the distinction. It sounds like she's using the same narrative.

Justin: But, it's fun! And super readable.

Fizbane: *sigh* You're not familiar with the romance genre are you? It's pretty clear that Mira Grant is trying to export the romance mentality to science fiction readers. In romance the plots are extremely predictable. The characters fill archetypes. The goal is to recreate the same squishy feeling that you got from the book before. My client, Mr. Sparks, has mastered this. He's used Alzheimer's, amnesia, terminal cancer, and a host of other excuses to simultaneously drive people apart and pull them together. Replace the bad shit with another kind of bad shit and the novel is the same. It doesn't change.

Cheryl: Ugh. I hate to admit it, but the blog wizard has a point. Don't you see it? Mira Grant writes books that appeal to a segment of reader that wants to have the same reading experience every time they read her!

Justin: Huh. So you're telling me I'm getting suckered?

Cheryl: No. Just that you don't want to think very hard when you read. In fact, fans of Parasite are pretty much the literary equivalent of zombies. They know what they want and they'll consume it forever until someone forces them to stop.

Fizbane: Mr. Sparks has changed my assignment. You've been served for defamation. *hands notice to Cheryl*

Justin: Ha. Maybe you should consider some rewrites to Tumid Tentacle. Because Parasite is going to sell like a mother fucker regardless of what you say.

Cheryl: ...Damnit.

Book editor and critic Joshua Glenn has worked to bring classic early science fiction back into print with his Radium Age Science Fiction Series. Now here's his definitive list of the best adventure stories of all time! (Remember — these are not just scifi, but action/adventure scifi.)



Below, please find a list of one hundred and one of my favorite science-fiction adventures — arranged not qualitatively (which would be impossible) but chronologically. The forty-two titles marked with an asterisk (*) are from my Top 200 Adventures list; the others are second-tier favorites.



(https://www.znaksagite.com/diskusije/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg.gawkerassets.com%2Fimg%2F196962kwt0h4ujpg%2Fku-xlarge.jpg&hash=e3777f2ffc72959aa245620b56bc1f748b7efe76)

http://io9.com/the-top-101-science-fiction-adventures-listed-in-chron-1463897780 (http://io9.com/the-top-101-science-fiction-adventures-listed-in-chron-1463897780)

When Real Life Honors Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Writers

by John DeNardo on November 27, 2013 | https://www.kirkusreviews.com/features/when-real-life-honors-science-fiction-fantasy-horr/#continue_reading_post (https://www.kirkusreviews.com/features/when-real-life-honors-science-fiction-fantasy-horr/#continue_reading_post)





Speculative fiction—an umbrella term I use to encompass the science fiction, fantasy and horror genres—has long had a reputation problem. Stemming back from the early days of cheap pulp-fiction during the golden age, science fiction in particular has been the red-headed stepchild of literary fiction. But the global mindset of the reading population is finally coming around—one look at the influence of speculative fiction in pop culture proves that. Moreover, beyond pop-culture references, science fiction, fantasy and horror are literally invading our streets and watching us from the skies...but in a good way.

Here' a look at how real life honors science fiction, fantasy and horror.

Science Fiction Author Gets a Rock Named After Him

Scottish author Iain M. Banks is notable in science-fiction circles for his Culture novels, a series about an advanced, interstellar society managed by advanced, benevolent artificial intelligences. They also have the tendency to use hollowed-out asteroids as vehicles of transportation, travelling faster than the speed of light. In this futuristic post-scarcity society, production and physical labor is largely accomplished by machines, everything if free, and as a result, crime is low and there is little need for law enforcement. The science-fiction field was dealt a strong blow with Banks' passing and he will be remembered by his canon of Culture novels (the latest of which is The Hydrogen Sonata)


Banks will be immortalized in another way. Taking a cue from the Culture itself, Dr. Jose Luis Galache of the Minor Planets Centre in Cambridge, Mass., applied to have an asteroid named after the author, a tribute conceived when Banks was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. The application was approved. From now on, Asteroid 5099 will now officially be known as Iainbanks. Sadly, Mr. Banks did not live to see this honor bestowed upon him. He died two weeks before the renaming became official.

The Intersection of H.P. and Lovecraft

H.P Lovecraft is a legend in the field of horror fiction. Born in Providence, R.I., the author carved a name for himself by writing eerie, gothic horror fiction that tapped into the base fears of humanity. His fiction was essentially immortalized with the creation of the Cthulhu mythos, a series of connected stories about an ancient race of otherworldly creatures. The Cthulhu mythos has since been expanded by countless authors since the first story Lovecraft wrote ("The Call of Cthulhu" in a 1928 issue of Weird Tales) and it's still going strong. Many of today's writers cite Lovecraft as a major influence of their writing. For examples, see Black Wings of Cthulhu: Tales of Lovecraftian Horror, edited by S.T. Joshi, Volume 1 and Volume 2.Ocean at the End of the Lane, Gaiman

Recently, Lovecraft's hometown of Providence honored the author by naming an intersection after him. The intersection of Prospect and Angell Streets has been renamed as "H.P. Lovecraft Square." Not far from here is Lovecraft's home and the library where he often wrote his particular brand of dark fiction. I haven't visited H.P. Lovecraft Square, but I hear that, so far, there has been no sign of winged creatures with octopuslike heads and faces full of feelers.

I Live on The Ocean at the End of the Lane

Neil Gaiman is one of speculative fiction's superstars whose works spans books, comics and graphic novels, theater, television and films. He's known for his popular Sandman series of graphic novels, his books Stardust and Coraline (which were adapted into films) and for winning a Hugo Award for his work writing an episode of Doctor Who. Earlier this year, Gaiman released The Ocean at the End of the Lane, a novel about a man who finds the horrible memories of a decades-old accident resurfacing when he returns to his childhood home to attend a funeral.

Even more recently, Gaiman was honored by Portsmouth, England, the town where he was born, which saw fit to name a street after Gaiman's latest book, The Ocean at the End of the Lane. Gaiman was noted in a recent issue of Locus Magazine as saying, "When you make things up, you never expect them to creep out into the real world." Indeed, this street naming is just one of the ways in which the world of fiction affects the world in which we live.

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http://damiengwalter.com/2013/06/14/harlan-ellison-the-interview/ (http://damiengwalter.com/2013/06/14/harlan-ellison-the-interview/)


When Damien Walter tweeted he'd 'literally kill' to interview the multiple award-winning author Harlan Ellison, Neil Gaiman replied 'What if the person you had to kill was ... Harlan Ellison?' Here Ellison talks about running away from home, the rights and wrongs of paying to read books and how his job on this planet is annoying people.

DW: Harlan, first of all, can you confirm that you are indeed the great Harlan Ellison?

HE: For all my sins – and I assure you, the only thing that has ever held me back from God-like greatness is my humility – I am the Harlan Ellison, the only one. I'm in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, right between Ellis Island and Ralph Ellison.

DW: Are you the writer of over 1,000 stories, novellas, screenplays, teleplays and essays?

HE: Yeah, it's probably more like 1,800 now. I find that I have continued to write. I had 10 books last year, and that at my age I think is pretty good. While I always aspired to be Alexandre Dumas, if I reach the level of – I don't know, Donald Westlake – I'll be more than happy.

DW: You must have seen and done as much in speculative fiction as anyone, so can you tell us just what is speculative fiction?

HE: I will give you the only answer that there is. It is the game of "what if?". You take that which is known, and you extrapolate – and you keep it within the bounds of logic, otherwise it becomes fantasy – and you say, "Well, what if?". That's what speculative fiction is, and at its very best, it is classic literature, on a level with Moby Dick and Colette and Edgar Allan Poe.

DW: So it's definitely not fantasy.

HE: Fantasy is a separate genre, and it allows you to go beyond the bounds of that which is acceptable, where all of a sudden people can fly, or the Loch Ness Monster does not have a scientific rationale, but is a mythic creature. It is in the grand tradition of the oldest forms of writing we know, all the way back to Gilgamesh, the very first fiction we know, and the gods. Fantasy is a noble endeavour. Science fiction is a contemporary subset that goes all the way back to Lucian of Samosata, and Verne and Wells, and Aldous Huxley and George Orwell.

DW: It seems to be everywhere, with video games, massive movie franchises and millions of people going to conventions. So why is it so popular now?

HE: Well, we live in a technological age. Time has passed, and we have stepped over the ruins of our own societies, and our own civilisations, and we come now to the fruition of those things about which the human race has dreamed. We have flight and we have electronic assistants. The entertainment media – which are always very timorous and step very carefully out of fear and loathing – don't know what they're doing so much. So they go back, and they are catching up on the kind of science fiction – and they call it, in that ugly, ugly phrase, "sci-fi," which those who have worked in speculative fiction despise, it's like calling a woman a "broad" – they are catching up on ideas that were covered with hoarfrost 60 years ago. That's why you have an overabundance of zombies and walking dead, and world war and asteroids from space. They have not yet tackled any of the truly interesting discussions of humanity that are treated in speculative fiction. But they are a break from standard 19th, early 20th-century fiction, and so they seem fresh to an audience that is essentially ignorant.

DW: You famously described sci-fi fandom as an "extended family of wimps, twinks, flakes and oddballs." But don't the geeks kind of run the world now?

HE: I am a steadfastly 20th-century guy. I've always been pathologically au courant. Even today I can tell you the length of Justin Bieber's hair. But it has now reduced society to such a trivial, crippled form, that it is beyond my notice. I look at things like Twitter and Facebook, and "reality TV" – which is one of the great frauds of our time, an oxymoron like "giant shrimp" – and I look at it all, and I say, these people do not really know what the good life is. I look at the parched lives that so many people live, the desperation that underlies their every action, and I say, this has all been brought about by the electronic media. And I do not envy them. I do not wish to partake of it, and I am steadfastly in the 20th century. I do not own a handheld device. Mine is an old dial-up laptop computer, which I barely can use – barely. I still write on a manual typewriter. Not even an electronic typewriter, but a manual. My books keep coming out. I have over 100 books published now, and I've reached as close to posterity as a poor broken vessel such as I am entitled to reach.

DW: I think I know what you're going to say as the answer to this question, but I want to ask you anyway. Because a lot of writers today – and I'm thinking of people like Cory Doctorow, and Neil Gaiman, who set up this interview for us – say that they can give their work away for free, and they can still sell it. Do you think there's any chance that they're right?

HE: I think without question they are wrong. I don't know that Neil has ever said that. I think I've known Neil so many years, that I think I've whipped him, flayed him, and browbeaten him enough that he knows that he gives nothing away for nothing. But he has a kind heart, and so people can touch him, and they will ask him to do something for nothing because, "Well, we don't have the money." They have the money to buy drugs, they have money to go to the movies, they have money to buy themselves new shoes, but they don't have the money to pay the writer. Cory Doctorow's philosophy I find egregious. Egregious in the extreme. Stephen King tried to give things away for free on the web, and was screwed. I think any writer who gives away his work demeans himself, demeans the craft, demeans the art, and demeans the buyer. It is not only caveat emptor, it is caveat lector. I don't mean to be crude when I say this, but I won't take a piss unless I'm paid properly.

DW: [Laughter] What I wanted to talk to you about – and it was kind of the reason for the interview, the starting point – was All The Lies That Are My Life.

HE: Ah, All The Lies That Are My Life. One of my great apologias for being the idiot I am. It was based upon – well, there are two legs upon which it stands. One of them is the relationship that I have had with another writer all my life, who was at one time a very, very close friend of mine, who I discovered later was less a good friend than I had thought, and who had held me in some contempt. And then the relationship between Edgar Allan Poe and Griswold, who became his bibliographer after he died, and kept Poe a minor figure in literature for over a hundred years. This was a sort of getting even story where a famous writer talks about another famous writer he knew.

DW: You've said that writing is the hardest work of all, harder than being a truck driver. Harder than being in the army?

HE: Well, being in the army is like being in prison. You are not your own person. You are constrained 24/7. You are told what to do. They keep you in your place. You are not allowed to have an awful lot of self-respect, or pride of place, or pride of self. And I've been in jail, and I've been in hospitals, and I've been in the army. They constrict me. They're a straitjacket. I am a mad thing, and wildness asserts itself. I'm like your average dopey teenager, who lies down in the middle of traffic just to see what it feels like to have a car run over you. I'm blessed. I'm blessed. I'm less than a month shy of the age 79. By all rights – I ran away from home when I was 13, not because I was being abused, just because I couldn't stand it any more, and I had to get out on my own. I was on the road at age 13, and I should have bought the farm at age 14, duelling with Richelieu's guards on the parapets, and instead I have lived to this ripe old age.

DW: OK then, I want to ask you a question about one of the stories that seems to haunt people the most, Demon with a Glass Hand.

HE: That's just been picked up again to be remade as a movie, as a motion picture. But it's remarkable that something that's more than 30 years old has had this kind of life. People say, "Well, Ellison is always suing everybody." Well, I never sue anybody unless they pick up one of my ideas from 40 years ago and do a bad job of it in a movie. Then I say, "Well, if you used me as the source, by God get your hand out of my pocket. Pay me." I've won every lawsuit that I've ever gotten into, except last year, there was a movie came out that was pretty close to my famous story 'Repent, Harlequin!' Said the Ticktockman, the one that's one of the 10 most reprinted stories in the English language, and I started to sue, and then I went and saw the movie, and it was so bad – so bad – I withdrew the case saying, no, let this movie fall into complete obscurity, and the universe forget it, and don't attach my name to it, the way they did The Terminator, which is a good film.

DW: In many of your stories there is the oppressor or the bully, who wants to have their way with humanity, with whoever is in the story. The worst of these, I think for me, is I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream, which is a story of –

HE: Oh, yes, God. God is a shit.

DW: Yeah. It's a story you wrote in a single night. I read it in my teens in a hallucinatory state over the course of a single night. Is there something about – you have to be in this state to find that oppressive being out there? You have to find it in the night?

HE: Well, I wrote another story – I'm not steering away from the question, I'm answering it in an ancillary way, but I'll get right back to it – I wrote a whole book of stories called Deathbird Stories, which are retellings in a modern way of the godlike myths. And one of the short stories that I did, that is in the Best American Short Stories, is called The Man Who Rowed Christopher Columbus Ashore, and it is in a way my atheist tract. I'm a stiff-necked Jewish atheist, and I, like Mark Twain, do not believe that there is a great bearded avuncular spirit up there watching us carefully to see whether we masturbate or not. He's got better things to do creating star systems than to worry about whether we do Feng Shui with the furniture.

When I talk about God, I talk about him not believing in him. If there were a God, and you believed in him, and then instead of saying something ridiculous like, well, God has these mysterious ways, we are not meant to know what it is he's doing, or she's doing, or it's doing, I say, in defiance of Albert Einstein, yes, the universe does shoot craps – God does shoot craps with the universe. One day you'll win £200m in the lottery and the next day you'll get colon cancer. So when I wrote I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream, I put God in the form of a master computer, AM – cogito ergo sum, I think therefore I am – and had him preserve these half a dozen human beings, after having destroyed the world, to keep them down there and torment them forever, for having created him but giving him no place to go. And I believe – much to the annoyance of my various fervid aficionados – they wish I had more faith.

I say, I have faith in the human spirit, that something noble enough to have created Gaudí's cathedral in Barcelona is noble enough not to have to go to war over sheep in the Falklands. That's what I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream says. In fact I did a video game called I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream, and I created it so you could not win it. The only way in which you could "win" was to play it nobly. The more nobly you played it, the closer to succeeding you would come, but you could not actually beat it. And that annoyed the hell out of people too.

[Laughter]

HE: I spend a lot of time annoying people. That's my job on this planet.

DW: That's a good job to have. You've always been a political writer and politically active as well. You famously marched from Selma to Montgomery with Martin Luther King.

HE: Yup.

DW: Why don't speculative fiction writers today cause more trouble?

HE: Ah, kiddo, I wish I could give you an answer. I sigh woefully, [sighs], because that's what writers are supposed to do, afflict the contented. But most of them don't. Most of them just want to tell a story, and I guess that's a noble endeavour in and of itself, to tell a story. Storytellers can be teachers, like Aristotle, or they can just be storytellers like – I don't know, who's writing the trash these days? I don't know who's writing trash over there where you are, but whoever it is, you pick the name, put it in for me.

DW: When you were starting out, and you'd run away from home, and then you were in the army for a short while, and you were writing through the night to get all of this stuff done, did you expect, did you dream, of becoming as famous and as successful as you have as a writer?

HE: Absolutely. At one point in my career – I don't think I was married at the time. I've been married to my wife for 27 years, and God knows how she's been able to stand it. But she's my fifth wife. At one point I had a T-shirt that said, "Not tonight dear, I'm on a deadline." And you stop and think how many movies you didn't go and see, how many parties you didn't attend, how many concerts you didn't get to hear, because you were working. And I've worked endlessly through my entire life. I've never been a sluggard, and yet I've never felt that I've done one twentieth of what I was capable of doing.
And when I stopped at some point – and I've done this on numerous occasions – and said, "Why? Why am I doing it?" I am reminded of the quote from Heinrich von Kleist, who said, "I don't stop writing, because I cannot." And it is a compulsion. It's like breathing. It's systole and diastole. I just go in and out, and I do it. I do it because it is part of what I do. But the reason I do it is because I want it to last. I live in vain hope that one day, 50 years from now, or 100 years from now, when taking down Dumas, or Chaucer, or Colette, or somebody really worth reading, they say, oh, let's try another Ellison, and they take down Angry Candy or All the Lies That Are My Life, and they say, he did know how to write. He knew how to put words together. He knew how to transform the human condition into translatable prose that could draw a smile or a tear. And that's hoping for fame. That's hoping for longevity. That's hoping for reality. It's the same thing that drove Magellan and drove Julius Caesar and drove Imhotep. It's the hoping that you last beyond the shell.

DW: Harlan, I have no doubt that you will. No doubt.

HE: You are enormously kind and gracious. Just for the record, I never, ever threw anybody down an elevator shaft.

DW: [Laughter] I didn't want to ask you that question, because I'm sure you always get asked that, Harlan. Everyone always seems to ask you, have you killed anybody, did they survive?

HE: Well, that's a different question. That's a different question. I've never thrown anybody down an escalator shaft, and I did not grab Connie Willis's breast.

DW: I didn't want to ask you that question either.

HE: Oh, that just infuriates me. That just infuriates me.

DW: Do you want to – do you have anything you want to say about it?

HE: About Connie Willis? I think she's a brilliant writer.





• Harlan Ellison's graphic novel 7 Against Chaos launches from DC in July. Volumes three and four of his unproduced television scripts, Brain Movies, are available at harlanbooks.com

• No one was killed in the making of this interview

Svonvik na svom blogu a za priliku Čipovog proglašenja za Grand Mastera:




Grand Master Chip!

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SFWA has just announced that the 2013 Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award will go to Samuel R. Delany!  This is an award meant to be given to people who obviously, blatantly deserve it.  People like Robert A. Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, Ursula K. Le Guin, Gene Wolfe . . . and Chip (as his friends call him).  So I don't think anybody had any doubt that would happen sooner or later.  But sooner is better.

I had the good fortune of discovering Chip's works early in his career and relatively late in my pre-career.  The Einstein Intersection shaped my writings-to-be in ways that will never be mapped out and may in fact be responsible for my fondness for creating works that sprawl across the boundaries of genre without concern for what they properly "should" be.  I've been following his works, both of fiction and of criticism, with enormous joy ever since.

Just how important is Chip to science fiction?  More so even than most of his admirers -- and they are a fervent lot -- realize.  Some years ago, my pal Gardner Dozois put together two anthologies of SF, one titled The Good Old Stuff and the other The Good New Stuff.  The first was to introduce the virtues of classic SF (what might be and once was called the Old Wave) to a new generation of readers.  The second was to highlight the virtues of those who came later (post New Wave, mostly).  Afterward, he told me that in his researches it became obvious that every writer in the first book had in some way or another been influenced by Robert A. Heinlein.  Those of the second had all been influenced by Chip.

You want specifics, but alas I do not have the time to write the book explicating them.  So I will only observe that John W. Campbell once observed that you could have too much innovation in a story, that if everything is new and bright and interesting that distracts from the central thesis of the work.  But Chip said no to that.  Interesting people, interesting worlds, interesting ideas, prose that feels free to turn a handspring if it feels like it.

Science fiction got a lot more interesting when Chip came into it.  As a reader, I just want to say:  Thank you, Chip.  I appreciate that.


a sama vest je ovde. (http://www.sfwa.org/2013/12/32160/)

A Liptak odlucio da svoje kolumne o ranom sf palpu fino uoblici u knjigu:


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I'm very happy to announce that I've sold the rights to a book on SF History to British publisher Jurassic London! Since April 2012, I've been writing a column on the subject for Kirkus Reviews, which has been a fantastic experience thus far. Since starting with them, my end goal has always been to collect the columns together into a larger work, and Jared has been a vocal and enthusiastic proponent for it. (Seriously, he calls it required reading!)

I'm pretty thrilled to have this land here. I'm a big fan of the books that Jurassic London has put out, especially their short fiction anthologies: The Lowest Heaven was a fantastic read, and I'm eagerly getting ready to read their latest, Book of the Dead.

This book isn't going to be a collection of the columns, but they are going to form a bit of the backbone. My aim here is to look at the history of the genre and its relationship with the readers and authors, but also the relationship between society and technology. In my work with Kirkus, I've been trying to emphasize some of the important, but lesser known authors and editors working within the genre, and I'm hoping that it'll be a nice addition to some of the other popular works on SF history.

This is going to be Jurassic London's first foray into original non-fiction, and while we don't have a title for this book yet, we are aiming for an early 2015 release.


http://andrewliptak.com/2013/12/05/book-sale-history-of-sf-to-jurassic-london/ (http://andrewliptak.com/2013/12/05/book-sale-history-of-sf-to-jurassic-london/)

Wesley Chu (https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&ved=0CCwQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.chuforthought.com%2F&ei=u46wUqMbhcDZBfawgMAJ&usg=AFQjCNEEYIv7gQClOeUX0W6m6dCbFsHIiw&sig2=W-KOQ_eFgYlwLcem1oQD-w&bvm=bv.57967247,d.b2I), author of Lives of Tao and Deaths of Tao, built a book tree. He used pine cones and ornaments and bows and a weird book about male fashion (see bottom!). He conveniently placed his own books at the trees pinnacle, standing on the shoulders of Robert Jordan and George R.R. Martin. The tattered copies of Fires of Heaven and Lord of Chaos demonstrate the fact that Chu is no dabbling genre author, but a true blue fan of the highest order. Wait a second... is that Terry Goodkind?[/size][/font]






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:lol:

With no further ado or parsing of terms, here are four great anthologies from 2013:
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We See a Different Frontier (http://www.amazon.co.uk/See-Different-Frontier-postcolonial-speculative/dp/0957397526) (Edited by Fabio Fernandes and Djibril al-Ayad) - I got to review this at length here (http://www.tor.com/blogs/2013/10/under-the-radar-we-see-a-different-frontier), but, needless to say, I'm a big fan. One of the major themes of the anthology is that these are perspectives that challenge the science fictional 'status quo', a theme that is a) right up my street and b) inherently linked to wanting to read every story. In every tale in We See a Different Frontier, anything can happen - and that sense of adventure and excitement alone is worth its placement on this list. (Also, J.Y. Yang's "Old Domes".)



Troubled Daughters, Twisted Wives (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Troubled-Daughters-Twisted-Wives-Trailblazers/dp/0143122541/) (Edited by Sarah Weinman) - Meanwhile, Sarah Weinman makes the case for reprint anthologies as an art form. Troubled Daughters collects fourteen tales of 'domestic suspense' (a genre that she explores in the introduction, in individual forewords and on a companion website), from female crime writers. A simply brilliant piece of work (and, weirdly, a really excellent present for the holidays and whatnot). Remarkably, this crime anthology also contains one of the year's best SF reprints: Margaret Millar's "The People Across the Canyon", a wonderfully twisted tale that reads like the best of Ray Bradbury.



Glitter and Mayhem (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Glitter-Mayhem-Lynne-M-Thomas/dp/193700919X/) (Edited by John Klima, Lynne M. Thomas and Michael Damian Thomas) - I... don't Kickstart often (https://i.chzbgr.com/maxW500/4671596800/h4C144520/), but occasionally it the crowd-funded primordial goo spits up niche anthologies that are niches that I niche and I'm like, "ah, that's why this exists". And, yes, discopunk (?!) is so silly that I had to get on board. I'm glad I did. The stories in this were bonkers enough that I didn't like all of them (in fact, a few I really didn't like), but it also produced two of my favourite short stories of the year: the unclassifiable "Such & Such Said to So & So" by Maria Dahvana Headley (a bit like falling into an old Felix the Cat cartoon and hitting King Rat on the way down) and the Afrofuturistic space opera "The Electric Spanking of the War Babies" by Maurice Broaddus & Kyle S. Johnson.



]World War Cthulhu (http://shop.cubicle7store.com/epages/es113347.sf/en_GB/?ObjectPath=/Shops/es113347_shop/Products/CB74002) (Edited by Jonathan Oliver) - Lovecraftian monsters and the Third Reich! I think this went slightly under the radar because it was published by Cubicle 7, but it isn't tie-in fiction as much as, well... Lovecraftian monstesr and the Third Reich. And check out the contributor list: (http://shop.cubicle7store.com/epages/es113347.sf/en_GB/?ObjectPath=/Shops/es113347_shop/Products/CB74002) Sarah Lotz, Lavie Tidhar, Gaie Sebold, James Lovegrove, Rebecca Levene, Jonathan Green, Archie Black... a collection of some of my favourite short story authors, writing on tentacle-beasts-that-eat-Nazis.



And a few that are very much worth mentioning:
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[Fearsome Journeys (http://www.solarisbooks.com/titles/title_details/the_fearsome_journeys_the_new_solaris_book_of_fantasy) (Edited by Jonathan Strahan): At least one shaggy dog tale [not my thing] and a few that rely on knowing/caring about a pre-existing setting [also not my thing]. Still, worth it for Scott Lynch's story alone - he delivers an outstanding lesson on how to write short fantasy, as he establishes a world, the characters, a complex magic system, the historical background, a conflict and its resolution in the space of one short story. Plus, KJ Parker on dragons, in a thoroughly Parkery way - a surprisingly wistful piece that maintains the author's high standards of ambiguity and inventiveness.



[Random musing - although there have been plenty of epic and sword-and-sorcery type fantasy anthologies this year, of those I tried, the only one I like at all is Fearsome Journeys. Is that just me? Or are crime & SF are better genre 'tools" for writing short fiction that's self-contained and resolves? (Two things that fantasy often struggles to do in small spaces.)]



[Something Wicked: Volume 2 (http://www.somethingwicked.co.za/magazines/something-wicked-anthology-vol-two/) (Edited by Joe Vaz and Vianne Venter): Always my favourite SF/F/H magazine and now my favourite SF/F/H magazine-turned-anthology-series.
Terra Nova (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Terra-Nova-Anthology-Contemporary-Spanish/dp/8494127489) (Edited by Mariano Villarreal) : Six exceptional stories, finally translated to English - plus a very useful round-up of the Spanish SF scene (historical and contemporary). My favourite: Lola Robles' "Deirdre", a slightly heart-rending ... romance?... about made-to-order robots.





After the Apocalypse (http://www.prime-books.com/shop/trade-paperbacks/after-the-end-recent-apocalypses-edited-by-paula-guran/) (Edited by Paula Guran): Admittedly, I'm biased - this anthology of contemporary reprints contains two Jurassic stories. But that's just why I picked it up: once I read it, I was surprised how well Ms. Guran managed to uncover twenty very different looks on a well-worn topic, but one that still very much interests me.



]Mothership: Tales from Afrofuturism and Beyond (http://www.amazon.com/Mothership-Afrofuturism-Beyond-Bill-Campbell/dp/0989141144): An exceptional showcase of authors from around the world, and a mixture of original and reprint stories. I'm glad that Lauren Beukes' "Unathi Battles the Black Hairballs" has been re-released after its initial publication in Home Away (http://www.randomstruik.co.za/title-page.php?titleID=3224&imprintID=4) (2010). [Incidentally, alsohighly recommended] I'm equally glad to find new stories like Lisa Allen-Agostini's twisty "A Fine Specimen".



Plus one random bonus from the distant past:

Nelson Algren's Book of Lonesome Monsters (http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?an=algren&sts=t&tn=lonesome+monsters) (1962) (Edited by Nelson Algren) - Ok, granted, the contributors include Thomas Pynchon and Saul Bellow, so this is a piranha amongst guppies, but still, that Algren fellow know a bit about wordification. Lonesome Monsters is kind of astounding, a work from that wonderful late-50s/early-60s period where noir/literary/speculative/whatever all coalesced into an experimental goo of spine-chilling and bizarre fiction. Granted, several of the entries are a little too odd for me, and, for the most part, actual "plot" has gone by the wayside... but this is a fascinating collection of razor sharp literary desolation. Algren's own introduction might be the best part.

Jared (http://profile.typepad.com/straycarnivore) on Friday, December 20, 2013 in Books (http://www.pornokitsch.com/books/), Friday Five (http://www.pornokitsch.com/friday-five/), Science Fiction (http://www.pornokitsch.com/science_fiction/)

ovo je neka vrst novogodišnje čestitke...  :evil:








What If the 21st Century Begins in 2014?


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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-12-31/what-if-the-21st-century-begins-in-2014-.html (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-12-31/what-if-the-21st-century-begins-in-2014-.html)







This what-if isn't technological, social, political or even science-fictional. Rather, it's a bit of wholly unscientific, superstitious pattern-recognition. The last two centuries (and possibly more) didn't "start" at their official point, the turning of a calendar from 00 to 01. That wasn't when they began in essence, nor when they first bent the arc of history.



No. Each century effectively began in its 14th year.


Think about it. The first decade of the 20th century was filled with hope and a kind of can-do optimism that was never seen again -- not after the horrific events of 1914 shattered any vision that a new and better age would arrive without pain. Yet until almost the start ofWorld War I, 19th-century progress seemed unstoppable and ever-accelerating.


Consider the world of 1913, when regular middle-class folks in the U.S., U.K., France, Germany and so on were acquiring unexpected wonders: clothes-washing machines, gas stoves, gas and then electric lighting, indoor plumbing, refrigeration, vaccinations, telephones, radios, motor cars. Stepping outside you would see and hear human beings flying through the sky -- with a looming confidence that soon you would get a chance to join them.


Science was pouring forth what seemed unalloyed goodness. New dyes and industrial textile methods doubled a working family's access to fresh and beautiful clothes. Cheap iron bedsteads kept cheap spring mattresses clean, making sleep both healthier and far more comfortable. Nations were banning child labor and providing free schooling. Astronomers discovered what galaxies were. Physicists were pushing their pure and harmless science to fantastic frontiers. And the Haber-Bosch process brought cheap fertilizers that tripled crops, as chemistry proved itself to be everybody's friend.


Think our era is similarly fast-changing? Just compare the kitchen of today with a kitchen of 1950. Sure, everything nowadays is shinier, smarter. Still, a person from 1950 could use our apparatus with fluid familiarity. But the drudgery-saddled housewife of 1880 would blink in bedazzlement at what her daughter used in 1913. Life itself was changing at a pace never-before seen, and mostly for the better.


Yes, all of those techno-advances continued after World War I. Social changes such as women getting the vote were harbingers of more to come. But after 1914, the naivete was gone. People realized that the 20th century would be one of harsh struggle accompanying every step of advancement. And along the way to hard-won better times, the age would spiral downward first, into the deepest pit that humanity ever knew, before our parents (or grandparents) clawed their way out of the nadir of 1944 -- the focal year of a century that truly began in 1914.


All right, that's just one data point. Is there another? Well, look at 1814, the beginning of the Congress of Vienna and the so-called Concert of Europe that made possible the continent's longest extended period of overall peace, as the great powers turned from fighting bloody wars to perfecting their colonial empires. Those two years -- 1814 and 1914 –- each marked a dramatic shift in tone and theme (in the West, that is), so much so that they represented the real beginnings of the 19th and 20th centuries.


Suppose the pattern holds -- and remember this is just a thought experiment -- what might it mean about the true 21st century? What theme will typify or represent its arc?


First, let's dismiss one parochial notion -- that the terrorist attacks of September 2001 were the major break point between centuries. Nonsense. We were engaged in the same struggle before and after. The U.S. shrugged off more damage during any month of World War II. Indeed, nothing could be more "twen-cen" or 20th century than the overwrought focus that some (not all) Americans apply to Sept. 11. Much of the world assigns no particular relevance to that date.


Oh, we are still in the 20th. Consider the pervading doom and gloom we see around us, right now. Post-apocalyptic tales and dystopias fill our fiction, films and politics, especially the Young Adult genre where today's teens seem terminally allergic to stories containing hope. How very '60s. And '70s. And so on.


There was a similar sense of apocalypse in 1813 Europe, but at least there were good reasons, after decades of ferocious struggle that seemed poised to last forever. What excuse do we have, in a time when per capita violence has been plummeting for decades? When the fraction of kids -- worldwide -- who are well-fed and in school is higher than ever? Sure, the planet faces dire problems. But the things keeping us from addressing pollution, oppression, climate change and all of that are political inanities. The War on Science that has hobbled innovation, for example, can be won if we do one thing -- tell the gloomcasters of both left and right to get out of our way and let us get back to problem-solving.


Indeed, the only real obstruction we seem to face is a dullard-sickness of attitude, dismally ignoring every staggering accomplishment since 1945. Hence the question: Is it possible that a new theme for our 21st century requires only that we snap out of our present funk?


If only. That would truly be the Dawning of an Age of Aquarius, forecast by hippies long before the old 20th was anywhere near done with us, but arriving at last. You shake your heads, but it could happen.


We can still choose our own fate. Next year, we might decide to cheer up and rediscover the can-do optimism that was crushed by the czar and kaiser and a small group of insipid, inbred aristocrats, exactly 100 years ago. We could choose to become problem-solvers, in part, because (let's imagine) someone in 2014 discovers a simple, cheap and safe IQ-boosting pill. Or politicians decide to get over their self-serving snits and resume the adult craft of negotiation. Or some cable news owner decides to rediscover citizenship. Or some brave director releases an inspiring film that astounds people with an unexpected idea called hope.


Or else go ahead and wallow in the obvious notion that 2014 will see a violent ruction of its own. A phase transition into a century whose theme we'll all regret. Or we'll see a continuing retreat from confident civilization, a turning away from the Enlightenment Dream, relapsing into fearful obeisance to a leader, or New Lords, or some simplistic ideal.


That, too, could take place. In which case, please don't give me any prediction points. All I did was spot a pattern. I don't want respect from a people who would allow something like that to happen.

(https://www.znaksagite.com/diskusije/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.popularmechanics.com%2Fcm%2Fpopularmechanics%2Fimages%2FSt%2F10-best-sci-fi-01-1213-lgn.jpg&hash=9a248b761505111f7b3c141403a4e2a846e4d314)






Real scientists can be the harshest critics of science fiction. But that doesn't mean they can't enjoy a movie just because it bends the laws of nature. We polled dozens of scientists and engineers to discover the sci-fi movies they love.  (http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/digital/fact-vs-fiction/the-10-best-sci-fi-movies-as-chosen-by-scientists?spr_id=1457_37019779#slide-1)

 :mrgreen: :mrgreen: xrofl


Indian Trail, N.C., Councilman David Waddell pens Klingon resignation letter 

The plumber-turned-politician, who's eying a U.S. Senate run, lent his withdrawal from his first term some humor by issuing a letter written in the language of sci-fi TV show 'Star Trek.' Mayor Michael Alvarez called the move an 'embarrassment.'


Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/n-pol-resigns-klingon-article-1.1565452#ixzz2pmqzbGvC (http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/n-pol-resigns-klingon-article-1.1565452#ixzz2pmqzbGvC)




(https://www.znaksagite.com/diskusije/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fassets.nydailynews.com%2Fpolopoly_fs%2F1.1565450.1388771388%21%2Fimg%2FhttpImage%2Fimage.jpg_gen%2Fderivatives%2Flandscape_635%2Fklingon4n-2-web.jpg&hash=efd8c86acf9696328aa7b2c05ffb1d4a0a86d9ec)

Očito je da se ljudska imena moraju opisno porevoditi na klingonški...

opisno, opisno...  :mrgreen:

inače, ovo se fino poklapa sa nekim mojim zapažanjima o onoj famoznoj tezi da upravo smisao za humor najbolje dokazuje kako su muškarci poreklom sa Venere a žene sa Marsa: muškarci svoju pedomorfiju konzistetno (od)nose sa sobom u penziju, dok se žene jos u pubertetu nauče da foliraju ozbiljnost odraslosti, da bi se tek u menopauzi bacile u verbalna očijukanja kakva inače priliče samo šiparicama. :lol:

A što se izdavaštva tiče, Jared odlučio da razbije iluzije onima koje tvrde kako upravo elektronski samizdati imaju najveće šanse da postanu bestseleri:


http://www.pornokitsch.com/2014/01/self-publishing-a-best-seller.html#more (http://www.pornokitsch.com/2014/01/self-publishing-a-best-seller.html#more)



Digital Book World have just put out a list of the 2013 ebook 'best sellers', and it has been making the rounds since being picked up by Forbes (with a slightly misleading title). Proponents of indie publishing are especially delighted as "self-published" ranks four on the table.


Rank

Publisher

eBest-Sellers

1 Penguin Random House 478
2 Hachette 258
3 Self-published 99
4 HarperCollins 91
5 Simon & Schuster 72

(Complete numbers here.)

The methodology of how DBW calculates a best-seller is here. It includes all six major online ebook retailers and is US focused.

My criticism isn't with the methodology. It is with the conclusion that these figures demonstrate the "success of self-publishing". And many of the more vocal proponents of indie publishing have been making hay of that conclusion - erroniously.

However, if we compare these to the available publication statistics, conveniently provided by Bowker, we get a different story...


Sadly, 2013 numbers aren't out yet, but we can use 2012 as stand-ins:
•2012 US self-published titles: 391,000 total (234,000 hard copy only; leaving 157,000 ebook-only or ebook/print)
•2012 US traditionally published titles: ? (301,000 hard copy only)

Let's make another assumption and use the same proportion across both publication methods, which gives us 503,000 traditionally published titles and 202,000 ebook-only or ebook/print titles.

If we aggregate the traditional publishers from the top five:


Publisher

eBest-Sellers

Total eBooks

% eBest-Sellers

Traditional 899 202,000 .45%
Independent 99 157,000 .06%

And if you include the rest of the top 10, in search of a slightly more precise number...:


Publisher

eBest-Sellers

Total eBooks

% eBest-Sellers

Traditional 1069 202,000 .53%
Independent 99 157,000 .06%

It tails off pretty dramatically after that, so I'll stop there.

Still the odds look a bit like this:


Happening

Odds

USA winning the World Cup 1 in 160
Having an eBest-Seller by traditional publishing 1 in 191
Houston Astros winning the 2014 World Series 1 in 200
Iran winning the World Cup 1 in 1,000
Swansea winning the Premier League 1 in 1,250
Having an eBest-Seller by self-publishing 1 in 1,586

Go Swans.

This also excludes the chances of having a print best-seller, and all of those are traditionally published. "Best-seller" is an annoying phrase, but, no matter how you define it, you seem more likely to achieve it with the marketing, distribution, rights, negotiation and sales power of a traditional publisher behind you.

I'm sorry to rain on any parades. The growth of self-publishing might very well be the story. But the "success" isn't. Based on these rough numbers (which we can replace as soon as the 2013 stats are out), a book is over 9 times more likely to become a best-seller if you don't self-publish it.




Jared on Thursday, January 02, 2014 in Spurious Theories

Entries on Interesting Obscure and Lesser-Known Writers, Artists, Literary Folk, etc., I've Happened to Encounter


http://desturmobed.blogspot.com/ (http://desturmobed.blogspot.com/)

Jared se ne propusta dobru priliku da malko bocne raju povodom ovogodisnjeg Hjuga, i, naravno, u komentarima se to odmah osetilo  :lol::




I'm not giving my entire ballot, but that's because I don't have it yet.

When the shortlists come out, I'll probably do another activity like this, but, for now, here are a few selections and, in case it is helpful, some of the reasoning behind why I'm voting the way I will.

Best Novel:

I'll jump right in with what is, by far, my most controversial choice.

The awards-related scandal of the week is the fact that this enterprising Tor.com columnist has discovered that the entire Wheel of Time series somehow qualifies as a single "Best Novel".

I'll be voting for it.

For two reasons:
•I find this wonderful - I'm always supportive of bureaucratic subversion and this is genuinely hilarious: a case of more rules = less sense. I don't mind using one of my 4 nominations as a protest vote.
•This is utterly stupid, but, if it is allowed - and it is, I think there's a case to be made. Is the Wheel of Time good? No. It is awful. Is it one of my favourites? No. Much the reverse.

But the Hugo Awards don't ask about either of those things - they ask for 'Best', which is the worst and woolliest word in all awardsdom. And, for a certain definition of "best", that is "important and influential", Wheel of Time more than qualifies. It may be rubbish, but it is rubbish that inspired and influenced most of contemporary fantasy. Will we be able to say that about many of the other contenders? Will Ocean at the End of the Lane be as influential in 10, 20 years? Will Doctor Sleep reinvent (or, at the very least, crystallise) an entire genre? Etc. Etc.

Anyway, I've now spent 200 words defending the last and least of all my votes. My other "Best Novel" selections will be more seriously made. I'm not sure what they are yet, but I'm juggling books like The Violent Century, Fangirl, American Elsewhere, The Shining Girls, Gun Machine, The Golem and the Jinni, Life After Life, More Than This... I'm not a Kitschies judge, so I haven't read my normal swathe of 150+ recent titles, but I've still read 50-odd 2013 books that I can choose from.

Many more categories below the jump...





Best Novella:

I have no idea. Did I read any? I'm not certain I did. Normally I have a K.J. Parker Subterranean book to plug in here, but no such luck.

Best Novelette*:

I'm fairly sure that novelettes have snuck into some of my favourite anthologies from this year... 

A few great stories that I'm almost positive are the right length:
•Pat Cadigan's Chalk (This is Horror)
•Joseph D'Lacey's Roadkill (This is Horror)
•Lola Robres' "Deirdre" (from Terra Nova)

All of which are exceptional.

Best Short Story*:

So many. Here are a few that I've really enjoyed:


•Lisa Allen-Agostini - "A Fine Specimen" (Mothership)
•Maurice Broaddus & Kyle S. Johnson - "The Electric Spanking of the War Babies" by  (Glitter & Mayhem)
•Maria Dahvana Headley - "Such & Such Said to So & So" (Glitter & Mayhem)
•Stark Holborn - "Nunslinger" (Nunslinger)
•China Miéville - "The Ninth Technique" (The Apology Chapbook)
•Shweta Narayan - "The Arrangement of Their Parts" (We See a Different Frontier)
•Lavie Tidhar - "Dragonkin" (Tor.com)
•J.Y. Yang - "Old Domes" (We See a Different Frontier)

If you're low on short stories, and are keen to find great work from outside the usual suspects, I highly recommend these anthologies, as well as pretty much anything from Stone Skin Press (cross-over bonkersness), NewCon (SF) or Solaris (horror). Plus many others - the UK has a great short fiction scene (see below).

Best Related Work:

I'm going to break my * code and pitch a Jurassic work: Speculative Fiction 2012. This isn't "my" work any more than it is Justin's - we were just the two slobs who got to play at "editor" and pick 50 of the best articles from the interwebs. It was surprisingly easy/hard (take your pick): we could've chosen 100, or 2,000 or... The reason I think SpecFic is important is because it represents the idea that online criticism is important, valid, noteworthy... choose your word. We set out to "embiggen the blogosphere", and I think we succeeded.

I also want SpecFic to be nominated so that every blogger that's in the collection ever gets to be part of a "Hugo nominated series". And I really, really want it to win so that Justin can make a Hugo speech that's a bit like this. I'll even bust out my Mathletes jacket.

That said, this category is so woolly and broad that there are really a lot of things I like:
•"Visions of the Universe" at the National Maritime Museum - sadly, this has closed. But, wow. A wall of high resolution Mars video, images of galaxies and deep space that seemed unreal, a look into the heart of the Sun... it was so utterly spectacular, it brought me (and many others) to tears. If you'll pardon the cheese, it was the sort of eye-opening, jaw-dropping, brain-expanding wonderful that drew us all to science fiction in the first place. Here's a review. Here's another.
• "Gothic: The Dark Heart of Film" - the British Film Institute's astounding run of film and online content related to the origins of horror in cinema.

On a slightly jingoistic note, it is amazing how Britain has so much collaboration between its cultural institutions and its genre community. A lot of people, on both sides, work really hard at this, and the results are something that we should be extremely proud of.

And two more traditional suggestions if that's all too wacky:
•"Rich Men's Skins: A Social History of Armor" by K.J. Parker
•"Going Forth by Day" by John J. Johnston (the introduction to Unearthed, yes, another Jurassic publication, but I can claim zero credit for John's utterly genius history of mummies in fiction). (Here's a potted version for Tor.com, but the actual full-length piece is fascinating.)

Best Graphic Work:

Not my area of expertise, but I did pick up a few volumes that I really enjoyed and will happily rationalise as genre interest:
•Rob Davis' Don Quixote
•Sally Jane Thompsons' Atomic Sheep
•Gary Northfield's Teenytinysaurs

The two comics publishers represented above - SelfMadeHero and Markosia - are fantastic, and are doing brilliant things. (Teenytinysaurs is from Walker, who are also lovely, but mostly do book-books.)

Best Dramatic Presentation (Long Form):

No idea. I saw nothing last year. Thor 2?

Best Dramatic Presentation (Doctor Who):

As above.

Best Editor (Long Form):

My normal rant about Hugo injustice has two pillars. I'll get to one below, but the other is that the UK editorial scene is ridiculously underrepresented on ballots.

Editors are naturally hard to identify, and their contributions are often intangible (at least, to the readers). My hunch is, the great editors are especially difficult to spot because they're busy making sure their authors get the glory. And, a great editor is more than an author factory - he is or she is the the unsung hero of genre - moving it forward, establishing trends, bringing in new readers.

With that in mind, here are a few of my favourites:
•Anna Gregson (Orbit) is the guiding force behind many of my favourite authors, including Simon Morden, Mike Carey and Kate Griffin.
•Tim Holman (Orbit) is behind Jesse Bullington and KJ Parker. Which, right there: awesome.
•Gillian Redfearn (Gollancz), is the person behind, amongst many, many others, Joe Abercrombie and Joe Hill and Patrick Rothfuss and Elspeth Cooper and Chris Wooding and... (the list goes on and on). Her importance to genre - especially the rocket-like growth of contemporary fantasy - goes far beyond just a few names.
•Ruth Tross (Mulholland Books) published Warren Ellis, Joe Lansdale and Austin Grossman this year. Hell, she's brought the Saint back this year. She has amazing, bonkers and utterly trustworthy taste: if Ruth publishes it, I'm pretty I'll love it.

And that's a very, very slim selection. There are dozens more that belong on this ballot. If nothing else, I strongly suggest taking a few minutes to look at the blog of your favourite author's publisher, and reading up on who the people are behind the scenes.

Obviously I'm a little biased towards the excellence of the Hodder & Stoughton team as well, but I can understand if you don't want to take my word for it.

Best Editor (Short Form):

A tricky one, as I don't really read magazines. On the anthology front, however:
•Irene Gallo for Tor.com: I mean, geez. Enough of an obvious pick that I'm even setting aside my shameless regional bias.
•Jonathan Oliver for Solaris: I left Jon off the list above, as I think his contributions are even more prounced here on my ballot here. As well as being Britain's finest Weird and horror editor, Jon's also leading from the front when it comes to finding new and diverse authors. If you pick up one of his collections, you'll find a fantastic, international table of contents that combines 'big names' and new voices.

There's a fantastic small press scene in the UK, with a lot of people that deserve a space on the ballot. I'll also be looking at Ian Whates and Adele Wearing, amongst others, not only for their contributions as publishers of fiction but also as leaders of a lively, cooperative community.

Best Professional Artist:

I could go on for ages, but four that will definitely be on my ballot:
•Zelda Devon
•Joey Hi-Fi
•Sarah Anne Langton
•Vincent Sammy
•Fiona Staples

I'm going to be sad when Joey Hi-Fi makes the ballot this year, as it'll ruin the other half of my  "greatest Hugo injustice" rant. Zelda Devon I discovered through word of mouth, and her work is just... my style. Ditto Fiona Staples, who is astounding. Vincent Sammy covers are now de rigeur in the horror and magazine scene, as they should be.

But the one I want to pitch at you, like, properly pitch, is Sarah Anne Langton.

Sarah is, amongst other things, the in-house talent for Forbidden Planet, the unofficial creative director for at least four small presses, a children's book illustrator, web-site designer and the first-port-of-call for anything visual and geeky.

Which means if you live in the UK and you like science fiction or fantasy, you have encountered her work. It may be one of FP's foxy anniversary bags, a Joss Whedon poster, the logo for a major publisher's genre website, an event poster or a tube pass. Or one of, what I count, twenty covers that she produced in 2013.

Also, Zombie Attack Barbie.

She's the heart of British geekery. Or, at the very least, the skin. (That sounded creepy, sorry.) She works on dozens of projects at once: in stores, on screens, on posters and on covers. And our blossoming (and kind of amazing) science fiction scene simply wouldn't exist without her.

Best Semiprozine:

Strange Horizons.

(Ok, I don't really understand this category, but I remember this site was nominated last year and I like this site. More of my feelings about Strange Horizons here.)

Best Fanzine & Fan Writer:

I'm genuinely not sure about these categories and probably won't be until the last minute. I will, however, be voting on an agenda: picking bloggers and fans. I know professionals are allowed to win Fan Writer, and if folks like Kameron Hurley or N.K. Jemisin win, that's genuinely a great thing.

But I'm personally subscribing to a definition of "fan" that means that the person has no professional relationship to SF/F at all and isn't paid for their writing in any way. Again, I don't begrudge authors for winning, but I need to do some sort of filtering to narrow down to a list of 10 for these two categories.

Similarly, I'm pro-blogger. I read blogs, I write blogs and right now, I think they're the dominant medium for reasonably-intelligent SF/F discussion.

According to my browser history, the two I check most often are The Book Smugglers and Staffer's Book Review. So they're definitely on my ballot. I also think both sites really raised their game this year - the Smugglers seemingly doubled the amount of work they were doing across all online platforms and Justin started what I joking call "investigative journalism". Posts like this are exceptional, and what we need in "fan writing".

Granted, I'm friends with them, but I hope I could say that about many bloggers. I like that they're bloggers that aren't afraid of tackling big issues head on. And, with both sites, I don't actually agree with all (or even that many of) their reviews, but I do like what they add to the discussion and how they add it.

Anyway, I follow a zillionty bloggers on Twitter and there are sixteendozenty sites that I check on a regular basis. So,... yeah. I have 8 spots left and no idea.

Best Fancast:

I don't actually listen to podcasts. (Ok, before I sound rude, I've gotten to go on podcasts as a guest, which is incredibly flattering and I've loved it. And when I do that, I study up ahead of time on their work because that's polite and a reasonable expectation of how I should behave. But I don't consume them naturally and am not really someone that knows anything about this medium so I'm not even going to pretend. THE END.)

If you're not listening to Mahvesh Murad, you should. But she's a professional.

Best Fan Artist:

I'm totally drawing a blank here. I'm not even sure I see fan art? Am I getting the definition wrong? All suggestions welcome.

___________________________________________

*In the interests of transparency, at least part of my ballot in this category will be spent on things published by Jurassic in 2013. We published six novelettes and a lof short stories, and as well as being proud of them, I like them a lot.


http://www.pornokitsch.com/2014/01/my-2014-hugo-ballot.html#more (http://www.pornokitsch.com/2014/01/my-2014-hugo-ballot.html#more)

... a Justin otkriva jos zanimljiviju kontorverzu :mrgreen::



Do the successful get a free pass?




Patrick Rothfuss just completed an Ask Me Anything session on Reddit in the  r/fantasy subreddit. It was a huge event, with over 1500 comments, and something like 25,000 unique visitors. During the event, the following conversation took place:

(https://www.znaksagite.com/diskusije/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.staffersbookreview.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2014%2F01%2Frothfuss.jpg&hash=a18e08f99d8bdd30d80611ded4880bef2ebb13f1)

My response was most closely approximated to shock. I put it on Twitter. It was retweeted. Some female fans decried it. Otherwise, silence. I should not be surprised. Successful people with gobs of social power are often left to their own devices. I cannot in good conscience let this one go.

See, people who are immensely successful, with a massive following and the kind of social power that political candidates would salivate over, are in essence providing a model of behavior for their fans, admirers, and imitators. It's a responsibility whether they want it or not, something former NBA player Charles Barkley parodied in this ad,


http://youtu.be/nMzdAZ3TjCA (http://youtu.be/nMzdAZ3TjCA)



I hate to break it to you, Chuck. But you were a role model then and you're still one today. And so is Pat Rothfuss.

By not objecting to the comment on Reddit, Rothfuss functionally condoned the behavior. By responding to it, and participating in the masturbatory exchange that followed, Rothfuss demonstrated a camaraderie with the concept that his female characters exist solely for the benefit of the male gaze. He is normalizing a culture in which men feel entitled to have access to "attractive" women, judge women's worth on their "attractiveness", and not consider women as anything other than objects for view/consumption. I think what bothers me most of all is that the science fiction and fantasy community has done nothing but rail against this kind of mentality for the past several years and yet one of its most successful is perfectly fine participating in it.

Worst of all, perhaps, is that Reddit as a community has an underlying reputation for misogyny. It is widely populated by young men in the 18-35 demographic. What, from a marketing perspective, you might call "the holy grail". Jim Hines, an author heavily committed to gender equality, decided not to participate in a Reddit AMA for exactly this reason. He believed, that by participating on the site he was condoning their behavior. I think Hines took things a little far, but the sentiment is right on. If we want change we must participate in helping it occur. By engaging in this behavior on Reddit, Rothfuss is telling them their past, and future, behavior is fine. I'm of the opinion that allowing this to skate does irreparable damage the message we're trying to send.

If the Reddit question was the first example of Rothfuss doing something questionable as it relates to women, I would keep my mouth shut. But, for the past several years he has published a pin-up calendar for his Worldbuilders charity that depicts female characters from genre novels in alluring poses. He's even got some high profile women authors to contribute their characters to the project. Why is the calendar problematic? Because the man is framed as the viewer, and the woman as the viewed. The calendar is celebrating science fiction and fantasy, and thus framing the woman as a passive recipient in the art excludes them from an active role in the making, creating, and consuming of the genres themselves. Of course, none of that is nearly as egregious at the comment that opened this post, but it points to a pattern of behavior. A pattern which none of the big dogs have deemed appropriate to call out.

I'm aware that many of women involved in the project have argued that the calendar is not inherently sexist. There have been others who disagree, generally people with no power. Natalie Luhrs, editor of Masque Books and blogger at Radish Reviews, recently wrote about the subject. It was met with deafening silence. Katie Baker wrote about the subject for Jezebel in 2011. Baker also highlighted some other odd interactions from Rothfuss. Yet, in all this, we've yet to see any major figure from within the science fiction and fantasy community say anything that would correct what is, at least occasionally, sexist behavior. But, this really doesn't have to do with Patrick Rothfuss. As often as he's wrong, he's been right a lot more. He is overall a force for good. The larger issue though is the implied free pass that someone gets when their profile is such that they become untouchable.

Most of the individuals with real power to provide a mallet of loving correction are people just like Rothfuss. Authors with major platforms who don't mind carving out a social position. The term, mallet of loving correction, is probably familiar. It's a John Scalzi-ism, one of the internet's self proclaimed police force for the good and righteous. Except, when it comes to the successful. When it comes to people who fall under the "don't shit where you eat" axiom, the internet is eerily silent.

The Reddit comment was buried in a place such internet raconteurs may not frequent. It's quite possible despite my Tweeting (I am, after all, not a big deal) none of them saw it. It's also quite possible that they spoke to Rothfuss about it in private. It's also entirely possible that every one is a little nervous about the social power of the immensely successful and it's best not to poke the hive of rather energetic fan bases. I don't know. But, we seem perfectly happy to speak out both sides of our mouth when it comes to people with power. And as far as I'm concerned that is bold faced hypocrisy. Our internet police force cannot only choose to engage when it can't harm their own professional standing. At least it can't if their genuinely interested in change.

Or, maybe they're just pandering by engaging when it's convenient. Tell me I'm wrong. Oh, and donate to Worldbuilders. It's a really great cause.


http://www.staffersbookreview.com/2014/01/author-privilege-do-we-give-them-a-free-pass.html#more-4259 (http://www.staffersbookreview.com/2014/01/author-privilege-do-we-give-them-a-free-pass.html#more-4259)

Justin je neumoran  :) :


Thursday, January 23, the short lists for the Kitschies were announced. Many of the novels on the list were not shelved as science fiction or fantasy, including a Thomas Pynchon novel and one previously short listed for the Man Booker Prize. In other words, the Kitschies awards are full of novels no one in the genre communities have read and many have never heard of. Fantasy author Saladin Ahmed made this statement shortly after the announcement:

Quote
I think the Kitschies, like the WFAs, do great work. I just wish juried awards didn't smack of subtle derision toward deep-genre readers.

— Saladin Ahmed (@saladinahmed) January 23, 2014

I'd like to introduce Ahmed to my 2012 self. That version of me wrote:


In recent years, SFF bloggers (myself included) have tried to convince mainstream readers that the things we read have merit.  Awards like The Kitschies seem created, almost exclusively, to serve this purpose.  It seems as if reviews like the ones written by Bourke are geared towards eradicating a certain type of incredibly popular genre fiction and posts like Walter's almost shame (for lack of a better term) readers into reading those things accepted by the mainstream.  I believe we should demand better writing and better storytelling.  Where we differ, is that I believe in demonstrating value in the things that the mainstream rejects, not only those things they embrace.

[I'm going to riff on my own words at this point, inspired by Ahmed's Tweet. Nothing should be construed as me making any assumptions about Ahmed's points. I think by qualifying his statement as he did he groks this very conflict I'm going to describe.]

My opinions in 2012 advocated the notion that juried awards are predisposed to diminish the fiction that people (and by people I mean those who only read a handful of books a year) seek out, consume quickly, and remember with an affection comparable to a good buzz. They also imply that the vast majority of what we consider genre sits within that definition as opposed to say inaccessible, intellectually rigorous, and memorable in a gut wrenching soul shriveling way.

I was right, but also utterly wrong.

Such a position makes the assumption that juried awards by their nature are judging entertaining fiction and finding it unworthy of any merit. Implied in all of this is an accusation that we're trying too hard to be something we're not. Basically, don't forget where you came from. This position is not only grossly unfair to those authors pushing the envelope, but one that, given its head, would be incredibly damaging to the future of genre fiction.

The phrase, don't forget where you come from, is an interesting one. On the surface it supports the idea that success shouldn't change anything. It's often used in reference to athletes in the United States, many of whom are young black men from difficult backgrounds who find themselves overwhelmingly wealthy before they can legally drink a beer. Don't forget where you come from is often levied to remind them that it took a lot of people to help them become millionaires and they ought to remember that in the form of hundred dollar bills.

To me, it's always been an idea that completely devalues the hard work the athlete put it to achieve the pinnacle of their sport. It serves as a nagging suggestion that it could all come tumbling down at any moment and you ought to make sure you have someone to catch you should you fall. What it actually does is retard growth. It shames success. And it certainly isn't restricted to athletes.

Bringing the discussion back to literature, authors who write in speculative terms, but appeal to an audience wider than the "deep-genres", as Ahmed describes them, are just like athletes. They are writing something that dares to be great. It dares to ascend beyond the standard expectations and tropes laid down by the "deep-genres" and we resent them for it. We want to remind them that, if the mainstream rejects them, they better not forget who lifted them up in the first place, without whom they would be just another voice in the crowd of literary fiction (which is even more difficult to succeed in than genre).

When we talk about "genre awards" that recognize these kinds of works and make statements that imply they ignore the "deep-genre" we are functionally making this exact argument. We are demanding that fiction with genre trappings, but tries to be something more, must restrain itself for our own sense of importance. Just like the best friend of an athlete, left behind because of a knee injury or an over appreciation of Oreos, we want our most successful to come back to the block and let it be like old times.

I have some words that describe how that idea makes me feel. They start with F and in that.

I just finished reading a book that was published in 1984, Another Fine Myth by Robert Asprin. It neither complex nor funny. It is fun though, in a sort of whimsical no nonsense way, but only because it's inherently nostalgic. It reminded me of a kind of fiction that is mostly dead and gone. Today, we demand more from our fiction, even the deepest-genrest works. We want characters who change, prose that describes more than what is obvious, and structures that make us reconsider our place within our own narrative. And we get it! Even from novels like Ahmed's Throne of the Crescent Moon, whose cover could have been published in 1972, offer deep discussions of faith and aging amid sword fights and wizard battles.

The fact that deep-genre no longer means static characters and wooden dialogue is one-hundred percent a function of recognizing those who excel. It's a function of not holding themselves back to make me feel better about my reading choices. While I may not always agree with the choices juried awards make, I will always (now) defend their importance. Do not change. Keep insisting on the most unique, compelling, and sometimes esoteric work for recognition. Because only by giving our best the freedom to grow and succeed and leave their old skin behind can we hope to lift everyone behind them.

... a Niall se oduševljava (zanosi?   :?: ) idejom o Barkerovom kombeku:


Inspiration, Interrupted: Chiliad: A Meditation by Clive Barker

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For more than twenty years, Clive Barker was terrifically prolific. During that period, a year without a new novel by the author seemed—to me at least—incomplete. Sadly, when Barker started work on the Abarat, that was that. Since the first part of the series was released in 2002 we've seen, for various reasons, just two sequels and one short novel in the form of Mister B. Gone.

That may change in 2015 with the belated publication of The Scarlet Gospels: a return to Barker's beginnings by many measures. A sequel, indeed, to one of his very earliest novellas—no less than The Hellbound Heart, which found fame later when it became the basis of the film Hellraiser. Before that, though... this: an amoral meditation on humanity's spiralling history of violence which certainly whet my appetite for more from the man who helped define dark fantasy.

Chiliad, to be sure, is neither a novel nor new. Rather, it is an arrangement of two tales intertwined with a maudlin metatext about an author who has lost his voice, and though its relevance today remains great, both "Men and Sin" and "A Moment at the River's Heart" were previously published in Revelations, the Douglas E. Winter-edited anthology of short stories intended to celebrate the millennium.

That said, the overarching narrative seems particularly prescient here, at this point in Barker's career. We find our unnamed narrator mid mid-life crisis, having forsaken all his old haunts and habits because of a bone-deep despair; a hateful malaise that says, to paraphrase: all he had in his life, and all he had sought to make, was worthless.

But at the river, things are different. At the river, contradictory as it is, something like a vision hits him:


Tales had kept coming even in the chasm, like invitations to parties I could not bear to attend, cracked and disfigured as I was. This one, however, seemed to speak to me more tenderly than the others. This one was not like the stories I had told in my younger days: it was not so certain of itself, nor of its purpose. It and I had much in common. I liked the way it curled upon itself, like the waters in the river, how it offered to fold itself into my grief, and lie there a while if necessary, until I could find a way to speak. I liked its lack of sentiment. I liked its lack of morality.

These lacks become apparent in both "Men and Sin," which describes the journey of an ugly man called Shank to avenge the brutal murder of his partner Agnes, and in "A Moment at the River's Heart," which has a husband set out to identify the killer of his beloved wife, who "had met death by chance, because she had wandered its way."

There are surprises in store in both stories; twists, if you will, but Barker, to his credit, deploys them deftly, and in the interim the two tales relate to and engage with one another in various ways. They and their characters and the violence that befalls them all are joined—at the lip, if you will—by the river. The same river that inspires the framing tale's narrator; the same river that runs through the changed landscape of his paired parables, which—though there is a thousand years between them: a chiliad, in fact—take place in the same location.


In my mind, the river flows both ways. Out toward the sea, toward futurity; to death of course, to revelation, perhaps; perhaps to both. And back the way it came, at least at those places where the currents are most perverse; where vortexes appear, and the waters are like foamy skirts on the hips of the rocks. [...] Don't trust what you hear from shamans, who tell you, with puffy eyes, how fine it is to bathe in the river. They have their mutability to keep them from harm. The rest of us are much more brittle; more likely to bruise and break in the flood. It is, in truth, vile to be in the midst of such a commanding torrent: not to know if you will be carried back to the womb—to the ease of the mother's waters—or out into cold father death. To hope one moment, and be in extremis the next; and not to know, half the time, which of the prospects comforts and which arouses fear.

The thousand years that separate the stories simply melt away in the final summation, revealing two torrid tales about the cruelty of creation; about what it gives, only to take away.


You know what happens next. The parable is perfectly transparent. But I have to tell you; I have to believe that my meaning resides not in the gross motion of the tale, but in the tics of syntax and cadence. If not, every story may be boiled down to a few charmless sentences; a sequence of causalities: this and this and this, then marriage, or death. There must be more to the telling of stories, just as there must be more to our lives.

As above, so below—for there is so much more to these stories. Packaged as a pair as opposed to the extended parentheses they represented in Revelations, both "Men and Sin" and "A Moment at the River's Heart" are given a second lease of life, and indeed death, in this terrific new edition. Hauntingly illustrated by the Mistborn trilogy's cover artist Jon Foster, whilst the author plays his own artful part perfectly, Chiliad is as cold as it is contemplative, and as cerebrally thrilling as it is viscerally chilling.

Welcome back, Clive Barker.

'Coherence': The Best Sci-Fi Movie of 2014 That You Haven't Seen (http://grantland.com/hollywood-prospectus/coherence-the-best-sci-fi-movie-of-2014-that-you-havent-seen/)

A Podcast I'm Looking Forward to is Based on The Worst Novel Ever Published: GALAXY 666 by Pel Torro


By John DeNardo



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Science fiction fandom seldom agrees on anything, but if there's one thing that unites them it's that the worst novel ever written is Galaxy 666 by Pel Torro (the pseudonym used by Lionel and Patricia Fanthorpe).

Although mostly lost to the annals of time, we've talked about this historical gem before. What is it about this book that makes it so memorable?

For starters, check out this stellar prose (and by "stellar" I mean "laughable"):


There were pinkish streaks among the rock, and it seemed that some of the chromatic tint from the atmosphere owed its origin to these. There were a number of white veins in the rock, which bore some kind of resemblance to marble, but the majority of it was grey. It gave an over-all impression of greyness streaked with pink and white, rather than an over-all impression of whiteness tinged with grey and pink, or an over-all impression of pink streaked with grey and white.
Greyness was the dominant background shade; neither black nor white, but something midway between the two. It was a light rather than a dark grey, yet could never have been so light that it might be mistaken for an off white.

..and...


The things were odd, weird, grotesque. There was something horribly uncustomary and unwonted about them. There were completely unfamiliar. Their appearance was outlandish and extraordinary. There was something quite phenomenal about them. They were supernormal; they were unparalleled; they were unexampled. The shape of the aliens was singular in every sense. They were curious, odd, queer, peculiar and fantastic, and yet when every adjective had been used on them, when every preternatural epithet had been applied to their aberrant and freakish appearance, when everything that could be said about such eccentric, exceptional, anomalous creatures had been said, they still remained indescribable in any concrete terms.



Ok, sure...the book is a product of its time (1963), written in an era of high-speed pulp-science fiction production. But who really cares when it's stuffed full of gold like that?

What's even more surprising than the book's original publication is that it was reprinted several times. One of those reprints sported the Star Trek Enterprise ripoff cover you see in the middle image above.

Is this book so bad that's it's worth paying or that $40 for a copy? I wouldn't pay that much even if they were someone else's dollars. (I did luck out and find it used for about $2 — hilarity ensued.)

Thankfully, The wonder that is Galaxy 666 is not yet destined to be forgotten. Not only has Gateway converted this to eBook late last year, but there will now be a podcast based on it.

The Galaxy 666 Podcast is set to premier on iTunes, Tumblr and WordPress Halloween night 2014. I can think of nothing more scary. And I can't wait.

 

   

Stanislaw Lem and His Push For Deeper Thinking



When discussing a literary genre over a length of time, it becomes apparent that such genre worlds are inherently insular: authors, inspired and encouraged by authors coming before them, work within genre conventions, often because such limits are self-imposed or placed on authors due to what a publisher reasonably thinks can sell. For a genre such as science fiction, where literally anything is possible, it seems absurd, thinking about it, but it's something that's frequently accepted without argument (or with little argument) throughout the genre's history. Some authors, however, buck that trend completely. An excellent example of this is Stanislaw Lem.

Stanislaw Lem was born on September 12th, 1921, in Lvov, Poland. He was an intelligent child, the son of a doctor and a housewife. Throughout his childhood, he was an avid reader, reading widely from a broad range of books in his father's personal library. By the time he reached high school, he was bilingual. He went to college at Lwow University, where he studied medicine. The onset of World War II interrupted his education, and he endured both the Soviet occupation of Lvov, and eventually, the capture of the city by German forces in 1941. During the war, he made due as a mechanic and welder. The conflict would have a huge impact on his career as a writer, according to literary critic Peter Swirski, exemplified by "his relentless return to the subjects of change, survival, the use of force, aggression, and military 'solutions' in so many of his mature writings." At some point in his youth, he read works by H.G. Wells and Olaf Stapledon, both of which heavily influenced him and his writing.

Following the end of World War II, Lem and his family relocated to Kraków, Poland (Lvov is now in Ukraine), where he resumed his studies at Jagiellonian University. By this point, he had begun to write science fiction. His first story, "Człowiek z Marsa" ("The Man from Mars"), was published in Nowy Świat Przygód (New Adventure World magazine) in 1946, a first contact novel about the study of a crashed Martian, although Lem would later disparage it (along with a number of his earlier stories).

His first novel was Astronauci (The Astronauts), which was published in 1951. In it, a multinational expedition journeys to Venus, where they uncover the remains of an alien civilization, one that had wiped itself out in an arms race of its own. The novel is overtly utopian, and Lem later said about the book that "naiveté is present on all pages of this book. The hope that in the year 2000 the world would be wonderful is indeed very childish." In 1955, he published his next novel, Obłok Magellana (The Magellan Nebula). Like its predecessor, the book is a utopian work, about a group of explorers headed to Proxima Centauri to locate an intelligent alien civilization. Swirski notes that "These three early novels—Man from Mars, The Astronauts and The Magellan Nebula—present a different face of Stanislaw Lem, more utopian and optimistic, even if already hinting at a darker side of our human kind." This early phase of Lem's career is steeped in utopian overtones, heavily influenced by a proscribed vision of the confidence on the part of the Soviet Union.

In 1959, Lem published a new novel, Śledztwo (The Investigation), a science fiction mystery set in London. However, it was the publication of his next novel, Eden, later that year, that Lem's career began a new phase: one that shed the optimistic outlook of the future and turned far more pessimistic. In this novel, astronauts land on a distant planet, only to discover they've arrived in the middle of a blood bath: a systematic purge by an oppressive government is underway. Lem's book uses the book to comment on the control of information in a rigid society, one that controls its citizens—a stunning rebuke of oppressive regimes during the Cold War.

Lem's next novel, Powrót z gwiazd (Return from the Stars), was published in 1961, and examines how societies change over time and how human nature inherently shines through. This is apparent when an astronaut, Hal BreStanislaw Lemgg, returns from a 10 year mission in space, finding that over a century has passed at home on Earth. Society has completely changed: technology has allowed the world to eliminate violence and hatred, but at a price. Another novel appeared in 1961, Pamiętnik znaleziony w wannie (Memoirs Found in a Bathtub).

At this time, Lem had only recently come to the attention of Western readers: His first work in English appeared in 1969 when he placed a translation of a story, "Are You There, Mr. Jones?" in a U.S. publication. The story had originally been published as "Czy pan istnieje, Mr. Johns?" in 1957, and was printed in Vision of Tomorrow 1 in August 1969.

While Lem had been putting together a strong backlog of novels, it was his 1961 novel Solaris for which he is best known. The novel followed an astronaut's arrival on a space station, with a crew of astronauts haunted by strange visitors. As the human crew worked to study the strange nature of Solaris, it gives few answers, but creates visitors from the crew's own memories, providing some dark insights into each member's own personality. In the novel, Kelvin has arrived, and shortly thereafter, is visited by a visitor of his own: Rheya, a lover who killed herself after the pair fought. Solaris largely focuses on the inability to comprehend an extraterrestrial intelligence, and the assumptions we bring with ourselves when we attempt to study the cosmos.

Lem, Franz Rottensteiner notes in a critical look at Solaris, is interested in the process in which the scientists are working to understand the planet, even as he "is not so much concerned with results as with processes and ways of thinking....In this respect, Lem is somewhat of an existentialist; in spite of a positive attitude toward science, he is well aware of the absurdity of existence." Faced with a vast alien intelligence that is completely incomprehensible, Lem essentially does something that no American author would have: Solaris isn't a problem to be solved or examined by the wit and intelligence of the astronauts. Solaris is a phenomenon that exists with its own set of logic, defying human examination because humans are examining it from their own set of rules and systems. It's incomprehensible on one level, completely alien on another.

Solaris reached English-speaking audiences with a translation that came from the French edition of the book, a translation which has long been characterized as a poor one. It wasn't until 2011 that a definitive Polish to English translation was published. Since the original publication, Solaris has been adapted for film three times: the first in 1968, directed by Boris Nirenburg for Soviet television, and the second in 1972 by Andrei Tarkovsky (who would go on to direct another adaptation of a Soviet-bloc science fiction novel, Roadside Picnic, by Boris and Arkady Strugatsky in 1979). The third adaptation came in 2002, with Steven Soderbergh at the helm.

Lem would continue to publish following Solaris's original release. Niezwyciężony (The Invincible) was published in 1964, Głos pana (His Master's Voice) in 1968 and Kongres futurologiczny (The Futurological Congress) in 1971.

Lem's fiction takes on a different direction from most of the science fiction being published at this point in time: Landon Brooks notes that "[Lem] presents the method of science as a philosophy of science—as 'critical doubt in action,' a process in which science 'throws up new questions for any problem solved.' " Indeed, Lem was highly critical of science fiction published in the United States, which he characterized as being light fare, geared toward mere entertainment and which failed to comprehend itself in any appreciable way.

Notably, in an article in Science Fiction Studies, he explains his issues with genre fiction as a whole: "If anyone is dissatisfied with SF in its role as an examiner of the future and of civilization, there is no way to make an analogous move from literary oversimplifications to full-fledged art, because there is no court of appeal from this genre. There would be no harm in this, save that American SF, exploiting its exceptional status, lays claim to occupy the pinnacles of art and thought." This makes sense, given that the rise of Lem's fiction didn't arise through the shared influences of the American genre, or even the underpinning cultural influences that informed it. In many ways, Lem was an alien in and of himself to the regular language of science fiction, and his viewpoint is a good way to recognize the limitations of the fiction emerging from the United States at this point in time. It's also a good reminder that science fiction existed outside of North America and the United Kingdom.Solaris-2

Lem's attitude toward American science fiction put him at odds with other professionals in the field. Thomas Disch called him smug, and noted that he was insufferable due to his own high regard of his works. Other authors went to further lengths: Philip K. Dick wrote a letter to the Federal Bureau of Investigation regarding Lem: "What is involved here is not that these persons are Marxists per se or even that Fitting, Rottensteiner and Suvin are foreign-based but that all of them without exception represent dedicated outlets in a chain of command from Stanislaw Lem in Krakow, Poland, himself a total Party functionary (I know this from his published writing and personal letters to me and to other people). For an Iron Curtain Party group—Lem is probably a composite committee rather than an individual, since he writes in several styles and sometimes reads foreign, to him, languages and sometimes does not—to gain monopoly positions of power from which they can control opinion through criticism and pedagogic essays is a threat to our whole field of science fiction and its free exchange of views and ideas."

Brooks summed up Lem's attitude toward American science fiction: "Lem [refused] to think of himself as an SF writer and has written denunciation of SF—particularly American SF—so scathing that in 1976, individuals in the Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA) through a complicated and controversial series of events, rescinded his honorary membership, awarded only three years before." The formal word came from Jerry Pournelle: Lem's honorary membership was a miscommunication. "According to the SFWA by-laws then in force, honorary membership was intended not as an 'honor' but as a means to extend benefits of SFWA membership to individuals who would otherwise be ineligible, such as SF writers who had not published in the U.S." Lem, having published in the United States, was technically ineligible for "Honorary Status," and instead was offered a full membership, which he refused. While the affair seems to have been explained away as a bureaucratic problem, in reality, it was Lem's abrasiveness and attitude which was the motivation for his expulsion. This wasn't a universal opinion in the ranks of SFWA members: A number of members, including Ursula K. Le Guin, protested. Lem later claimed to harbor no ill-will toward members of the association, "but it would be a lie to say the whole incident has enlarged my respect for SF writers."

In spite of Philip K. Dick's attitude and letter to the FBI, Lem seems to have held his writing in high regard: According to Mike Ashley, "Lem believed that the New Wavers should have used Philip K. Dick as their 'guiding star' rather than, as he believed, Norman Spinrad, Samuel Delany or Michael Moorecock....In Lem's view, 'Until now the New Wave has succeeded well in making SF quite boring.' " Lem's issues with American science fiction derive mainly from where the genre seemed to pull most of its influences: the early 1900s, when fiction was written quickly and with an eye toward adventure, rather than toward deeper thinking. Lem's thoughts weren't unique; others throughout the New Wave began raising similar points. Science fiction needed to mature and not rely so closely on its past. For Lem, hailing from Poland, this was an easy task. For others in the U.S., the conventions were deeply entrenched.

Lem continued to publish, with his final novel, Fiasko (Fiasco), published in 1987, although he would publish three story collections in the 1990s and 2000s: Pożytek ze smoka i inne opowiadania (The Benefit of a Dragon and Other Stories) in 1993, Przekładaniec (Layer Cake) in 2000 and Lata czterdzieste / Dyktanda (Forties / Dictation) published in 2005. Lem passed away at the age of 84 on March 27th, 2006.

Lem has frequently been cited as one of the 20th century's most important and widely read science fiction authors, enjoying a very large audience in the USSR throughout his career. As a writer he was particularly interested in the impact of humanity's relationship with others, and what that relationship reflected on ourselves. Hailing from Eastern Europe, Lem's writing style developed outside of the confines of conventional science fiction, and as a result, his work is unique and deeply philosophical.




Andrew Liptak is a freelance writer and historian from Vermont. He can be found online at his site and on Twitter @andrewliptak.
https://www.kirkusreviews.com/features/stanislaw-lem-and-his-push-deeper-thinking/ (https://www.kirkusreviews.com/features/stanislaw-lem-and-his-push-deeper-thinking/)

30 Years of William Gibson's Neuromancer



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It's rare that a science fiction novel comes out of nowhere and upends the large part of a literary movement, but that's just what William Gibson did 30 years ago with his first novel, Neuromancer. The book depicted a dystopian future and codified a simmering movement within the genre: Cyberpunk. It's a claustrophobic, cynical and raw take on the future, and it became an instant hit, one that changed science fiction for years to come.

William Gibson was born on the March 17th, 1948, in South Carolina. His father died when he was 8, and with a move to Virginia, Gibson noted that "this experience of feeling abruptly exiled, to what seemed like the past, that began my relationship with science fiction." The death and move were traumatic for Gibson. His new life in Virginia was suffocating: "suddenly I was living in a vision of the past. There was television, but the world outside the window could have been the 1940s, the 1930s or even the 1900s." Early on, he watched science fiction television shows and eventually came across a "moldering stack of 1950s Galaxy Magazines," in the loft above an office supply store, which he took home in a brown paper bag. He began reading, coming across stories from authors such as Alfred Bester, Samuel R. Delany, Robert Heinlein, Fritz Lieber and Theodore Sturgeon. By his late teens, though, he had largely moved on from science fiction, becoming enraptured with the works of William S. Burroughs and Thomas Pynchon. His mother died when he was 18. The Vietnam War raged on halfway across the world, and he made an effort to be as unappealing as possible to his local draft board, eventually moving to Toronto, Canada, before traveling throughout other parts of the world.

It was in the late 1970s that Gibson rekindled his interest in science fiction. He married and entered the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. The couple had a son. He rediscovered Bester's novel The Stars My Destination and read it again, expecting a nostalgic trip, but instead found a brilliant novel: "[It] blew, as we used to say, my mind. I hadn't, I saw, actually been able to read it fully before. It had been too fast for me, too gloriously relentless, too brilliant...It was, I saw in my twenties, a book that had absolutely ignored everything that science fiction had been doing when it was written." Gibson became the primary caregiver for their son, writing during his down time. He soon took a class on science fiction literature run by a friend of his, Susan Wood, who encouraged him to write his own fiction. His first short story, "Fragments of a Hologram Rose," was written in lieu of a term paper, and with her editing and encouragement, he submitted it to Unearth magazine, who published in the summer of 1977. Still, Gibson was deeply disillusioned with the state of science fiction of the day—"so much of the genre was patently awful"—and he was disturbed by the conservative and centric views of most American authors from that time.

It was in his next story that Gibson began to make a mark. "Johnny Mnemonic" was published in ONeuromancer 2mni Magazine's May 1981 issue. Gary Westfahl noted in his recent survey of Gibson's work that its publication in "Omni, the genre's most prestigious venue, [was] a sign that insiders at least were identifying Gibson as a major new talent." The story introduced a dystopic, futuristic sprawl of cityscape with a language that was unlike anything else seen in science fiction. In it, Johnny is a data mule with a contract on his head, and he's eventually saved by a woman named Molly Millions. Another short story, "The Gernsback Continuum," came out of a rejected review, and was published in Universe 11, edited by Terry Carr. Another story, "The Belonging Kind," co-written with John Shirley, appeared in Shadows 4, edited by Charles L. Grant. His stories with Omni also continued: "Hinterlands" appeared in October 1981, but it was "Burning Chrome" in July 1982 that landed Gibson a nomination for a Nebula Award the following year. The story follows a pair of hackers infatuated with a girl, Rikki, stealing money to win her over. The story also coined the term "cyberspace."

Cyberspace was a new, although not original, concept in science fiction. Gibson had been struck by what he had seen in Vancouver: newfangled, dark arcades that captured the attention of their teenage patrons. "Even in this primitive form, the kids who were playing them were so physically involved; it seemed to me that they wanted to be inside the games, within the notational space of the machine. The real world had disappeared for them." Gibson realized the importance of the coming computer revolution: Computers would arrive, and people would likely treat them like those teenagers were treating their games. It was a concept ripe with the anxieties of science fiction.

Around this time, Terry Carr had returned to Ace Books, where he started up a new science fiction novel series, the Ace Science Fiction Specials, with an emphasis on picking up debut novels from new talents. He approached Gibson with an offer, who promptly accepted: "I said 'Yes' almost without thinking, but then I was stuck with a project I wasn't sure I was ready for. In fact, I was terrified once I actually sat down and started to think about what it meant." To cope, he turned to the world that he had already begun to create in "Johnny Mnemonic" and "Burning Chrome." In it, a hacker named Case has been cut off from the global computer infrastructure known as The Matrix. Hired by a shadowy agent named Armitage and Molly Millions, he's tasked entering cyberspace to help link together two immensely powerful AIs.

The process of writing a novel was a terrifying one to Gibson: "Neuromancer is fueled by my terrible fear of losing the reader's attention. Once it hit me that I had to come up with something, to have a hook on every page, I looked at the stories I'd written up to that point and tried to figure out what had worked for me before." He pulled in Molly from "Johnny Mnemonic" and elements from "Burning Chrome." Gibson worked hard at the book: Much of it was written and re-written a number of times before he settled on his story and voice before narrowing in on the ending. Given a year, he took that and half again before the book was completed. In that time, Ridley Scott's Blade Runner, an adaptation of the Philip K. Dick novel Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?, was released: Gibson found himself "afraid to watch [the film] in the theater because I was afraid the movie would be better than what I myself had been able to imagine." Later, Scott would note that Neuromancer and Blade Runner came from "basically the same list of ingredients."

In the meantime, Gibson published "Hippie Hat Brain Parasite" in the April 1983 issue of Modern Stories; "Red Star, Winter Orbit" in the July 1983 issue of Omni; and "New Rose Hotel" in Omni's July 1984 issue. In July 1984, Ace Books published Neuromancer as an original paperback. The book wBurning Chromeas an immediate hit, nominated for the British Science Fiction Award for Best Novel and placing eighth in the Locus 1985 poll for best novel. It gathered steam and won the triple crown of science fiction awards: the Philip K. Dick, Nebula, and Hugo Awards in 1985.

Neuromancer was largely an antithesis of everything that science fiction had become throughout the 1960s and 1970s. It quickly became the centerpiece in a growing movement called Cyperpunk, which treated technology and its implications as part of the surrounding background of a story, rather than the focus. While Gibson's novel wasn't the origin point of the genre, it helped to codify many of the various elements into a single narrative. The stories wove in elements of globalized infrastructure, computer technology and a mixing of worldwide cultural influences. It was dark, cynical and postmodern.

Gibson continued to work in the world of The Sprawl, writing two additional novel. Neuromancer: Count Zero was published by Gollancz in 1986, and Mona Lisa Overdrive was published in 1988, both of which continued to play with a number of the themes introduced in the first book. A collection of his short fiction appeared in 1986, titled Burning Chrome, which contained several of his Sprawland cyberpunk stories.

It's hard to underestimate the huge impact left by Neuromancer: The book is ripe with ideas that have influence generations of authors and directors in three decades it's been in print. Movies such as The Matrix and Elysium and television shows such as Person of Interest have borrowed substantially from its themes, while the cyberpunk subgenre has continued to run forward as computers continue to occupy greater and greater parts of our lives. Even as it feels outdated (there are no cellphones, for example), the novel will undoubtedly continue to remain as relevant and as raw as it was in 1984.



Andrew Liptak is a freelance writer and historian from Vermont. He can be found online at his site and on Twitter @andrewliptak.
https://www.kirkusreviews.com/features/30-years-william-gibsons-ineuromanceri/ (https://www.kirkusreviews.com/features/30-years-william-gibsons-ineuromanceri/)

July/August 2014 Cover Story

http://www.stainlesssteeldroppings.com/julyaugust-2014-cover-story#more-11310 (http://www.stainlesssteeldroppings.com/julyaugust-2014-cover-story#more-11310)

  :lol:  James L. Sutter on What Authors Owe Fans (Or: Maybe George R. R. Martin *Is* Your Bitch)



What Authors Owe Fans

by James L. Sutter

In 2009, Neil Gaiman posted the now-famous blog entry "Entitlement Issues...," in which he declared that "George R. R. Martin is not your bitch." This was in the context of a larger statement about fan entitlement and what authors of series owe their fans, of which I think the most pertinent part reads:


"You're complaining about George doing other things than writing the books you want to read as if your buying the first book in the series was a contract with him: that you would pay over your ten dollars, and George for his part would spend every waking hour until the series was done, writing the rest of the books for you. No such contract existed. You were paying your ten dollars for the book you were reading... When you see other people complaining that George R.R. Martin has been spotted doing something other than writing the book they are waiting for, explain to them, more politely than I did the first time, the simple and unanswerable truth: George R. R. Martin is not working for you."

In the rest of the post, Neil argues both that authors need downtime to let their brains recharge and-more interestingly-that the author-audience transaction is in fact complete as soon as a reader pays money for a book, regardless of whether it's part of a series. I don't want to put words in Mr. Gaiman's mouth, yet presumably if George Martin lost interest and simply never produced the last book of A Song of Ice and Fire (or pulled a Dark Tower and took 22 years to finish the series), Neil would say that's the artist's prerogative.

It's an argument that I embraced wholeheartedly when I first encountered it. My day job is in the pen-and-paper RPG industry, where fan entitlement can reach truly mythic proportions, and that idea that an artist-even a commercial artist-is responsible only for the art they feel like creating is deeply liberating. The fans yelling online about how your work would be better or faster if you weren't distracted by other projects-or, god forbid, a personal life-can safely be ignored, because you don't owe them anything. You wrote a book, they bought it, end of transaction.

That soothing philosophy lasted exactly as long as it took me to explain it to my non-author roommates. They then patiently explained to me that in fact there is a social contract in play. Because to them, when it comes to epic series with giant overarching storylines, a single book is not a complete product, any more than a single chapter, paragraph, or word is the complete product in a standalone novel. When they buy into a series, they believe they're purchasing the story, and whether a book is 100 pages long or 10,000, if the story is incomplete, it's no different than if you bought a novel and found the last three chapters had been left blank.

Obviously, this sort of logic doesn't apply to every series. If your books are all standalone but linked by recurring characters, then a single volume might well be said to be a self-contained unit. But if the true focus is the overarching story-if, like some fantasy epics, book breaks are little more than expanded chapter breaks-then by this new argument, readers aren't buying individual books, but rather purchasing the overarching storyline in installments. You can't say, "Well, you enjoyed the first three books, so you got your money's worth for those whether I finish the series or not." Series become an all-or-nothing game.

At this point, you may be thinking, "Well, caveat emptor. The artistic muse is fickle, and I never promised them a conclusion." And that would be a valid position, except for one thing:

We as authors can't afford a cautious audience.

As Neil himself points out, "The economics of scale for a writer mean that very few of us can afford to write 5,000 page books and then break them up and publish them annually once they are done." Which is exactly why we need the audience not just to purchase our series after they're complete, but to invest in us by purchasing each book as it comes out. We're asking for their trust, promising that if they buy the car now, we'll do our best to sell them wheels for it tomorrow.

That's a hard sell. Unlike The Wheel of Time, most book series that fail to reach their conclusion can't expect Brandon Sanderson to swoop in and save the day. (TV series are even worse, as those brave enough to have a story arc usually get canceled or change creators before reaching a satisfying end.) As a result, more and more fans are doing the sensible thing and waiting to see whether authors can finish their opuses before picking up the first books.

And we can't afford that. Because as every author knows, the number one reason series get canceled partway through is lack of sales on the early books. By waiting to see if a series resolves, we help ensure that it never gets the chance.

We can't simply blame the publishers, either. While it's easy to look at smash successes and assume that the series is a healthy art form, the truth is that for smaller publishers, series are extremely risky. And without reader buy-in on early books, they're doomed to failure.

It would seem, then, that arguments against entitlement and obligation cut both ways. If we as authors want to take a no-strings approach, then we can hardly turn around and beg readers to support the early books in our series. And if we instead want to ask people to be our patrons-to have the faith to invest both emotionally and financially in a series before it's complete-then we need to keep our side of the bargain and do our damnedest to see things through.

There are limits, of course. Every author works at a different pace. The trolls who insist that a vacation with your family is wasting valuable writing time are still trolls. And Neil makes a fine point that the same people who whine about how long a book takes to release are frequently the ones who complain if it feels rushed.

In the end, only we as the authors get to decide what it means to be acting in good faith. But to pretend that the social contract between author and reader doesn't exist at all is disingenuous. If we walk away or let a series languish, we can't blame the fans for feeling cheated. We're the one who sold them an incomplete product.

"When they buy into a series, they believe they're purchasing the story, and whether a book is 100 pages long or 10,000, if the story is incomplete, it's no different than if you bought a novel and found the last three chapters had been left blank."

Evo razloga zašto sam prestao da čitam "Songs of ice and fire" nakon prve duge pauze,  sažetog u jednu rečenicu. A zagrizao sam serijal toliko da sam dva toma pročitao sa kompa, tako što sam ih skinuo sa IRC-a, a onda manijakalno pratio najave... i odlaganja... i najave... i odlaganja, na njegovom sajtu. To je bilo doba CRT monitora, mislim da sam se ozračio za četiri života.

Zato: Nevermore, Martine. Što je tuga, ako se uzme da je u pitanju čovjek koji je napisao "Sandkings"  :(

Quote from: BladeRunner on 23-09-2014, 11:21:20
A zagrizao sam serijal toliko da sam dva toma pročitao sa kompa, tako što sam ih skinuo sa IRC-a, a onda manijakalno pratio najave... i odlaganja... i najave... i odlaganja, na njegovom sajtu. To je bilo doba CRT monitora, mislim da sam se ozračio za četiri života. 

Joj!

Quote from: BladeRunner on 23-09-2014, 11:21:20

Zato: Nevermore, Martine. Što je tuga, ako se uzme da je u pitanju čovjek koji je napisao "Sandkings"  :(

same here.
A godinu dana nakon kraljeva izašao je Fevre Dream i to je bio poslednji komad Martinove proze nad kojim i danas mogu da nostalgičnu suzu otarem...  :(

Don't Diss Dystopias

Sci-fi's warning tales are as important as its optimistic stories.

By Ramez Naam




This piece is part of Future Tense, a partnership of Slate, New America, and Arizona State University. On Thursday, Oct. 2, Future Tense will host an event in Washington, D.C., on science fiction and public policy, inspired by the new anthology Hieroglyph: Stories & Visions for a Better Future. For more information on the event, visit the New America website; for more on Hieroglyph project, visit the website of ASU's Project Hieroglyph.


Sci-fi writer Neal Stephenson is worried about America. "We have lost our ability to get things done," he wrote in 2011, in a piece for the World Policy Institute. "We're suffering from a kind of 'innovation starvation.' " And part of the problem, he wrote, is science fiction. Where science fiction authors once dreamt of epic steps forward for humanity, now, "the techno-optimism of the Golden Age of SF has given way to fiction written in a generally darker, more skeptical and ambiguous tone."


Others have picked up where Stephenson left off. In an op-ed for Wired titled "Stop Writing Dystopian Sci-Fi—It's Making Us All Fear Technology," Michael Solana wrote, "Mankind is now destroyed with clockwork regularity. ... We have plague and we have zombies and we have zombie plague."






Well, Stephenson wants to do something about that. He's urged science-fiction writers to help reignite innovation in science, technology, and how they're used, and his mission helped create Hieroglyph, a new anthology of optimistic, aspirational science-fiction stories. The collection includes stories from Stephenson himself and some of the best science fiction writers in the business, several of whom also happen to be my friends. The thesis behind Hieroglyph, that one of the roles of science fiction is to dream bigger, to help us imagine positive outcomes for society—is one that I fundamentally agree with.


But in our enthusiasm for aspirational science fiction, let's not be so quick to dismiss the importance of dystopias.


Right now, the landscape of dystopias may be dominated by zombie tales and young adult novels with teen protagonists facing barely plausible totalitarian regimes. Yet there's a deeper tradition in science fiction of warning tales that have influenced our society—in positive ways—just as much as aspirational stories have.


Who doesn't know the broad outlines of George Orwell's 1984? Whether or not you've read the book, whether you've seen either of the film adaptations of the book, you know that it deals with state surveillance and state control of the media.


Orwell wasn't right about where society was in 1984. We haven't turned into that sort of surveillance society. But that may be, at least in small part, because of his book. The notion that ubiquitous surveillance and state manipulation of the media is evil is deeply engrained in us. And certainly, the geeks who make up the bulk of the computer and Web industry have largely absorbed that meme, and that's part of the reason they tend to angrily push back on things like NSA surveillance when it's uncovered.


1984 may be an example of a self-defeating prophecy. It was David Brin, one of the Hieroglyph authors, who first introduced me to the idea that a sufficiently powerful dystopia may influence society strongly enough to head off (or at least help head off) the world that it depicts. That alone is a compelling reason for society to create smart dystopias.


Other important dystopias are scattered throughout science fiction's past and its present.


Brave New World dealt with a kind of proto-genetic engineering of the unborn, through really, as many dystopias do, it dealt with totalitarianism. The 1997 film Gattaca updated Brave New World, bringing us to a future where genetic testing determined your job, your wealth, your status in life. And here I have a confession to make. I absolutely hated Gattaca. I left the theater shaking my head because the science in the film was just terrible. No genetic test will ever tell you how many heartbeats you have left. No genetic test will ever be more accurate in telling an employer how well you'll do at a job than your performance at a past job would be. The film was a gross exaggeration.


Why do I bring Gattaca up, then? Because it was effective. Genetic discrimination on the scale and pervasiveness that Gattaca depicted may have been an exaggeration, but there was a real risk that employers might discriminate against the unlucky carriers of particular genes, and the very high likelihood that insurance companies would raise rates or drop coverage for people who carried certain disease genes. But in 2008, heading off a Gattaca-esque future, Congress passed GINA, the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act, which makes it illegal for employers or health insurers to base their decisions on your genes. And Gattaca, a film seen by millions, if not tens of millions, helped lay the groundwork for GINA.


Dystopian fiction has also helped us pass down important mores about the freedoms we find central, and helped rally people against injustice.


Fahrenheit 451 dealt with the fear of state censorship. That may seem quaint now, but consider its historical context: Written in an era of McCarthyism, the House Un-American Activities Committee, and blacklisting of anyone believed to have Communist sympathies, Ray Bradbury's incendiary dystopia wasn't really about the future—it was about the present he lived in. (And, ironically, Fahrenheit 451 has been censored or banned on at least three different occasions inside the United States since it was published.)


What of our present? We have our own share of warning tales, and for my money, they're among the most important pieces of science fiction being written. Pick up Cory Doctorow's Little Brother and Homeland and you find a warning tale, not of the far future, but of the barely-future, a warning about state surveillance, about overreach in the name of the War on Terror, about the abrogation of civil liberties, about the loss of privacy.


Or read Paolo Bacigalupi's Hugo- and Nebula-Award-winning The Windup Girl, a warning about climate change, the end of fossil fuels, corporate control of food, and corporate control of people.


These are powerful books, with powerful messages, about futures we want to avoid, some near, and some far. These are books I expect to last the test of time. More than that: We need these books. We need people being shaken out of complacency on real threats to society, just as much as we need them being inspired by compelling new possibilities for society. (Cory Doctorow, by the way, is another writer with a story in Hieroglyph, demonstrating that the very same writers can pen both warning tales and optimistic stories. Indeed, many warning tales, including Doctorow's, can also be inspirational and optimistic in the ways in which characters persevere or overcome.)


I'm an optimist. My own fiction, while it has its own dark warnings about pitfalls ahead, depicts the potential of science to improve society by networking human minds. More broadly, when I look at the world around us, I see that we've made it tremendously better over the ages, perhaps two steps forward, one step back, but better nonetheless. I expect the future to be brighter, not darker.


Yet if that's to happen, it will happen both because we have pole stars to aim for—the aspirational science fiction dreams that Neal Stephenson wants to bring more of into the world, and for which I applaud him—and because we have compelling warning tales that inform us of the pitfalls we need to avoid.


So by all means, pick up a copy of Hieroglyph. I have, and I'm loving it so far. And at the same time, let's keep those smart, thoughtful, prescient dystopias coming as well. The world needs both sides of that coin.



http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2014/09/neal_stephenson_hieroglyph_in_defense_of_dystopian_science_fiction.html (http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2014/09/neal_stephenson_hieroglyph_in_defense_of_dystopian_science_fiction.html)

There were several amazing moments from last night's premiere of American Horror Story: Freak Show, from Sarah Paulson's amazing two-headed performance to Twisty's horrifying grin. But the one everyone's talking about is a Baz Luhrmann-esque cover of David Bowie's "Life on Mars"—performed, appropriately enough, by Elsa Mars (Jessica Lange).

EW has exclusive video of the number from the premiere below. It's worth watching over and over again, if only to see Lange pulled out on a wooden rocket.

http://insidetv.ew.com/2014/10/09/ahs-freak-show-jessica-lange-life-on-mars/ (http://insidetv.ew.com/2014/10/09/ahs-freak-show-jessica-lange-life-on-mars/)

QuoteHigh Science and High Fantasy Walk Into a Bar...

by Alma Alexander

I have a science degree. Well, I have three, actually. I got my basic undergraduate BSc back in 1984, and then followed that up with what in South Africa at the time was a stepping-stone half-undergraduate and half-postgrad degree known as BSc (Hons.) In my Honours year, there were five of us – three young women, two young men, all eager-beaver young scientists all dewy fresh and enthusiastic. At our post-graduation-ceremony celebration, gathered together at the worst-kept secret at my University (a watering hole called Spanish Gardens...you might have heard about it...I used it as a setting for a novel I wrote back before the Mayans said the world would end...), the five of us were joined by one of our lecturers, himself a young postgrad, probably closer in age to us than he was to the elder echelon of the other academic staff at our department. On this occasion, he prophesied for us – he looked at each of the five of us and told us what our scientific futures would be. This one would go on to earn a PhD and end their lives in the halls of academe...this one would probably go into industry...this one this...this one that...and then he came to me.

He looked at me for a long time, and then said, "You...you are just misguided."

He had reason enough for that opinion, to be sure. I was a scribbler and dreamer even back then. I was keenly interested in the thing I was studying, to be sure – I went on to take a MSc in Molecular Biology and Microbiology – but I did not have quite the die-hard passion for it in order to climb higher and reach for that PhD (I did begin one. It ran into difficulties. A more deeply rooted, stubborn, dedicated, dyed-in-the-wool scientist might have found a way around all of them. I reached a point where I simply took the Universe at its word, and stopped trying to.) I got a good and decent degree, I learned a lot...and then I kind of categorically fulfilled the "you are misguided" prophecy by segueing sideways into first scientific writing and editing and then sailing full steam ahead into the deeper and far more fascinating waters of fiction, and fantasy.

(It would be years before my mother would stop carefully cutting out job ads which called for my actual education background and expertise and leaving them for me to find in strategic spots around the house...)

The years flew by. I wrote and published a dozen novels, not one of them touching on all the things I had sworn at and sweated over and learned about all living things. About the building blocks of life and how and why they worked. About the biochemistry and physiology of living things. And all this time all that simmered, slowly, quietly, on a back burner somewhere, waiting...until now.

I sat down to write a short story about Were-critters – I had this wildly fun idea about something called the Random Were, a particular type of Were-kind I hadn't seen anywhere else before, whose particular talent was to Turn into whatever the last warm-blooded thing they laid eyes on before the Turn came upon them at the traditional full moon rising.

The short story stopped being "short", in any sense, very quickly. And started being a lot more solid, a lot darker, a lot more sophisticated...and I heard once again a still small voice I had not been listening to for years now.

My long-gone youth, glittering with science, was speaking to me once again.

And so I set out to do what was flatly impossible. If Were had a "true" genetic basis, after all, they would probably already exist. That did not stop me, however, from sitting down and working out how it would all work if they did exist.

I was faced with the problem of a question of High Science in a head-on collision with High Fantasy. The crash was spectacular, the debris on the story road was fascinating, and putting everything back together again in a new and never before seen shape...was exhilarating.

And I kept on remembering my friend, my lecturer at University, and the 'misguided' label.

Because, it turns out, I wasn't misguided at all. It just so happened that my science took a little longer to become a really useful tool, and uniquely equipped me to write about a situation, and about characters, which would pulse with life because they were based on the Real ThingTM and because this world, the world I created for them, would (with a bit of poetic licence given that Were do not, in fact, as far as we know, walk among us) be absolutely realistic, be true, and would potentially be able to be understood and accepted in a way that would allow it to simply walk off the page and into a believable reality that my readers would very easily be able to imagine themselves into.

You'll have to get the books to find out exactly how the genetics of Were-kind work. But let me just say that I had an enormous amount of fun and satisfaction working them out, and it is my hope that anyone who reads these books will quite simply accept that these creatures are as real as you or me – they live – and it took me, and my words, and my science, to give them that life.

So, then. Misguided, and proud of the fact that somehow I still managed to find myself on the right road after all, even without paying all the attention that I should have done to the signposts at the crossroads of my life.

I sign myself off with all of my credentials, for once – this blog post, these books, this world, has been brought to you by Alma Alexander (MSc), Novelist.

I'll see you inside the Were Chronicles.

Alma Alexander's life so far has prepared her very well for her chosen career. She was born in a country which no longer exists on the maps, has lived and worked in seven countries on four continents (and in cyberspace!), has climbed mountains, dived in coral reefs, flown small planes, swum with dolphins, touched two-thousand-year-old tiles in a gate out of Babylon. She is a novelist, anthologist and short story writer who currently shares her life between the Pacific Northwest of the USA (where she lives with her husband and two cats) and the wonderful fantasy worlds of her own imagination. You can find out more about Alma on her website (www.AlmaAlexander.org (http://www.almaalexander.org)), her Facebook page or her blog."

Quote'Am I being catfished?' An author confronts her number one online critic


When a bad review of her first novel appeared online, Kathleen Hale was warned not to respond. But she soon found herself wading in


(https://www.znaksagite.com/diskusije/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fstatic.guim.co.uk%2Fsys-images%2FGuardian%2FPix%2Fpictures%2F2014%2F10%2F15%2F1413376951610%2FIllustration-of-woman-fis-012.jpg&hash=be6e9a34cd846e5d493f571233dcae5652e307b7)


In the months before my first novel came out, I was a charmless lunatic – the type that other lunatics cross the street to avoid. I fidgeted and talked to myself, rewriting passages of a book that had already gone to print. I remember when my editor handed me the final copy: I held the book in my hands for a millisecond before grabbing a pen and scribbling edits in the margins.

"No," she said firmly, taking the pen away. "Kathleen, you understand we can't make any more changes, right?"

"I was just kidding," I lied. Eventually she had to physically prise the book from my hands.

A lot of authors call this "the post-partum stage", as if the book is a baby they struggle to feel happy about. But for me, it felt more like one of my body parts was about to be showcased.

"Are you excited about your novel?" my mom asked, repeatedly, often in singsong.

"I'm scared," I said. Anxious and inexperienced, I began checking goodreads.com, a social reviewing site owned by Amazon. My publisher HarperTeen had sent advance copies of my book to bloggers and I wanted to see what they thought. Other authors warned me not to do this, but I didn't listen. Soon, my daily visits tallied somewhere between "slightly-more-than-is-attractive-to-admit-here" and "infinity".

For the most part, I found Goodreaders were awarding my novel one star or five stars, with nothing in between. "Well, it's a weird book," I reminded myself. "It's about a girl with PTSD teaming up with a veteran to fight crime." Mostly I was relieved they weren't all one-star reviews.

One day, while deleting and rewriting the same tweet over and over (my editors had urged me to build a "web presence"), a tiny avatar popped up on my screen. She was young, tanned and attractive, with dark hair and a bright smile. Her Twitter profile said she was a book blogger who tweeted nonstop between 6pm and midnight, usually about the TV show Gossip Girl. According to her blogger profile, she was a 10th-grade teacher, wife and mother of two. Her name was Blythe Harris. She had tweeted me saying she had some ideas for my next book.

"Cool, Blythe, thanks!" I replied. In an attempt to connect with readers, I'd been asking Twitter for ideas – "The weirdest thing you can think of!" – promising to try to incorporate them in the sequel.

Curious to see if Blythe had read my book, I clicked from her Twitter through her blog and her Goodreads page. She had given it one star. "Meh," I thought. I scrolled down her review.

"Fuck this," it said. "I think this book is awfully written and offensive; its execution in regards to all aspects is horrible and honestly, nonexistent."

Blythe went on to warn other readers that my characters were rape apologists and slut-shamers. She accused my book of mocking everything from domestic abuse to PTSD. "I can say with utmost certainty that this is one of the worst books I've read this year," she said, "maybe my life."

Other commenters joined in to say they'd been thinking of reading my book, but now wouldn't. Or they'd liked it, but could see where Blythe was coming from, and would reduce their ratings.

"Rape is brushed off as if it is nothing," Blythe explained to one commenter. "PTSD is referred to insensitively; domestic abuse is the punch line of a joke, as is mental illness."

"But there isn't rape in my book," I thought. I racked my brain, trying to see where I had gone wrong. I wished I could magically transform all the copies being printed with a quick swish of my little red pen. ("Not to make fun of PTSD, or anything," I might add to one character's comment. "Because that would be wrong.")

At the bottom of the page, Goodreads had issued the following directive (if you are signed in as an author, it appears after every bad review of a book you've written): "We really, really (really!) don't think you should comment on this review, even to thank the reviewer. If you think this review is against our Review Guidelines, please flag it to bring it to our attention. Keep in mind that if this is a review of the book, even one including factual errors, we generally will not remove it.

"If you still feel you must leave a comment, click 'Accept and Continue' below to proceed (but again, we don't recommend it)."

I would soon learn why.


***

After listening to me yammer on about the Goodreads review, my mother sent me a link to a website called stopthegrbullies.com, or STGRB. Blythe appeared on a page called Badly Behaving Goodreaders, an allusion to Badly Behaving Authors. BBAs, Athena Parker, a co-founder of STGRB, told me, are "usually authors who [have] unknowingly broken some 'rule'". Once an author is labelled a BBA, his or her book is unofficially blacklisted by the book-blogging community.

In my case, I became a BBA by writing about issues such as PTSD, sex and deer hunting without moralising on these topics. (Other authors have become BBAs for: doing nothing, tweeting their dislike of snarky reviews, supporting other BBAs.)

"Blythe was involved in an [online] attack on a 14-year-old girl back in May 2012," Parker said. The teenager had written a glowing review of a book Blythe hated, obliquely referencing Blythe's hatred for it: "Dear Haters," the review read. "Everyone has his or her own personal opinion, but expressing that through profanity is not the answer. Supposedly, this person is an English teacher at a middle school near where I lived... People can get hurt," the review concluded.

In response, Blythe rallied her followers. Adults began flooding the girl's thread, saying, among other things, "Fuck you."

It turned out that Parker and her co-founders were not the only ones to have run into trouble with Blythe. An editor friend encouraged me to get in touch with other authors she knew who had been negatively reviewed by her. Only one agreed to talk, under condition of anonymity.

I'll call her Patricia Winston.

"You know her, too?" I Gchatted Patricia.

She responded – "Omg" – and immediately took our conversation off the record.

"DO NOT ENGAGE," she implored me. "You'll make yourself look bad, and she'll ruin you."

***


Writing for a living means working in an industry where one's success or failure hinges on the subjective reactions of an audience. But, as Patricia implied, caring too much looks narcissistic. A standup comic can deal with a heckler in a crowded theatre, but online etiquette prohibits writers from responding to negativity in any way.

In the following weeks, Blythe's vitriol continued to create a ripple effect: every time someone admitted to having liked my book on Goodreads, they included a caveat that referenced her review. The ones who truly loathed it tweeted reviews at me. It got to the point where my mild-mannered mother (also checking on my book's status) wanted to run a background check on Blythe. "Who are these people?" she asked. She had accidentally followed one of my detractors on Twitter – "I didn't know the button!" she yelled down the phone – and was now having to deal with cyberbullying of her own. ("Fine, I'll get off the Twitter," she said. "But I really don't like these people.")

That same day, Blythe began tweeting in tandem with me, ridiculing everything I said. Confronting her would mean publicly acknowledging that I searched my name on Twitter, which is about as socially attractive as setting up a Google alert for your name (which I also did). So instead I ate a lot of candy and engaged in light stalking: I prowled Blythe's Instagram and Twitter, I read her reviews, considered photos of her baked goods and watched from a distance as she got on her soapbox – at one point bragging she was the only person she knew who used her real name and profession online. As my fascination mounted, and my self-loathing deepened, I reminded myself that there are worse things than rabid bloggers (cancer, for instance) and that people suffer greater degradations than becoming writers. But still, I wanted to respond.

Patricia warned me that this was exactly what Blythe was waiting for – and Athena Parker agreed: "[GR Bullies] actually bait authors online to get them to say something, anything, that can be taken out of context." The next step, she said, was for them to begin the "career-destroying" phase.

"Is this even real?" I Gchatted Patricia.

"YES THERE IS A CAREER-DESTROYING PHASE IT'S AWFUL. DO. NOT. ENGAGE. Omg did you put our convo back on the record?"

She went invisible.

***


Why do hecklers heckle? Recent studies have had dark things to say about abusive internet commenters – a University of Manitoba report suggested they share traits with child molesters and serial killers. The more I wondered about Blythe, the more I was reminded of something Sarah Silverman said in an article for Entertainment Weekly: "A guy once just yelled, 'Me!' in the middle of my set. It was amazing. This guy's heckle directly equalled its heartbreaking subtext – 'Me!'" Silverman, an avid fan of Howard Stern, went on to describe a poignant moment she remembers from listening to his radio show: one of the many callers who turns out to be an asshole is about to be hung up on when, just before the line goes dead, he blurts out, in a crazed, stuttering voice, "I exist!"

I had a feeling the motivation behind heckling, or trolling, was similar to why most people do anything – why I write, or why I was starting to treat typing my name into search boxes like it was a job. It occurred to me Blythe and I had this much in common: we were obsessed with being heard.

But empathy didn't untangle the knots in my stomach. I still wanted to talk to her, and my self-control was dwindling. One afternoon, good-naturedly drunk on bourbon and after watching Blythe tweet about her in-progress manuscript, I sub-tweeted that, while weird, derivative reviews could be irritating, it was a relief to remember that all bloggers were also aspiring authors.

My notifications feed exploded. Bloggers who'd been nice to me were hurt. Those who hated me now had an excuse to write long posts about what a bitch I was, making it clear that:

1) Reviews are for readers, not authors.

2) When authors engage with reviewers, it's abusive behaviour.

3) Mean-spirited or even inaccurate reviews are fair game so long as they focus on the book.

"Sorry," I pleaded on Twitter. "Didn't mean all bloggers, just the ones who talk shit then tweet about their in-progress manuscripts." I responded a few more times, digging myself deeper. For the rest of the afternoon, I fielded venom from teenagers and grown women, with a smattering of supportive private messages from bloggers who apologised for being too scared to show support publicly. I emailed an apology to a blogger who still liked me. After she posted it, people quieted down on Twitter, and my inbox quit sagging with unread mail. But the one-star reviews continued, and this time they all called me a BBA. My book had not even been published yet and already it felt like everybody hated it, and me.

***


A few nights later I called my friend Sarah, to talk while I got drunk and sort of watched TV. Opening a new internet window, I absent-mindedly returned to stalking Blythe Harris. Somehow, I had never Googled her before and now, when I did, there was nothing to be found – which was weird, considering she was a high school staff member. "Wait a sec," I mumbled, reaching for my bourbon.

"And then, I don't know, I sort of lost it," Sarah was saying. "I just sort of – poof – exploded..."

"Lost what?" I asked, distracted, thinking back through what I knew of Blythe – her endless photos and reviews complete with Gifs and links, which I now realised must have taken hours to write. The only non-generic photo on her Instagram was of a Pomeranian. It occurred to me that a wife and mother with papers to grade might not have a lot of time to tweet between 6pm and midnight. That said, I had a fiance, friends and a social life (if you can believe it), a lot of writing projects, and I still managed total recall of much of what Blythe had said online. I noticed that two of her profiles contradicted each other – one said 8th grade teacher, one said 10th grade – and that most of her former avatar photos had been of the Pomeranian.

"No, lost it," Sarah said, "like, I went a little nuts and yelled at this stranger who was hitting on me. I can't remember the last time I yelled at anyone." In the ensuing silence, she waited as I rummaged in the kitchen for snacks. "Are you OK?" she asked.

"I'm fine," I lied, trying to open a bag of pretzels with my teeth. But my eyes felt funny, and the bourbon burbled like magma in my stomach.

Was Blythe Harris even real?

***


Over the next few months, my book came out, I got distracted by life and managed to stay off Goodreads. Then a book club wanted an interview, and suggested I pick a blogger to do it.

"Blythe Harris," I wrote back. I knew tons of nice bloggers, but I still longed to engage with Blythe directly.

The book club explained that it was common for authors to do "giveaways" in conjunction with the interview, and asked if I could sign some books. I agreed, and they forwarded me Blythe's address.

The exterior of the house that showed up on Google maps looked thousands of square feet too small for the interiors Blythe had posted on Instagram. According to the telephone directory and recent census reports, nobody named Blythe Harris lived there. The address belonged to someone I'll call Judy Donofrio who, according to an internet background check ($19), was 46 – not 27, as Blythe was – and worked as vice-president of a company that authorises disability claims.

It looked as if I had been taken in by someone using a fake identity. I Gchatted Patricia: "I think we've been catfished?"

Patricia asked how I could be sure Judy D wasn't merely renting to Blythe H? I had to admit it seemed unlikely that I might be right: why would someone who sells disability insurance pose as a teacher online?

"Well, there's only one way to find out," Sarah said, sending me a car rental link. "Go talk to her."

"DO NOT DO THIS," Patricia cautioned me.

"You don't want to talk to her?" I responded.

"NO STOP IT HOW DO YOU EVEN KNOW YOU'RE RIGHT?"

"I don't." I opened a new tab to book a car.

***


I planned my car rental for a few months down the line. I was procrastinating, hoping to untangle the mystery without face-to-face confrontation. I sent a message to Blythe through the book club, asking if we could do the interview via video chat. She vanished for a month, then told the club she'd been dealing with family issues and didn't see herself having the time to do a video chat.

I suggested we speak on the phone and Blythe countered by pulling out of the interview – she was about to go to Europe, she said, but told the book club she hoped I'd still address "the drama", a reference to my drunken tweets.

"Europe" seemed a vague destination for an adult planning a vacation. But a few nights later, lit only by the glow of my screen, I watched in real time as Blythe uploaded photos of Greece to Instagram. The Acropolis at night. An ocean view. A box of macaroons in an anonymous hand.

The images looked generic to me, the kind you can easily find on Google Images, but then Blythe posted a picture of herself sitting in a helicopter. The face matched the tanned Twitter photograph.

"Fuck," I said. What if she was real and had simply given the book club the wrong address?

Then Judy updated her Facebook profile with photographs of a vacation in Oyster Bay, New York. I clicked through and saw the holiday had started on the same day as Blythe Harris's.

***


As my car rental date approached, I thought it might be helpful to get some expert advice about meeting a catfish in person. So I telephoned Nev Schulman, subject of the 2010 hit Catfish, the documentary that coined the term. He now hosts and produces the MTV programme Catfish, in which he helps people confront their long-distance internet boyfriends, girlfriends and enemies – almost 100% of whom end up being fakes. Maybe, I thought, he could help me, too.

"Of all the catfish I've confronted, there was only one I didn't tell I was coming," Schulman said cagily, apparently shocked by my plan to go unannounced. Nonetheless, he had some tips: "This is a woman who is used to sitting behind her computer and saying whatever she wants with very little accountability. Even if she hears from people she criticises, she doesn't have to look them in the face. She doesn't know she hurt your feelings, and she doesn't really care."

"How did you know that she hurt my feelings?"

"Because you're going to her house."

He urged me to listen to whoever answered the door, and not to make our impromptu meeting about my "issues".

Schulman used the word "issues" so many times that I decided to get in touch with another kind of expert: a doctor. Former film-maker Michael Rich splits his time between teaching pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, and lecturing on "Society, Human Development and Health" at Harvard's School of Public Health. He is also the director of the Centre on Media and Child Health at Boston Children's hospital, and runs a webpage called Ask the Mediatrician, where parents write in about concerns ranging from cyberbullying to catfishing. Given the adolescent nature of my problem, he proved an excellent source.

"The internet doesn't make you crazy," he said. "But you can make yourself crazy on the internet." The idea that I hadn't transformed was reassuring. Whatever we become online is an extension of our usual behaviour: I was still myself, just amplified unattractively.

I asked Rich about his catfished patients: how did they react in the months that followed their discovery? "Depression, anxiety. They tend to spend more time online rather than less." I self-consciously x'd out of my browser window, open to three Blythe Harris platforms. "They're hyper-vigilant, always checking their phone. Certainly substance abuse." I reconsidered the cocktails I'd planned for that evening. "The response is going to vary," he concluded, "but it will have a commonality of self-loathing and self-harm."

"Great," I said, double-checking Blythe's address.

***


I parked down the street from Judy's house. It looked like something from a storybook, complete with dormer windows and lush, colourful garden. It was only now occurring to me that I didn't really know what to say, and should probably have brought a present. I needed a white flag.

I searched my bag but all it contained besides notebooks and tampons was a tiny book I'd been given: Anna Quindlen's A Short Guide To A Happy Life. This seemed a little passive-aggressive, but I figured it was better than nothing.

Before I could change my mind, I walked briskly down the street toward the Mazda parked in Judy's driveway. A hooded sweatshirt with glittery pink lips across the chest lay on the passenger seat; in the back was a large folder full of what looked like insurance claims. I heard tyres on gravel and spun round to see a police van. For a second I thought I was going to be arrested, but it was passing by – just a drive through a quiet neighbourhood where the only thing suspicious was me.

I strolled to the front door. A dog barked and I thought of Blythe's Instagram Pomeranian. Was it the same one? The doorbell had been torn off, and up close the garden was overgrown. I started to feel hot and claustrophobic. The stupid happiness book grew sweaty in my hands. I couldn't decide whether to knock.

The curtains were drawn, but I could see a figure silhouetted in one window, looking at me.

The barking stopped.

I dropped the book on the step and walked away.

Over the course of an admittedly privileged life, I consider my visit to Judy's as a sort of personal rock bottom. In the weeks that followed, I felt certain the conclusion to the Blythe Harris mystery was simply "Kathleen Hale is crazy" – and to be fair, that is one deduction. But I soon found out that it was not the only one.

While pondering that version of this story, I continued to scroll through both Blythe and Judy's social media pages. And I saw something I had missed: Blythe had posted identical photos of Judy's dogs, even using their names – Bentley and Bailey – but saying they were hers.

I sent screenshots to Patricia. "It's the end of an era," she Gchatted me. Between the emoticons and the lower-case font, she was the calmest version of herself she'd been all year.

Instead of returning to Judy's house, which still felt like the biggest breach of decency I'd ever pulled, I decided to call her at work. Sarah and I rehearsed the conversation.

"What do I even say?" I kept asking.

"Just pretend to be a factchecker," she said.

"So now I'm catfishing her."

I called the number, expecting to get sent to an operator. But a human answered and when I asked for Judy, she put me through.

"This is Judy Donofrio," she said.

I spat out the line about needing to factcheck a piece. She seemed uncertain but agreed to answer some questions.

"Is this how to spell your name?" I asked, and spelled it.

"Next question," she snapped without answering.

"Do you live in Nassau County?"

"No." Her Facebook page and LinkedIn account said otherwise, and that's where her house was. She was lying, in other words, but I didn't push it.

I asked if she was vice-president of the company.

"I can't help you," she said. "Buh-bye..."

"DO YOU USE THE NAME BLYTHE HARRIS TO BOOK BLOG ONLINE?" I felt like the guy on the Howard Stern show, screaming, "I exist!"

She paused. "No," she said quietly.

She paused again, then asked, "Who's Blythe Harris?" Her tone had changed, as if suddenly she could talk for ever.

"She's a book blogger," I said, "and she's given your address."

"A book blog... Yeah, I don't know what that is."

"Oh."

We both mumbled about how weird it all was.

"She uses photos of your dogs," I said, feeling like the biggest creep in the world, but also that I might be talking to a slightly bigger creep. "I have it here," I said, pretending to consult notes, even though she couldn't see me, "that you have a Pomeranian, and another dog, and she uses photos that you posted."

She gasped. "I do have a Pomeranian."

"She uses your address," I repeated. "Do you have children who might be using a different name online?" I already knew she had two teenagers.

"Nope – I do, but they're not... They don't live there any more," she stammered.

"You know what?" she added. "I am Judy, but I don't know who this Blythe Harris is and why she's using my pictures or information." I could hear her lips smacking; unruffled, she had started eating. "Can you report her or something?"

"Unfortunately it's not a crime," I said. "It's called catfishing."

She didn't know what that meant, so I found myself defining catfishing for someone who was, presumably, catfishing me. (And who I was cross-catfishing.) "It happens a lot."

"A long time ago I used to get books," she said, her mouth full. "I just put 'Return to Sender'."

I told her that publishing houses were sending the books. I told her she might want to check out Blythe Harris's Instagram, as there were photos on it she would recognise. She didn't seem to care.

I asked how long it had been since she'd received books. "Like years ago," she said.

An hour after I got off the phone to Judy, Blythe Harris deleted her Twitter and set her Instagram to private. A contact at a publishing house confirmed that they'd been sending books to Judy's address all year, and as recently as two weeks ago.

***


"So," I asked Nev Schulman, after giving him my evidence. "Am I a good catfisherwoman?"

"Do you really need me to tell you that?" he asked. "What's interesting are the unanswered questions – like, why would she do this? That's something our show does. It gives people closure."

"Yeah," I agreed. On the one hand, I was satisfied that Blythe Harris was a catfish. But part of me still longed to hear Judy say, "I am Blythe" and to explain, and then to laugh about it with me so we could become friends through admittedly weird circumstances. The mystery didn't feel 100% solved.

"I'm tempted to tell you to call her back and tell her it's you, and that you lied to her," Schulman said. "Because, look, I'm curious to know about this chick, too – these people are really interesting, and the lives they lead and the characters they create, it takes a lot of brain power."

So I called Judy again and this time I told her who I was, and that I knew she was Blythe Harris.

She started yelling. She said she wasn't Blythe Harris and that she was going to call the police about "this Blythe Harris person".

I paused. "OK." I hadn't anticipated the shouting.

"The profile picture is not me," Judy cried, referring to Blythe's Twitter profile. "It's my friend Carla."

I gasped. "You know that person?"

"She stole [pictures of Carla] off my website from making my Facebook."

The way she spoke about the internet – "making my Facebook" – made doubt grow in my chest. Blythe's blog was nothing fancy, but it had obviously been generated by someone who knew her way around a basic html template.

"The Pomeranian is me," Judy said. "That picture isn't me."

She wouldn't give me Carla's last name, but I later found her through Judy's Facebook. Sure enough, Blythe Harris had dragged her Twitter profile picture from Carla's. And according to Judy, the only picture on Blythe's Instagram page that featured an actual person – the one of the woman in the helicopter – had also been repurposed from a Facebook album chronicling Carla's recent trip to Greece.

I asked Judy if she had told Carla about Blythe Harris. She hadn't: "I don't want to alarm her." Then she started yelling again.

"I'm not yelling at you," she yelled, and started to cry.

"I'm sorry," I said.

"I feel like this is my fault," Judy sobbed.

"How is it your fault?" I wanted to know.

"Whatever," she whispered darkly. Her tone had shifted. "People are stupid," she added, her voice flat. "If you track their IP address, you can find them easily."

This seemed at odds with her earlier Facebook naivety, but I felt too suffocated to parse it all out. "OK," I said. "Feel better." When I gave her my name and number, there was no obvious reaction to my identity. "If you discover anything," I said, "or if there's anything you feel like you forgot to say, please let me know." Sweat trickled down my back. I knew, on some level, that I was speaking to Blythe Harris. But after all this time, and all this digging, I still couldn't prove it. Part of me wondered whether it even mattered any more.

"Sure," she said. "I'll Facebook message you."

After we hung up, she blocked me on Facebook. Then Blythe Harris reconnected her Twitter account and set it to private. But she was still following me, which meant I could send her a direct message. I wrote to her that I knew she was using other women's photos. I filled up three of the 140-character word limits, imploring her to contact me.

"I'm not trying to embarrass you," I wrote. Channelling Schulman, I emphasised that I just wanted to know more about her experience – to listen, and hear how she felt about all this. Blythe responded by unfollowing me; there could be no more direct messages.

I'm told Blythe still blogs and posts on Goodreads; Patricia tells me she still live tweets Gossip Girl. In some ways I'm grateful to Judy, or whoever is posing as Blythe, for making her Twitter and Instagram private, because it has helped me drop that obsessive part of my daily routine. Although, like anyone with a tendency for low-grade insanity, I occasionally grow nostalgic for the thing that makes me nuts.

Unlike iPhone messages or Facebook, Twitter doesn't confirm receipt of direct messages. Even so, I return now and then to our one-way conversation, wanting so badly for the time stamp at the bottom of my message to read "Seen".

Some names have been changed.


http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/oct/18/am-i-being-catfished-an-author-confronts-her-number-one-online-critic (http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/oct/18/am-i-being-catfished-an-author-confronts-her-number-one-online-critic)

Quote
Isaac Asimov Mulls "How Do People Get New Ideas?"

http://www.technologyreview.com/view/531911/isaac-asimov-mulls-how-do-people-get-new-ideas/ (http://www.technologyreview.com/view/531911/isaac-asimov-mulls-how-do-people-get-new-ideas/)


Note from Arthur Obermayer, friend of the author:

In 1959, I worked as a scientist at Allied Research Associates in Boston. The company was an MIT spinoff that originally focused on the effects of nuclear weapons on aircraft structures. The company received a contract with the acronym GLIPAR (Guide Line Identification Program for Antimissile Research) from the Advanced Research Projects Agency to elicit the most creative approaches possible for a ballistic missile defense system. The government recognized that no matter how much was spent on improving and expanding current technology, it would remain inadequate. They wanted us and a few other contractors to think "out of the box."

When I first became involved in the project, I suggested that Isaac Asimov, who was a good friend of mine, would be an appropriate person to participate. He expressed his willingness and came to a few meetings. He eventually decided not to continue, because he did not want to have access to any secret classified information; it would limit his freedom of expression. Before he left, however, he wrote this essay on creativity as his single formal input. This essay was never published or used beyond our small group. When I recently rediscovered it while cleaning out some old files, I recognized that its contents are as broadly relevant today as when he wrote it. It describes not only the creative process and the nature of creative people but also the kind of environment that promotes creativity.




ON CREATIVITY

How do people get new ideas?

Presumably, the process of creativity, whatever it is, is essentially the same in all its branches and varieties, so that the evolution of a new art form, a new gadget, a new scientific principle, all involve common factors. We are most interested in the "creation" of a new scientific principle or a new application of an old one, but we can be general here.

One way of investigating the problem is to consider the great ideas of the past and see just how they were generated. Unfortunately, the method of generation is never clear even to the "generators" themselves.

But what if the same earth-shaking idea occurred to two men, simultaneously and independently? Perhaps, the common factors involved would be illuminating. Consider the theory of evolution by natural selection, independently created by Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace.

There is a great deal in common there. Both traveled to far places, observing strange species of plants and animals and the manner in which they varied from place to place. Both were keenly interested in finding an explanation for this, and both failed until each happened to read Malthus's "Essay on Population."

Both then saw how the notion of overpopulation and weeding out (which Malthus had applied to human beings) would fit into the doctrine of evolution by natural selection (if applied to species generally).

Obviously, then, what is needed is not only people with a good background in a particular field, but also people capable of making a connection between item 1 and item 2 which might not ordinarily seem connected.

Undoubtedly in the first half of the 19th century, a great many naturalists had studied the manner in which species were differentiated among themselves. A great many people had read Malthus. Perhaps some both studied species and read Malthus. But what you needed was someone who studied species, read Malthus, and had the ability to make a cross-connection.

That is the crucial point that is the rare characteristic that must be found. Once the cross-connection is made, it becomes obvious. Thomas H. Huxley is supposed to have exclaimed after reading On the Origin of Species, "How stupid of me not to have thought of this."

But why didn't he think of it? The history of human thought would make it seem that there is difficulty in thinking of an idea even when all the facts are on the table. Making the cross-connection requires a certain daring. It must, for any cross-connection that does not require daring is performed at once by many and develops not as a "new idea," but as a mere "corollary of an old idea."

It is only afterward that a new idea seems reasonable. To begin with, it usually seems unreasonable. It seems the height of unreason to suppose the earth was round instead of flat, or that it moved instead of the sun, or that objects required a force to stop them when in motion, instead of a force to keep them moving, and so on.

A person willing to fly in the face of reason, authority, and common sense must be a person of considerable self-assurance. Since he occurs only rarely, he must seem eccentric (in at least that respect) to the rest of us. A person eccentric in one respect is often eccentric in others.

Consequently, the person who is most likely to get new ideas is a person of good background in the field of interest and one who is unconventional in his habits. (To be a crackpot is not, however, enough in itself.)

Once you have the people you want, the next question is: Do you want to bring them together so that they may discuss the problem mutually, or should you inform each of the problem and allow them to work in isolation?

My feeling is that as far as creativity is concerned, isolation is required. The creative person is, in any case, continually working at it. His mind is shuffling his information at all times, even when he is not conscious of it. (The famous example of Kekule working out the structure of benzene in his sleep is well-known.)

The presence of others can only inhibit this process, since creation is embarrassing. For every new good idea you have, there are a hundred, ten thousand foolish ones, which you naturally do not care to display.

Nevertheless, a meeting of such people may be desirable for reasons other than the act of creation itself.

No two people exactly duplicate each other's mental stores of items. One person may know A and not B, another may know B and not A, and either knowing A and B, both may get the idea—though not necessarily at once or even soon.

Furthermore, the information may not only be of individual items A and B, but even of combinations such as A-B, which in themselves are not significant. However, if one person mentions the unusual combination of A-B and another unusual combination A-C, it may well be that the combination A-B-C, which neither has thought of separately, may yield an answer.

It seems to me then that the purpose of cerebration sessions is not to think up new ideas but to educate the participants in facts and fact-combinations, in theories and vagrant thoughts.

But how to persuade creative people to do so? First and foremost, there must be ease, relaxation, and a general sense of permissiveness. The world in general disapproves of creativity, and to be creative in public is particularly bad. Even to speculate in public is rather worrisome. The individuals must, therefore, have the feeling that the others won't object.

If a single individual present is unsympathetic to the foolishness that would be bound to go on at such a session, the others would freeze. The unsympathetic individual may be a gold mine of information, but the harm he does will more than compensate for that. It seems necessary to me, then, that all people at a session be willing to sound foolish and listen to others sound foolish.

If a single individual present has a much greater reputation than the others, or is more articulate, or has a distinctly more commanding personality, he may well take over the conference and reduce the rest to little more than passive obedience. The individual may himself be extremely useful, but he might as well be put to work solo, for he is neutralizing the rest.

The optimum number of the group would probably not be very high. I should guess that no more than five would be wanted. A larger group might have a larger total supply of information, but there would be the tension of waiting to speak, which can be very frustrating. It would probably be better to have a number of sessions at which the people attending would vary, rather than one session including them all. (This would involve a certain repetition, but even repetition is not in itself undesirable. It is not what people say at these conferences, but what they inspire in each other later on.)

For best purposes, there should be a feeling of informality. Joviality, the use of first names, joking, relaxed kidding are, I think, of the essence—not in themselves, but because they encourage a willingness to be involved in the folly of creativeness. For this purpose I think a meeting in someone's home or over a dinner table at some restaurant is perhaps more useful than one in a conference room.

Probably more inhibiting than anything else is a feeling of responsibility. The great ideas of the ages have come from people who weren't paid to have great ideas, but were paid to be teachers or patent clerks or petty officials, or were not paid at all. The great ideas came as side issues.

To feel guilty because one has not earned one's salary because one has not had a great idea is the surest way, it seems to me, of making it certain that no great idea will come in the next time either.

Yet your company is conducting this cerebration program on government money. To think of congressmen or the general public hearing about scientists fooling around, boondoggling, telling dirty jokes, perhaps, at government expense, is to break into a cold sweat. In fact, the average scientist has enough public conscience not to want to feel he is doing this even if no one finds out.

I would suggest that members at a cerebration session be given sinecure tasks to do—short reports to write, or summaries of their conclusions, or brief answers to suggested problems—and be paid for that; the payment being the fee that would ordinarily be paid for the cerebration session. The cerebration session would then be officially unpaid-for and that, too, would allow considerable relaxation.

I do not think that cerebration sessions can be left unguided. There must be someone in charge who plays a role equivalent to that of a psychoanalyst. A psychoanalyst, as I understand it, by asking the right questions (and except for that interfering as little as possible), gets the patient himself to discuss his past life in such a way as to elicit new understanding of it in his own eyes.

In the same way, a session-arbiter will have to sit there, stirring up the animals, asking the shrewd question, making the necessary comment, bringing them gently back to the point. Since the arbiter will not know which question is shrewd, which comment necessary, and what the point is, his will not be an easy job.

As for "gadgets" designed to elicit creativity, I think these should arise out of the bull sessions themselves. If thoroughly relaxed, free of responsibility, discussing something of interest, and being by nature unconventional, the participants themselves will create devices to stimulate discussion.

Published with permission of Asimov Holdings.

'The Terminator' 30th anniversary: How a throwaway film became a sci-fi classic



By Bruce Kirkland, QMI Agency


In 2008, the U.S. Library of Congress designated The Terminator as worthy of preservation in the National Film Registry. Only those films held to be "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant" are deemed worthy. Both for itself and for its potent legacy, James Cameron's sci-fi thriller scores on all three criteria.

God, if I had only known that in advance in 1984. Stressed and overworked at The Toronto Sun, collaborating then with the founding entertainment editor, George Anthony, the two of us decided in our infinite "wisdom" to dismiss The Terminator and not even bother to see and review it when it opened on Oct. 26 that year. Big mistake!

Few people then had ever heard of Cameron, the Canadian-born, Los Angeles-based writer-director who created The Terminator franchise and made his official feature film directorial debut on the first one. Prior to The Terminator, Cameron had apprenticed in filmmaking by making miniature models and doing special effects, art direction and production design on B-movies. He finally got to direct on Piranha II: The Spawning in 1981, but only after the original director bailed out in a "creative differences" conflict. Not an auspicious beginning.

Most people, of course, had heard of Arnold Schwarzenegger, who plays the humanoid cyborg who time travels on a murder mission from 2029 to 1984 in the first movie. But few people really cared much for the Austrian bodybuilder. His Hollywood claim to fame was invested in his brawn, his awkward accent and two Conan the Barbarian movies. In short, The Terminator looked like a throwaway genre flick best left to video viewing at home.



Then it suddenly became a sensation in Canada and the U.S., leading the domestic box office race for two weeks running. Audiences knew something that most film critics did not and the cheapo (but great-looking) movie eventually grossed $78 million worldwide, a bloody fortune in that era. Especially given its modest $6.4 million production budget. And, yes, The Sun eventually reviewed The Terminator more than a week after it opened, sheepishly perhaps and with too much restraint even then.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing. The Terminator is a watershed in science-fiction filmmaking. It is prescient in its core debate and storyline, as the computerized machines of the future try to usurp and then wipe out the humans who programmed artificial intelligence into them. In The Terminator, the cyborg society known as Skynet is waging war against the humans. Schwarzenegger's T-800 is sent back to 1984 to kill the mother of the resistance warrior, John Connor, who challenges them so effectively in that future world.

The phenomenal success of The Terminator also gave rise to Cameron's Terminator 2: Judgement Day, which is a technical marvel as well as a great genre piece. As the original film marks its 30th anniversary, the fifth film in the franchise series is set for release on July 1, 2015.

With Cameron declining an invitation to participate in the project, Terminator: Genisys will "reset" the entire story with Alan Taylor (Thor: The Dark World) as director and the team of Laeta Kalogridis and Patrick Lussier as screenwriters. Schwarzenegger is reprising his role as the Terminator T-800, albeit with his human tissue aged to accommodate his own post-political, 67-year-old, physical reality.



As the cyborg, Schwarzenegger famously promised: "I'll be back." He has been, again and again, but he could never guarantee his personal physiography would remain the same. Craters, ravines and weathering have changed his appearance since he first appeared in The Terminator hunting down Sarah Connor, the character Linda Hamilton played so memorably in both of Cameron's Terminator films. So Schwarzenegger's T-800 will age, too.

In addition to Terminator: Genisys — which wrapped up its principle shoot in San Francisco on Aug. 6, Paramount Pictures has announced it will be part of a trilogy. The sequels are now scheduled for May 19, 2017, and June 29, 2018.

Like the Library of Congress folks assured in 2008, it all started with The Terminator in 1984 — and the 30-year-old film does have an enduring cultural, historic and aesthetic significance.

Five things we want to see in 'Terminator: Genisys'

The fifth Terminator film, Terminator: Genisys, has wrapped up its principal shoot under director Alan Taylor, is now in post-production for editing and special effects, and will be released in theatres on July 1, 2015. Here are five things I want to see in the film, which is being positioned as a franchise "reset" by the filmmakers:

• Let Arnold Schwarzenegger's face and body age into his T-800 cyborg. The man is 67. Do not use the technology made famous in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button that de-ages actors by removing wrinkles and other signs of reality. I can accept a ruined relic as the Terminator.

• Do not follow the same storyline James Cameron wrote for the original 1984 film. Dare to be different, even radically so. Cameron already perfected his vision in T2. We need something fresh. So the rumours of time-shifting between 1984 and 1991 are interesting, because that means T2 plot details are in play, including the metallic T-1000.

• Let the screenwriters — American Laeta Kalogridis (executive producer on Avatar) and Canadian Patrick Lussier (a Dracula specialist) — explain time travel in a logical way. Otherwise, my head will explode.

• There are also rumours about prequel scenes showing Sarah Connor as a girl with her parents. Do not let these sequences turn the new Terminator into a maudlin family melodrama. Sci-fi needs an edge, not sentimentality.

• Given the 30 years since The Terminator, give Skynet and the future shock elements of artificial intelligence a new millennium twist. Supposedly, the stylized spelling of Terminator: Genisys indicates the filmmakers are on that track, but we obviously need something more complex than wordplay.


http://www.torontosun.com/2014/10/16/the-terminator-30th-anniversary-how-a-throwaway-film-became-a-sci-fi-classic (http://www.torontosun.com/2014/10/16/the-terminator-30th-anniversary-how-a-throwaway-film-became-a-sci-fi-classic)

...And the adaptation news keeps coming!

Deadline is reporting that Horrorstör, the unique supernatural mystery novel written by Grady Hendrix, is being adapted for television!

Horrorstör is a haunted house story of a different color. It's about the strange goings-on at the Ikea-like Orsk furniture superstore in Cleveland, Ohio...where employees arrive every morning to find the store trashed. The store cameras reveal nothing, so a small group of brave employees agree to work the night shift, when they encounter unspeakable horrors. Horrorstör is unique in that comes packaged in the form of a glossy mail order catalog, complete with product illustrations, a home delivery order form, and a map of Orsk's labyrinthine showroom.

The rights to Horrorstör have been acquired for development as a television series by The Jackal Group, a co-venture between Fox Networks Group and Gail Berman. Berman spearheaded the development of the successful Buffy The Vampire Slayer television series, another series that mixed horror and humor, as Horrorstör was obviously designed to do. That bodes well for any show that might develop from this.

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http://deadline.com/2014/10/grady-hendrix-horrorstor-novel-tv-series-gail-berman-the-jackal-group-864211/ (http://deadline.com/2014/10/grady-hendrix-horrorstor-novel-tv-series-gail-berman-the-jackal-group-864211/)

DeNardo na Kirkusu:

Quote
I'm far from being the trivia king of science fiction, but I like to think I know a thing or two about sci-fi that the average reader might not know. One of the great things about science fiction—aside from the obvious mind-expanding ideas—is that it's a literary genre with a long, rich history that's filled with interesting factoids. I'm continually learning new things about it: interesting facts about the stories, about the writers and about its place in our society. That's why, in addition to reading science fiction stories, I like to read about the genre itself.

Case in point: I was perusing Sci-Fi Chronicles: A Visual History of the Galaxy's Greatest Science Fiction, edited by Guy Haley. This is a stunning visual guide book about science-fiction books, films, television shows, and the people that make them. At 550-plus pages, it's jam-packed with interesting write-ups and photos of hundreds of science fiction properties. The book itself is organized in chronological order beginning with early science fiction and ending with modern sci-fi. Each section contains informative and detailed descriptions of books, films and television shows for that period. A handful of worlds even get a special timeline describing all the important events that take place in that universe. This is the kind of book that science fiction fans like myself drool over.

So there I am, perusing this excellent volume, and finding out that I am perhaps even less of a sci-fi trivia king than I thought.

Here are 10 things that I learned about science fiction from reading Sci-Fi Chronicles:




1. Sherlock Holmes and Sherlock Holmes Met Frankenstein

I have no excuse for not knowing this one, because it happened only three years ago. In 2001, Benedict Cumberbatch (who plays the most famous literary detective of all time, Sherlock Holmes, in the BBC production of Sherlock) and Johnny Lee Miller (who plays Sherlock Holmes in the American production of Elementary) together starred in a stage production of Frankenstein. The play was directed by Danny Boyle, the director behind the 28 Days Later and Slumdog Millionaire (the first one is a zombie flick, the second one...not so much). During the play's run, Cumberbatch and Miller alternated the roles of Victor Frankenstein and his tortured creature.

2. Stranger in a Strange Land Inspired Its Own Religion

Robert A. Heinlein's 1961 novel Stranger in a Strange Land is about a man named Valentine Michael Smith who was born and raised on Mars. The story concerns Smith's trip to Earth and his first-ever interaction with Earth culture. The book is considered one of the most popular science-fiction novels of all time. What surprised me was learning that in 1968, the book inspistranger strange landred a man to found a Neopagan religious organization modeled after the religion founded by Smith in the novel, the beliefs of which include polyamory, social libertarianism and non-mainstream family structures. (Bonus trivia learned while writing this article: In 2012, the U.S. Library of Congress named Stranger in a Strange Land as one of its 88 "Books that Shaped America." Who knew? Well, I mean besides the Library of Congress....)

3. Isaac Asimov Had a Star Trek Connection

I had already known that several science fiction writers—including Harlan Ellison, David Gerrold, Richard Matheson, Theodore Sturgeon, Norman Spinrad, Robert Bloch and Jerome Bixby, among others—had written episodes of the original Star Trek series. What I didn't know until I read Sci-Fi Chronicleswas that renowned science-fiction author Isaac Asimov was given a screen credit on Star Trek: The Motion Picture as the science advisor for the 1979 film. He was apparently close friends with Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry.

4. Ronald Reagan Was a Fan of The Day The Earth Stood Still

The 1951 film The Day the Earth Stood Still is one of my all-time favorite films. Based on the short story "Farewell to the Master" by Harry Bates, this classic sci-fi film is about the arrival of an alien and his powerful robot companion who arrive on Earth to give humanity a stern warning about its future. At least one world leader in real life took those messages to heart decades after the film was released. Ronald Reagan biographer Lou Cannon claims that then-President Ronald Reagan had the film at the forefront of his mind when he first met Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in 1985. Reagan referenced the film two years later in a speech he delivered before the United Nations.

5. Ray Bradbury's Career Was Launched by Truman Capote and Charles Addams

Ray Bradbury is widely considered to be one of the world's top writers. Would it surprise you to learn that another famous writer helped him get his start? It surprised me! Bradbury's first published short story ("Homecoming") was submitted in 1946 to Mademoiselle magazine and sat in the so-called "slush pile." It took the keen eyes of the magazine's young editorial assistant to pick it out of that pile. That editorial assistant was Truman Capote, who later went on to become a respected writer as well. "Homecoming" was a story inspired by the Addams Family, the creation of the famous cartoonist Charles Addams, who was a friend of Bradbury's. Addams himself illustrated Bradbury's story for the magazine publication.

6. Arthur C. Clarke Discovered Lost Treasure and Had a Dinosaur Named After Him

There are two bits of trivia I learned about Arthur C. Clarke, a writer perhaps most famous for his novel 2001: A Space Odyssey. Firstly, Clarke was an avid scuba diver and immigrated to Sri Lanka in 1956 to pursue that activity. Later that year, he discovered the underwater ruins of the ancient Hindu Koneswaram temple in Trincomalee. Secondly, Clarke has a species of dinosaur named after him. The dinosaur was discovered in the Australian seaside town of Inverloch and was named Serendipaceratops arthurcclarkei.

7. Harlan Ellison Was Fired From Disney on His Very First Day

Harlan Ellison, one of the more outspoken and brutally honest writers in the science-fiction field, was once hired on at Disney studios as a writer. One his very first day, he joked about making a "porn Disney flick," even using the voice of Mickey Mouse to do so. Unbeknownst to Ellison at the time, Roy Disney and other studio heads were sitting at the next table. He found a pink slip on his desk later that day.

8. Ursula K. Le Guin Went to the Same High School as Philip K. Dick.

Science fiction Grand Master Ursula K. Le Guin names Philip K. Dick as one of her literary influences. It turns out that she and Dick were in the same high school class, although they did not know each other at the time. Small world!

9. Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale Was Adapted for Film, Radio, Stage Play and BalletProxima

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood is a classic of dystopian literature in which the theme of women in subjugation is explored. I already knew about the 1990 film adaptation...but was surprised to learn that there are four (count 'em) other adaptations: a BBC radio adaptation broadcast in 2000; an operatic adaptation that premiered the same year; a stage adaptation toured the U.K. in 2002; and a ballet adaptation jut one year ago in October 2013.

10. Stephen Baxter Applied to be a Cosmonaut

Stephen Baxter, a British author known for his realistic stories set in space (like next month's Proxima), once applied to become a cosmonaut. That was back in 1991, the year his first novel, Raft (part of his popular Xeelee future history), was published. He was trying out for the guest slot on the Soviet space station Mir, but "fell at an early hurdle."

Baxter wrote the Foreword for Sci-Fi Chronicles. I'm still digging through its treasures....

elem, kad vec imamo Tolko ljubitelja paralelnih, alternativnih i inih istorijskih varijanti, evo nesto i za njih:




Here's what Google, Twitter, Instagram, and other sites would have looked like in the 1980s (http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/what-would-google-twitter-spotify-instagram-skype-have-looked-like-in-the-80s/?utm_source=c1&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=305fijifrost)

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/29/william-gibson-peripheral-interview_n_6062070.html (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/29/william-gibson-peripheral-interview_n_6062070.html)

William Gibson is an author of speculative fiction, most notably his breakout debut novel, Neuromancer, which won the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award and The Philip K. Dick Award. According to fans, it accurately predicted the aesthetic and cultural influence of the Internet.

His latest novel, The Peripheral, was published this month. It follows a pair who realizes a side job they've been working -- playing a game that simulates guarding a building -- could actually involve murder. Featuring Gibson's signature cyberpunk setting, the story also explores PTSD and the detrimental impacts of capitalism.

Gibson spoke with HuffPost Books about the novel, the ever-growing fusion of our online and offline lives, and his fascination with Twitter:


The Peripheral deals with some themes your work commonly addresses -- a "game" is revealed to be much more than meets the eye. Why do you find that you are attracted to the idea of exposing big conspiracies?

"Exposing big conspiracies" might seem what it's about at a level of plot mechanics, but I find the world to be more complex and ambiguous than conspiracy theories can afford to allow for. The central appeal of conspiracy theories, I assume, is that they are simpler than reality, less ambivalent, hence comforting. So, while my plot may hold out the offer of revealing an imaginary conspiracy, whatever I may have to say about how the world may actually work won't be that, but will be embedded somewhere else, in some other way.

Would you say The Peripheral sheds light on your speculations for the future of the Internet?

It's an extension of my assumption that what we still call the Internet originally seemed like "another space" where we did certain things, but that that's come to be, increasingly, "the world." That it becomes the ground of everything, increasingly transparently. It seems to me that we all live today in a sort of partial condition of "Internetness," and daily less partially.


And would you say the book addresses the fine line between games and violence?

Or the increasingly fine line between existence and violence? One of my characters may suffer from PTSD as the result of something she experienced in a game, but I suspect that that's because she and her friends earn their livings playing on teams, for more affluent players. They feed their children that way, so can't afford not to play. So the question, then, is whether that's still "a game"?

What, in your opinion, are the biggest threats the Internet poses, say, 20 years down the road?

I feel less threatened by the Internet than by efforts to control it, generally.


Which contemporary speculative fiction writers do you admire?

Purely in terms of what it may be possible to do with the form, in ways I personally identify with most: David Mitchell, Nick Harkaway, Lauren Beukes, Ned Beauman, Cory Doctorow ... A full list would be very long indeed.

You tweet pretty frequently -- what do you enjoy about Twitter, and what bothers you about it? Are there any accounts you really enjoy?

It's like having a window open on a very crowded pedestrian thoroughfare. I love the sense of people and ideas passing. The demonstrations of very pure crowd dynamics can be unsettling, though. A shaming crowd, on Twitter, for instance, can feel like something out of Orwell.

You've said that you don't play close attention to computers themselves, but the way people behave around them. How are you able to continue to make that distinction today?

A lot less readily, actually! We are now surrounded by invisible computers. In cars, fridges, our pockets. It becomes difficult to find a human, in this landscape, who isn't in some sense using one.

Jared na blogu  (http://www.pornokitsch.com/)poziva na glasanje:

Goodreads Choice Awards!



First round is up!  (https://www.goodreads.com/choiceawards/best-books-2014)

Red Rising

The Goodreads Choice Awards are fun, in the way that popular votes are 80% predictable and 20% straight-up weirdness. GCA is further enweirdened by a crazy deadline (they start... now?!), a very American focus and the very fact that they are on GoodReads.

That said, as I am - for the first time in six years - not involved in an award of any type, I can give opinions! Freely!

So without further ado, my picks for the opening round:
•Fiction: Tigerman by Nick Harkaway.
•Mystery & Thriller: The Secret Place by Tana French
•Fantasy: City of Stairs by Robert Jackson Bennett
•Science Fiction: The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North
•Horror: The Wolf in Winter by John Connolly
•Debut Goodreads Author: Pierce Brown
•Young Adult Fiction: Since You've Been Gone by Morgan Matson
•Young Adult SF/F: Red Rising by Pierce Brown

I haven't read enough in any of the other categories, although I may wind up throwing in some specious votes at the end. GoodReads is also so big that write-ins don't fare well, so I'm wound up with the traditional small party dilemma of supporting 'the one I want' vs 'the best of what I've got'.


A curious thing: with Tigerman, Bone Clocks, Station Eleven and Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki in Fiction (not to mention Mr Mercedes and The Secret Place in Mystery), some of the best SF/F/H isn't in SF/F/H.

A nice thing: just looking at the titles on display here, across all categories, SF is in a much better place than it was last year. Not to take anything away from Ancillary Justice and what it achieved, but the competition is much stiffer for Sword. That's no bad thing - nice to have lots of good books to choose from.

A consistently frustrating thing: 10 of the 15 books on the Fantasy list are all mid-series. Not only does this make comparing like-for-like especially tricky, but it further encourages voting-the-author instead voting-the-book - already an issue with popular awards. I don't know a way around this, although it would be fun to try (originally my idea for the DLGA) dividing fantasy books into 'Starts', 'Series' and 'Standalones'.

And the 'did the award achieve its purpose' thing: did this award successfully introduce me to new books? Yes. I've actually bought three: Panic, The Impossible Knife of Memory and [cough] Romancing the Duke. I would probably try some of the Fantasy category as well, but I figured I might as well wait for the DGLA.

Anyway: the first round has started, everyone can vote, it is a silly amount of fun and you might find something new. So go play! And comments: who did you vote for, why, and what do you like/dislike about this particular award?

This week, Ursula K. Le Guin accepted the National Book Foundation's Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters at the 65th National Book Awards ceremony.

Congrats to Ms. Le Guin!

Hear her excellent, thought-provoking speech below...





https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Et9Nf-rsALk (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Et9Nf-rsALk)

Transrealism: the first major literary movement of the 21st century?




It's not science fiction, it's not realism, but hovers in the unsettling zone in between. From Philip K Dick to Stephen King, Damien Walter takes a tour through transrealism, the emerging genre aiming to kill off 'consensus reality'

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A Scanner Darkly is one of Philip K Dick's most famous but also most divisive novels. Written in 1973 but not published until 1977, it marks the boundary between PKD's mid-career novels that were clearly works of science fiction, including The Man in the High Castle and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, and his late-career work that had arguably left that genre behind. Like VALIS and The Divine Invasion that followed it, A Scanner Darkly was two stories collided into one – a roughly science-fictional premise built around a mind-destroying drug, and a grittily realistic autobiographical depiction of PKD's time living among drug addicts.

It is also, in the thinking of writer, critic and mathematician Rudy Rucker, the first work of a literary movement he would name "transrealism" in his 1983 essay A Transrealist Manifesto. Three decades later, Rucker's essay has as much relevance to contemporary literature as ever. But while Rucker was writing at a time when science fiction and mainstream literature appeared starkly divided, today the two are increasingly hard to separate. It seems that here in the early 21st century, the literary movement Rucker called for is finally reaching its fruition.

Transrealism argues for an approach to writing novels routed first and foremost in reality. It rejects artificial constructs like plot and archetypal characters, in favour of real events and people, drawn directly from the author's experience. But through this realist tapestry, the author threads a singular, impossibly fantastic idea, often one drawn from the playbook of science fiction, fantasy and horror. So the transrealist author who creates a detailed and realistic depiction of American high-school life will then shatter it open with the discovery of an alien flying saucer that confers super-powers on an otherwise ordinary young man.

It's informative to list a few works that do not qualify as transrealism to understand Rucker's intent more fully. Popular fantasy or science fiction stories like Harry Potter or The Hunger Games lack a strong enough reality to be discussed as transrealism. Apparently realistic narratives that sometimes contain fantastic elements, like the high-tech gizmos of spy thrillers, also fail as transrealism because their plots and archetypal characters are very far from real. Transrealism aims for a very specific combination of the real and the fantastic, for a very specific purpose, that seems to have become tremendously relevant for contemporary readers.


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The potential list of transrealist authors is both contentious and fascinating. Margaret Atwood for The Handmaid's Tale and her novels from Oryx and Crake onwards. Stephen King, when at his best describing the lives of blue-collar America shattered by supernatural horrors. Thomas Pynchon, Don DeLillo and David Foster Wallace, among other big names of American letters. Iain Banks in novels like Whit and The Bridge. JG Ballard, as one of many writers originating from the science-fiction genre to pioneer transrealist techniques. Martin Amis in Time's Arrow, among others.

This proliferation of the fantastic in contemporary fiction has at times been described as the "mainstreaming of science fiction". But sci-fi continues on much as it ever has, producing various escapist fantasies for readers who want time out from reality. And of course there's no shortage of purely realist novels populating Booker prize lists and elsewhere. Both sci-fi and realism provide a measure of comfort – one by showing us the escape hatch from mundane reality, the other by reassuring us the reality we really upon is fixed, stable and unchanging. Transrealism is meant to be uncomfortable, by telling us that our reality is at best constructed, at worst non-existent, and allowing us no escape from that realisation.

"Transrealism is a revolutionary art form. A major tool in mass thought-control is the myth of consensus reality. Hand in hand with this myth goes the notion of a 'normal person'." Rucker's formulation of transrealism as revolutionary becomes especially meaningful when compared to the uses transrealism is put to by the best of its practitioners. Atwood, Pynchon and Foster-Wallace all employed transrealist techniques to challenge the ways that "consensus reality" defined who was normal and who was not, from the political oppression of women to the spiritual death inflicted on us all by modern consumerism.

Today transrealism underpins much of the most radical and challenging work in contemporary literature. Colson Whitehead's intelligent dissection of the underpinnings of racism in The Intuitionist and his New York Times transrealist twist on the zombie-apocalypse novel, Zone One. Monica Byrne's hallucinatory road-trip across the future of the developing world and the lives of women caught between poverty and high-speed technological change in The Girl in the Road. Matt Haig's compulsive young adult novel The Humans, which invites the reader to see human life through alien eyes. Transrealism has 30 years of history behind it, but it's in the next 30 years that it may well define literature as we come to know it.

http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2014/oct/24/transrealism-first-major-literary-movement-21st-century (http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2014/oct/24/transrealism-first-major-literary-movement-21st-century)

... I jos malo Gibsona, Gibsona nikad dosta :)

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Earlier this year, William Gibson unleashed his latest novel, The Peripheral. For many, the author's return to the future, after 14 years spent writing about the present, was a welcome return. For Gibson, however, it looked as bleak as he'd left it in the 1990s.

Once upon a time (the mid-'80s to be exact), Gibson was the face of science fiction. His dystopian works warned of a near-future where computer technology was woven into our DNA—where a virtual datasphere played the dominant role in human interface. The genre was called cyberpunk.

In the pre-internet days, cyberpunk titillated readers with its underworld of hackers, anarchists and punks hell-bent on disrupting an autocracy of anonymous oppressors. Others, like Bruce Sterling and Neil Stevenson, followed Gibson's lead, releasing tomes that had critics and academics taking sci-fi seriously for the first time. Thirty years after they party-crashed the literary scene—with the internet now in roughly 75 percent of American homes, 40 percent worldwide—cyberpunk is largely forgotten. Many of their predictions, however, quietly came to pass.

Gibson first coined the term "cyberspace" in a 1982 short story titled "Burning Chrome." His landmark debut novel, Neuromancer (1984), further conceptualized the virtual network that Gibson described as "a consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators in every nation." Author Jack Womack said Neuromancer was less about predicting the future and more about affecting its lexicon. Though Gibson once saw them as "fantasies of anxiety," today (like everyone), he's an avid internet user. In just the past month, he's tweeted nearly a thousand times.

Born near Myrtle Beach, N.C. in 1948, Gibson avoided the Vietnam War draft in 1967 by hopping a bus to Vancouver, where he had first brushes with the counterculture, hallucinogenic drugs and the work of William S. Burroughs. By the late '70s, Gibson fell under the spell of punk rock and science fiction, which he called a "derelict, but viable form."

At a sci-fi convention in 1981 in Denver, he met Sterling and another budding writer named Lewis Shiner. The trio appeared at Austin's Armadillo Con a year later, where they gave a panel on punk in science fiction. Shiner later noted the "movement solidified" there; Sterling dubbed Gibson's "Burning Chrome" "a classic one-two combination of lowlife and high-tech." Neuromancer dropped two years after, becoming the first book to win the Nebula, Hugo and Philip K. Dick awards—science fiction's top honors.

Publisher Lawrence Person called it the "archetypal cyberpunk work." Time listed it in their top 100 novels since 1923. The UK Guardian called Gibson "the most important novelist of the past two decades."

Next came Count Zero (1986) and Mona Lisa Overdrive (1988), each set, like Neuromancer, in a megacity called "The Sprawl," where sky and weather are machine-controlled. An advanced computer network—dubbed the "matrix"—is available to all inhabitants, who spend each waking moment there.

"Johnny Mnemonic," a Gibson short from '81 also set inside the Sprawl, translated to the big-screen in '95. Starring Keanu Reeves as a cyber-trafficker who'd undergone surgery to install a data system in his head, the film was a critical and commercial flop. Similarities in cinematography and tone, however, were later detected in the 1999 megahit The Matrix (also starring Reeves), which Gibson called the "the ultimate cyberpunk artifact."

Narrative quotations in The Matrix also derived from Gibson's work. Laney, a character in the author's Idoru (1996), for instance, looks for patterns in the flow of data; protagonists in Count Zero have instructions (kung-fu, helicopter piloting) downloaded to their brains, and Neuromancer features artificial intelligences trying to free themselves from human control.

His influence quickly spread to music, where the first notably-cyberpunk album—Sigue Sigue Sputnik's Flaunt It (1986)—unleashed a sinister collage of pop slogans and gothic futurist soundscapes into the synthpop ferment. In the Gibson documentary No Maps for These Territories (1999), the author describes Neuromancer as "not a goth book, but kind of the same world that makes kids be goths."

One such kid was Trent Reznor, of middling Midwest synth acts like Slam Bamboo and Exotic Birds. In 1989, he embarked on a solo project under the moniker "Nine Inch Nails." The resulting Pretty Hate Machine, for all intents and purposes, ended the shiny '80s sound for good. Before it became landmark in alternative music history, Pretty Hate Machine was strictly cult. Critics bashed it. Yet a devoted core found in its pounding drum machines, aggressive synth textures and tortured human voicings a last connection in an otherwise depraved world.

Other Gibson-inflected works soon followed. Pop-punk Billy Idol's '93 comeback attempt—titled Cyberpunk—was rife with overly stylized technophobic anthems that went nowhere. UK dance-rockers Jesus Jones anointed their album Perverse (also '93) the "first made entirely on computers." (Doris Norton's Personal Computer album of 1984 had it beat, but who's counting?) If less than a masterpiece, Perverse pointed to the tech-driven DIY of a decade hence, where albums were recorded top-to-bottom on a computer, in a bedroom.

The biggest progenitors, however, of spatialized, abstract sound in the oncoming swarm of internet culture came from electronic dance music (EDM). Nascent '90s trends in Acid House, Jungle and Drum'n' Bass employed fractured samples and undulating breakbeats to convey what Gibson called the "incomprehensible present."

Richard D. James (aka Aphex Twin) was a UK-by-way-of-Ireland artist whose drum'n bass recordings seemed less for rave parties and more for cerebral, alienated geeks sitting alone in a bedroom contemplating the new open platforms of real cyberspace, now dubbed the World Wide Web.

Aphex's Xylem Tube EP of '92 is one of the most unusual releases of the period. "Polynomial-C" begins ambient, but quickly goes dissonant, its stacked arpeggios a mind-trip that both exhilarates and traumatizes. "Tamphex" loops a sample from a tampon ad that feels hard-wired into our brains.

James's only true peer in this style was Autechre, a Manchester duo equally interested in things that don't exist. Autechre's name, like many of its song titles, is a made-up word referring, essentially, to itself. Similarly, Gibson, in Memory Palace (1992), asserts: "We've always been on our way to this new place that is no place really."

Never to be left in the cold, rock chameleon David Bowie responded to the tech explosion with Outside (1995), featuring Trent Reznor on a remix of the album's "The Heart's Filthy Lesson." Bowie,—with Outside's producer Brian Eno—had in fact already brushed up against one of the pioneers of cybernetics.

Anthony Stafford Beer was a Mancunian management theorist who'd been commissioned by the new communist government in Chile in 1972 to create a computer network (titled "Cybersyn"), made up of 500 telex computers to report variables in workforce conditions. Despite never working properly (not to mention a coup d'etat in '73 that overthrew the communists), Beer gained a passionate follower in Eno. The two men struck up a correspondence in '75, and soon, Eno collaborators like David Byrne of the Talking Heads and Bowie became acolytes too. (Bowie put Beer's Brain of the Firm on his list of favorite books.)

Beer, in a 1964 lecture, spoke of the arrival one day of a smart network of connected devices—a so-called Internet of Things. Little did he know the U.S. Pentagon and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) had already commissioned such a project in '63. Essentially connecting the mainframes of university computers in the West, the original Internet sought to gather and protect information inside a virtual, computerized space in the event of a nuclear war. The internet, as it emerged in the 1990s, is its side effect.

As Gibson's star reached its pop culture apex around this time, the very Cold War that brought about the internet's creation was ending. The Berlin Wall fell in 1989; the Soviet Union collapsed two years later. Eighties rock band U2 were on hand in East Germany when the wall fell. There to reinvent themselves under the guiding hand of, you guessed it, Brian Eno, U2 would become the one rock band most closely associated with Gibson.

The author was tapped to appear in a televised documentary of U2's ZooTV tour, supporting Achtung Baby, their comeback album of 1991. (William Burroughs also appeared.) They returned the favor by contributing incidental music to Gibson's audio book version of Neuromancer in '94. Gibson also interviewed the band for Details magazine, wherein lead singer Bono reflected on fin-de-siecle celebrity, saying, "At first, when you're reading stories about your life in the media...you feel violated. Then you start to realize that the person they're describing has very little to do with you and is in fact much more interesting than you are."

The pervasiveness of multimedia became an obsession on U2's '93 album Zooropa, which opened with the phrase, "Vorsprung durch technik" (a '90s Audi ad slogan translating to: "A step ahead through technology.") The technophobic LP ended 10 songs later with "The Wanderer," starring country legend Johnny Cash as guest lead. The Man in Black's bellow of lines like "drifting through capitals of tin" hover ominously over a burbling synths that warn of rushing too quickly into the virtual—something he knows cannot be stopped.

By '95, Eno helped U2 disappear into a side project under the banner "The Passengers," where 14 imaginary film soundtracks turned the world's biggest rock act into its own virtual reality. As cyberpunk became the syntax of its age, nothing was sacred. Even Superman, that comic book champion of the All-American Way, was suddenly (and without warning) slapped with a cyberpunk makeover.

After a surprising death in a 1993 issue of the DC staple, Superman's writers scrambled for several years to continue the storyline. Then in '96, the brilliant idea formed to split the beloved superhero into two uncontrollable energy fields—Red Superman and Blue Superman. The techno-fied icon had to figure out how to unite his two zig-zagging energies to regain his powers and save the universe. It seemed a valid idea at the time, though by '98 no one quite knew how to work it, and with fan interest waning, DC dropped the cyberpunk Superman altogether, returning him to his traditional tights, cape and rubber boots.

By this time cyberpunk had pretty much faded anyway. Gibson's newest novels were set in the present, which he'd been so instrumental in projecting—at least aesthetically. The internet of Year-2000 had made a smooth transition from technological fear into everyday utility. Dystopianism and Y2K hysteria were replaced by a benign internet, roused in things like the Meg Ryan-Tom Hanks romantic comedy You've Got Mail (based on the signature AOL email slogan). A notable exception in the cyberpunk fadeout was Radiohead's OK Computer (1997).

The Essex band who'd hit in '93 with an alt-rock pastiche titled "Creep" had revamped their sound on 1995's full-length, The Bends. With lamentations on plasticity and prosthetics, The Bends hinted that our days living separate from machines were numbered. By OK Computer, humans and machines were fully hybridized.

Yet where Gibson's hard-boiled urchins of the techno-underworld sought a way out of the mind-control, Radiohead's self-loathing slackers on OK Computer are numbed to the point of regression. Police oversee karma, airbags routinely save lives, and slogans like "God loves his children" hang over a populace of "paranoid androids."

"Stay away from the future/Don't tell God your plans/It's all deranged/No control," sang Bowie two years earlier on "No Control" from Outside. U2's "Zooropa" too offered axiomatic simplicities like "Be all that you can be," "Eat to get slimmer" and "Fly the friendly skies." "Numb," from the same LP, negates the trend, with guitarist The Edge murmuring, "Don't move/Don't talk out of time/Don't think/Don't worry/Everything's just fine."

For OK Computer's "Fitter Happier," a computerized voice spits out dictums like, "Comfortable/Not drinking too much/Regular exercise at the gym...A pig in a cage/On antibiotics," which seemed lifted from a Gibson couplet in Idoru, which went: "Viciously lazy, profoundly ignorant, perpetually hungry...lives by itself, in the dark, in a double-wide, on the outskirts of Topeka." The sensation was no longer one of a future world where computers dominate. It was the present.

Radiohead's 2000 album, Kid A, proved the final transformation from mopey guitar-rockers to techno-rock avatars. Where U2's disappearing act with the Passengers called for a name-change, Radiohead's Thom Yorke simply became the voice inside the machine. (He credited Aphex Twin with Kid A's inspiration.)

By this time, U2 had already turned their back on techno-rock experimentation. Where Kid A baffled critics and fans alike, 2000's All That You Can't Leave Behind was hailed as U2's return to form. Bono became the love-him-or-hate-him mouthpiece of pop activism, lobbying government leaders and CEOs of mega-corporations to fund AIDS relief in Africa. Both acts, however, fell silent in the immediate aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Gibson did not.

He called 9/11 an event "outside of culture." His book Pattern Recognition (2002) is possibly the first piece of post-9/11 fiction, which scholar Chris Vanderwees says was also the first conspiracy theory pertaining to the event. (Gibson's main character surfs the internet for footage and opinions suggestive of a unified narrative, finding none.) Not surprisingly, the book was largely ignored.

As the U.S. (and England) waged war on the Arab world, Americans at home became accustomed to high-alerts of new domestic terror threats. A secret war was also being waged on the public's privacy. Between 2000 and 2001, over a dozen internet privacy laws were introduced to Congress. In the aftermath of 9/11, however, all of them were abandoned, and in October '01, the Patriot Act passed. It greatly expanded the government's ability to surveil its citizenry.

In 2002, DARPA (the original creators of the internet) opened the Office of Information Awareness, with the intent of scanning and collecting every piece of personal data that comes across the web—the assertion being that, with enough data collected, the government could predict who might engage in nefarious crimes. Public outrage ensued; the program quickly shut down. Nothing, however, changed, except that businesses such as AT&T, Yahoo and Google now made the same information available to covert law enforcement operations, only through user agreements. 9/11, in essence, provided a license for governments to develop spying systems that affect us all.

Then, in 2007, an American G.I. in Iraq—an intelligence specialist named Bradley Manning—received an internal video of a US Apache helicopter shown committing collateral murder on a crowd of unarmed Iraqi civilians (including two children in a van). Manning burned a copy of the video (and other classified military files) onto a CD-ROM, telling suspicious onlookers that he was just listening to Lady Gaga. The material—the video, as well as 400,000+ internal memos (not all from Manning)—told the story of vast war crimes by the American military in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as plans to spy on countries throughout the world. Flowing from an internet site called WikiLeaks, it galvanized the anti-war movement at home and abroad.

The face of WikiLeaks—Julian Assange—became the first major hacker-celebrity in political activism. After being accused of rape in late 2010, Assange was granted political asylum at the Ecuadorian embassy in London. Manning was charged in 2013 with 17 counts of espionage and theft and sentenced to 35 years in prison.

That June, a former CIA tech assistant named Eric Snowden leaked thousands of internal documents pointing to the National Security Agency's mass surveillance of US citizens through telecommunications and the internet. Former NSA analyst Russell Tice, in the days after the Bush Administration exited the White House, had already admitted they had access to, in his words, "everything." The candidate to replace Bush—Barack Obama—defended, on the campaign trail in '08, the necessity of wire-tapping and surveillance. The programs not only continued after he took office, they expanded.

The blame could be laid entirely at the feet of the government, if we didn't know that much of the legislation that has zapped personal privacy comes directly from lobbyists funded by the tech companies—the same ones selling us our phones and our computers, as well as the platforms where we enjoy music, film, literature and more.

Google, Twitter and Facebook, lauded as broadening the scope of human potential, in fact, built algorithms to drive us to predictable results. Cookies store information on individual user preferences. They have, in essence, created business models that are a dream come true for the CIAs, FBIs and NSAs of the world.

Facebook has nearly a billion users, with tons of personal data on each one, proving that plenty of individuals are willing to provide private information to get something that is free and fun. Simply put: We've allowed ourselves to be smitten. The computer is now miniaturized, or, as Bruce Sterling predicted, "adorable." Christopher Shin, the engineer of Cellebrite, a device that aids the U.S. government in collecting information from cellular users, contends that the iPhone holds more personal information than any other device on the market.

French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan wrote extensively during the 1950s of the "gaze," which he saw as a projection of power—not of a real person who wishes malevolently to deprive us of our independence, but the result of a pervasive struggle for self-mastery. Likewise, Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg argued recently that sharing personal information in a new platform, like the internet, has evolved in quite normal, social ways. Post-structuralist Michel Foucault took it a step further during the 1960s, linking the gaze to forms of surveillance. For Foucault, the notion of seeing things while being watched may liberate some marginal elements, but it shatters sovereignty. We literally become blind to reality.

In the end, many of the same artists who warned of the dangers in taking the full technological plunge are now willing accomplices.

In 2007-08, both Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails, leery of file-sharing in the past, gave away free downloads of their newest albums. Radiohead later decried the loss of artists' profits with the advent of streaming platforms like Spotify, but have yet to remove their music from it.

Last year, U2 offered its newest single, "Invisible," for free, with Bank of America promising to donate $1 to RED (Bono's foundation to fight AIDS) for each user download. This fall, the band took it one further and uploaded their newest album to every iTunes account without users having asked for it. All three acts have done soundtracking for Hollywood movies and Broadway musicals.

NIN's Trent Reznor soundtracked the Aaron Sorkin/David Fincher film The Social Network, a biopic of Facebook's Zuckerberg, who is portrayed as a self-serving pseudo-intellectual caught in an infringement case for stealing the social platform's original idea from a pair of jocular lugheads, to say nothing of his part in co-opting user privacy across the globe. The resolution of The Matrix series (the epically jump-the-shark film known as Revolutions) has Keanu Reeves' messianic Neo making peace with the machines. It seemed the mantra of our age.

Midway through Radiohead's "Let Down," from '97's OK Computer, the languid psychedelic ballad is suddenly bolstered by a flutter of computer blips and bleeps, which crescendo into a soaring Yorke vocal, where, after feeling "crushed like a bug in the ground," the singer croons of one day growing wings.

If one of the jobs of the artist is to watch those who watch us—to monitor the ways in which our liberties have been encroached upon—it is hard not to think, on some level, they've flown the coop. If we stop to ask how we got here, we may look back and find the signs embedded in cyberpunk literature of 20-30 years prior. We may then wonder how we might better have heeded its warnings. But it is too late. Privacy, under the current paradigm, is essentially dead. The question of how our media, and in particular, our artists uphold that paradigm going forward remains oblique.

http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2014/11/somebodys-watching-me-cyberpunk-30-years-on-and-th.html (http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2014/11/somebodys-watching-me-cyberpunk-30-years-on-and-th.html)

Kupio danas "The Peripheral"...

Pametno uložen novac!  :) Ja ga 'čuvam' sad za odmor, Gibsona ne valja drugačije ni čitati.

Nego, da vidimo mi šta ostale baje kažu glede nasušnjeg nam futurizma:



5 Very Smart People Who Think Artificial Intelligence Could Bring the Apocalypse


'The end of the human race'

On the list of doomsday scenarios that could wipe out the human race, super-smart killer robots rate pretty high in the public consciousness. And in scientific circles, a growing number of artificial intelligence experts agree that humans will eventually create an artificial intelligence that can think beyond our own capacities. This moment, called the singularity, could create a utopia in which robots automate common forms of labor and humans relax amid bountiful resources. Or it could lead the artificial intelligence, or AI, to exterminate any creatures it views as competitors for control of the Earth—that would be us. Stephen Hawking has long seen the latter as more likely, and he made his thoughts known again in a recent interview with the BBC. Here are some comments by Hawking and other very smart people who agree that, yes, AI could be the downfall of humanity.

Stephen Hawking

"The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race," the world-renowned physicist told the BBC. "It would take off on its own and re-design itself at an ever increasing rate. Humans, who are limited by slow biological evolution, couldn't compete, and would be superseded." Hawking has been voicing this apocalyptic vision for a while. In a May column in response to Transcendence, the sci-fi movie about the singularity starring Johnny Depp, Hawking criticized researchers for not doing more to protect humans from the risks of AI. "If a superior alien civilisation sent us a message saying, 'We'll arrive in a few decades,' would we just reply, 'OK, call us when you get here—we'll leave the lights on'? Probably not—but this is more or less what is happening with AI," he wrote.


Elon Musk

Known for his businesses on the cutting edge of tech, such as Tesla and SpaceX, Musk is no fan of AI. At a conference at MIT in October, Musk likened improving artificial intelligence to "summoning the demon" and called it the human race's biggest existential threat. He's also tweeted that AI could be more dangerous than nuclear weapons. Musk called for the establishment of national or international regulations on the development of AI.


Nick Bostrom

The Swedish philosopher is the director of the Future of Humanity Institute at the University of Oxford, where he's spent a lot of time thinking about the potential outcomes of the singularity. In his new book Superintelligence, Bostrom argues that once machines surpass human intellect, they could mobilize and decide to eradicate humans extremely quickly using any number of strategies (deploying unseen pathogens, recruiting humans to their side or simple brute force). The world of the future would become ever more technologically advanced and complex, but we wouldn't be around to see it. "A society of economic miracles and technological awesomeness, with nobody there to benefit," he writes. "A Disneyland without children."


James Barrat

Barrat is a writer and documentarian who interviewed many AI researchers and philosophers for his new book, "Our Final Invention: Artificial Intelligence and the End of the Human Era." He argues that intelligent beings are innately driven toward gathering resources and achieving goals, which would inevitably put a super-smart AI in competition with humans, the greatest resource hogs Earth has ever known. That means even a machine that was just supposed to play chess or fulfill other simple functions might get other ideas if it was smart enough. "Without meticulous, countervailing instructions, a self-aware, self-improving, goal-seeking system will go to lengths we'd deem ridiculous to fulfill its goals," he writes in the book.


Vernor Vinge

A mathematician and fiction writer, Vinge is thought to have coined the term "the singularity" to describe the inflection point when machines outsmart humans. He views the singularity as an inevitability, even if international rules emerge controlling the development of AI. "The competitive advantage—economic, military, even artistic—of every advance in automation is so compelling that passing laws, or having customs, that forbid such things merely assures that someone else will get them first," he wrote in a 1993 essay. As for what happens when we hit the singularity? "The physical extinction of the human race is one possibility," he writes.


http://time.com/3614349/artificial-intelligence-singularity-stephen-hawking-elon-musk/ (http://time.com/3614349/artificial-intelligence-singularity-stephen-hawking-elon-musk/)

I još nešto za knjiške moljce:


After fighting all year with Amazon, Hachette partners with Gumroad to sell books directly to readers



crowdfunding-a-dang-book

While it lacks the sexiness of "Uber vs Lyft" or "Apple vs Samsung," few tech fights hold larger implications for the future of media than "Hachette vs Amazon."

The world's fourth largest book publisher and Jeff Bezos' Everything Store have been sparring all year long over the terms of their distribution deal. At various points during the battle, Amazon has played dirty — often at the expense of customers — removing pre-order buttons, increasing shipping times, and reducing discounts on Hachette books, which include titles by David Baldacci and Malcolm Gladwell. And although the two have finally reached a peace agreement, neither party is exactly popping champagne in celebration.

Today, amid this uneasy detente, Hachette has announced a partnership with a platform that couldn't be more different from Amazon: Gumroad.

Gumroad is a site that allows artists, musicians, and writers to sell their work directly to fans, bypassing the big distributors like iTunes and Amazon. The partnership takes advantage of Gumroad's integration with Twitter's new "Buy Now" button, which will allow fans to purchase books like Amanda Palmer's The Art of Asking and The Onion's The Onion Magazine: The Iconic Covers that Transformed an Undeserving World directly from those authors' tweets.

While Gumroad lacks the ubiquity and name recognition of Amazon or iTunes, it's beginning to attract more and more artists, both big-time and obscure, thanks to its creator-friendly platform. The company only keeps 5 percent of every purchase plus $0.25 per transaction, putting more money in artists' pockets. Not only that, but Gumroad also makes far more data available to creators than the larger distributors do, which is something artists like hip-hop/R&B star Ryan Leslie have found hugely valuable. And finally, the platform makes it easy for artists to sell unique packages to fans. For example, everyone who buys Palmer's book through Gumroad will also receive a signed photo and a page from her original manuscript, complete with notes from her author husband Neil Gaiman.

So how worried should iTunes and Amazon be of sites like Gumroad?

"I think with iTunes, Amazon, and these players, they've done amazing things at pioneering digital distribution at scale," says Ryan Delk, who does Growth for Gumroad and led this partnership. "[But] I don't think by any means that innovation in the digital distribution space is over."

While Gumroad is well-suited to small, unsigned artists, it's increasingly grabbing the attention of more established acts, like Eminem, Ryan Leslie, and now Hachette, which is arguably its most significant partnership yet. But as Gumroad strikes deals with more old media gatekeepers like record labels or publishers, what's to stop it from becoming like Spotify or Pandora — in other words, just another cog in an industry that constantly screws over creators?

Delk says Gumroad will be careful to choose partners that share its creator-first mentality — and Hachette has already proven its pro-artist bonafides by fighting one of the most powerful companies in the US to protect its authors' livelihoods.

"In all these industries whether it's music or publishing, [labels and publishers] all play a very vital role," Delk says. "Part of why we're looking at Hachette is that they're really really excited about helping their artists make more money."

Changing media distribution models on a large scale won't happen overnight. There are entrenched interests — both on the platform side with iTunes and Amazon and on the production with record labels and publishing companies — that won't back down easily. But by striking deals like the Hachette partnership, wherein platforms, publishers, and creators can collaborate on distribution and still all get paid a fair amount, Gumroad is slowly shaping the future of creative industries. And for the first time in many years, that future looks pretty bright.


http://pando.com/2014/12/08/after-fighting-all-year-with-amazon-hachette-partners-with-gumroad-to-sell-books-directly-to-readers/ (http://pando.com/2014/12/08/after-fighting-all-year-with-amazon-hachette-partners-with-gumroad-to-sell-books-directly-to-readers/)

iiii..... ovo!



Chemists fabricate novel rewritable paper



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First developed in China in about the year A.D. 150, paper has many uses, the most common being for writing and printing upon. Indeed, the development and spread of civilization owes much to paper's use as writing material.


According to some surveys, 90 percent of all information in businesses today is retained on paper, even though the bulk of this printed paper is discarded after just one-time use.

Such waste of paper (and ink cartridges)—not to mention the accompanying environmental problems such as deforestation and chemical pollution to air, water and land—could be curtailed if the paper were "rewritable," that is, capable of being written on and erased multiple times.

Chemists at the University of California, Riverside have now fabricated in the lab just such novel rewritable paper, one that is based on the color switching property of commercial chemicals called redox dyes. The dye forms the imaging layer of the paper. Printing is achieved by using ultraviolet light to photobleach the dye, except the portions that constitute the text on the paper. The new rewritable paper can be erased and written on more than 20 times with no significant loss in contrast and resolution.

"This rewritable paper does not require additional inks for printing, making it both economically and environmentally viable," said Yadong Yin, a professor of chemistry, whose lab led the research. "It represents an attractive alternative to regular paper in meeting the increasing global needs for sustainability and environmental conservation."


The rewritable paper is essentially rewritable media in the form of glass or plastic film to which letters and patterns can be repeatedly printed, retained for days, and then erased by simple heating.

The paper comes in three primary colors: blue, red and green, produced by using the commercial redox dyes methylene blue, neutral red and acid green, respectively. Included in the dye are titania nanocrystals (these serve as catalysts) and the thickening agent hydrogen cellulose (HEC). The combination of the dye, catalysts and HEC lends high reversibility and repeatability to the film.

During the writing phase, ultraviolet light reduces the dye to its colorless state. During the erasing phase, re-oxidation of the reduced dye recovers the original color; that is, the imaging material recovers its original color by reacting with ambient oxygen. Heating at 115 C can speed up the reaction so that the erasing process is often completed in less than 10 minutes.


Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2014-12-chemists-fabricate-rewritable-paper.html#jCp (http://phys.org/news/2014-12-chemists-fabricate-rewritable-paper.html#jCp)

Thousands of Einstein Documents Are Now a Click Away

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http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/05/science/huge-trove-of-albert-einstein-documents-becomes-available-online.html (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/05/science/huge-trove-of-albert-einstein-documents-becomes-available-online.html)


I, kao offsipn toga:



Einstein's letter defending Marie Curie shows just how long trolls have been slut-shaming women

In 1911, nearly a decade after winning a Nobel Prize for her pioneering work on radiation, Marie Curie received a letter from Albert Einstein in which he urged her not to be beaten down by people who would, today, be called trolls.

The letter is among the thousand of Einstein's documents released last week — which are being called "the Dead Sea Scrolls of physics" — and it begins by Einstein asking Curie "not [to] laugh at me for writing you without having anything sensible to say."

"But I am so enraged by the base manner in which the public is presently daring to concern itself with you," he continued, "that I absolutely must give vent to this feeling."

The treatment to which Einstein referred included the fact that the French Academy of Sciences denied her application for a seat, possibly because of rumors that she was Jewish — or because she was having an affair with a married man, the physicist Paul Langevin.

"I am convinced that you consistently despise this rabble," Einstein wrote, "whether it obsequiously lavishes respect on you or whether it attempts to satiate its lust for sensationalism!"

"Anyone who does not number among these reptiles," he said of her critics, "is certainly happy, now as before, that we have such personages among us as you, and Langevin too, real people with whom one feels privileged to be in contact."

Einstein concluded that "f the rabble continues to occupy itself with you, then simply don't read that hogwash, but rather leave it to the reptiles for whom it has been fabricated."

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/12/einsteins-letter-to-marie-curie-shows-just-how-long-trolls-have-been-shaming-women/ (http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/12/einsteins-letter-to-marie-curie-shows-just-how-long-trolls-have-been-shaming-women/)

THE SPECULATOR

The Three-Body Problem
By CIXIN LIU

Posted by Paul Di Filippo ×   December 10, 2014

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The roots of modern science fiction in China — brilliantly synopsized in the pages of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction — are to be found deep in the early decades of the twentieth century, much like those of the genre in the USA. The mode continues to attract a large Chinese readership, as exemplified by the existence of the magazine Science Fiction World, the planet's most widely read SF publication. But of course, with historically minimal foreign commercial and intellectual contacts, either one-way or two-way, and shifting ideological banners, Chinese writers and readers came to explore radically different story spaces and themes, moods, and attitudes than their Gernsbackian brethren.

Unfortunately, due to the exclusionary rigors of the foreign marketplace and the lack of a cadre of crack translators, English-language readers have been generally cut off from this parallel world. Even veteran American fans would be hard-pressed to cite famous or representative works of Chinese SF, as opposed to recognizing French, German, Japanese, or Russian authors.

But welcome cracks in the dam are appearing, most notably with the publication in English of The Three-Body Problem, the first in a trilogy by Cixin Liu, ably translated by the award-winning American SF writer Ken Liu. And given the fact that filmmakers currently have in development five projects based on various works by Cixin Liu, this could be a watershed moment for Chinese SF in general.

The novel opens in the midst of China's Cultural Revolution, with a family tragedy in progress. A scientist deemed a counter-revolutionary is denounced at a show trial by his brainwashed wife, then murdered in front of a crowd that includes his young daughter, Ye Wenjie. It is Ye Wenjie, richly adumbrated, who will occupy much of the novel's center. We follow her through her maturation and her gradual involvement in a secret Chinese research program at a place called Red Coast Base. The exact transcendental and dangerous nature of this program is parceled out to the reader in measured fashion, in a series of flashbacks interspersed throughout what we might dub the realtime narrative, set in the present. But Ye Wenjie will figure in that contemporary telling as well, as an elderly woman, still pivotal to events.

But the main plot concerns a nanotechnologist named Wang Miao during the present era. Alarmed by a rash of suicides among scientists, by some disturbing anti-science cultural trends, and by certain hallucinatory incidents personally experienced, Wang Miao begins to conduct some investigations into the source of these allied phenomena. Part of his research consists of logging into the full-sensory online VR environment known as "Three Body." This place — "game" hardly describes the software — presents itself as an utterly strange alien world whose astrophysical setup involves arduously Darwinian Stable and Chaotic periods for its planets and their flora and fauna. Playing the role of visitor, Wang Miao gradually assimilates the bizarre realities of "Trisolaris."


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Aiding Wang Miao in the practical aspects of following clues and interviewing and confronting suspects is a cop named Shi Qiang, also called Da Shi. Amid all the high-flown intellectual conundrums and catastrophes, Da Shi provides the grounded, common-man perspective, and he threatens to steal every scene in which he appears. His droll, gruff language and refusal to be cowed by any existential threats offer a thread of hope and humor against the grimness of what eventually materializes: a situation in which the game proves to be a partial manifestation of a conspiracy of the most wide-reaching — indeed cosmic — significance imaginable.

The ultimate experience of reading Cixin Liu's novel is both parallel to the experience of reading similar English-language books and utterly lateral to those familiar frissons. In his afterword, Liu speaks of growing up on American SF, so it is hardly surprising that there would be similarities. But his native upbringing, embedded in the alternate reality that is China, ensures that his writing will also offer many uniquely foreign attitudes and thrills.

Considering the familiar aspects, we find appealing echoes of Lovecraft, for a start. Wang Miao's quest follows a path evocative of the investigations of The Call of Cthulhu. One might also fruitfully recall Colin Wilson's The Mind Parasites. Mixed in with this is a Pynchonian vibe, with Wang Miao as a kind of Tyrone Slothrop figure. In this sense, Liu's book stands in a cousinly relation to such contemporary outings as David Shafer's Whiskey Tango Foxtrot. And I'd adduce certain parallels between the outré seasons of Trisolaris and the equally exigent celestial circumstances of life on Brian Aldiss's Helliconia. All of this is updated, in a sense, by Cixin Liu's fascination with the odder features of quantum physics, theories that spark similar excitement in the writer's Western counterparts.

So much for touchstones in The Three-Body Problem that conjure up examples of Western SF. But to see where Liu's book reads distinctly like the product of another culture — a pleasing and desirable effect that the deft translator Ken Liu, in his notes, speaks of seeking to preserve and convey — we need to look at relevant Western SF whose effects are not duplicated here. I'm thinking of classic alien invasion novels such as Footfall by Niven and Pournelle, or The Killing Star by Zebrowski and Pellegrino. These books are, to simplify their essences, rational and practical invasions, Wellsian in other words. Liu's more existential and soul-twisting tale in part resembles the more multivalent and nebulous work of Haruki Murakami, with elements of the Strugatsky brothers in such works Definitely Maybe. The inner and outer journeys conducted by Wang Miao and Ye Wenjie are almost Jungian. Perhaps the nearest instance in Western SF is something like Philip K. Dick's VALIS.

And then there is an almost indefinable gravitas present in this book — and in much of non-Western SF — which is hard to pinpoint. But I think it is indeed quantifiable, especially in the opening section dealing with the Cultural Revolution, and in the way the characters define their individual freedoms balanced against societal duties. Having lived through such annealing times, writers from these cultures possess a certain outlook that incorporates the transience of life and the lack of sociopolitical stability and which Americans and UK citizens don't share. This distinctive disjunction was best captured in Philip Roth's famous observation from his 1986 interview in The Paris Review:

When I was first in Czechoslovakia, it occurred to me that I work in a society where as a writer everything goes and nothing matters, while for the Czech writers I met in Prague, nothing goes and everything matters. This isn't to say I wished to change places. I didn't envy their persecution and the way in which it heightens their social importance. I didn't even envy them their seemingly more valuable and serious themes. The trivialization, in the West, of much that's deadly serious in the East is itself a subject, one requiring considerable imaginative ingenuity to transform into compelling fiction.


Finally, I sense a bit of pre-modern Chinese literature fabulistic tactics here, Dream of the Red Chamber intricate cunningness, in the way the flashbacks intermingle with the realtime narrative, and in the story-within-a-story section devoted to the life of a fellow named Wei Cheng.

Ultimately, the welcoming commonality of this thought-provoking, heartfelt tale, its universality, outweighs the piquant flavorings that might seem exotic to Westerners. We emerge from the book happily affirming Cixin Liu's assertion in his afterword: "Science fiction is a literature that belongs to all humankind."

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Holden Scoula's wonderful "Save the story" series, superbly translated and published in English by our beloved Pushkin Press, is a thing of beauty. Not only that the entire series is so beautifully illustrated but it also, in most cases, manages to capture all the brilliance and importance of these, sadly nowadays never read, classics of literature. Final part in the series has just been released and brings us Melania G. Mazzucco's retelling of Shakespeare's classic play "King Lear".

King Lear instinctively feels like an obvious choice for "Save the Story". It is a tale of morality which, when succinctly distilled, delivers a lesson about the importance to scratch under the surface. If you remember, King Lear has three daughters, one of which, when asked how much she loves him, tells the truth. The other two lie to his face and King Lear decided to punish the one telling the truth by disowning her. At the same time, the remaining two daughters, Regan and Goneril each receive half of his Kingdom. But quickly tables are turned and daughters show they true face but then it's too late for sad King who disappointed becomes nothing but a shadow of his previous self. As it often the case with Shakespeare, only King's Fool realizes from the start how things really stand. Despite being discarded, youngest daughter Cordelia still holds candle for King and the war for the throne is soon brewing.

"King Lear" has always been one of my favourite Shakespeare's plays due to its depth and tragic ending and in her retelling Mazzucco's has done it justice despite for some bizarre reason completely overhauling the final set pieces. Mazzucco has decided to tell the tale from Edgar's point of perspective and it's a refreshing and curiously uplifting take on things. In general, the entire story is delivered cleanly and somehow even manages to capture some of more subtle nuances that grace the original. When you add wonderful illustrations by Emanuela Orciari to the mix, the result is a book that should be your choice if you have to pick just a single "Save the Story" volume. It'll inspire the reader to find out more about both Shakespeare and the whole series and that's all that you can hope for. And what's best, due to the nature of its ending, Shakespeare's play will still feel fresh.

http://upcoming4.me/news/book-news/review-the-story-of-king-lear-by-melania-g-mazzucco (http://upcoming4.me/news/book-news/review-the-story-of-king-lear-by-melania-g-mazzucco)

Read Them Now, Watch Them Later: Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Adaptation Watch (January 2015 Edition)

By John DeNardo on January 7, 2015


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I meni nepoznate:

Honor Harrington by David Weber

Speaking of military science fiction, one of the most popular military sci-fi series is David Weber's Honor Harrington series, named after its principal protagonist, Honor Harrington, who is a smart, genetically-engineered officer in the Royal Manticoran Navy. The series, which has been described as "Horatio Hornblower in space," depicts Honor's advancement through the military ranks and eventually the halls of politics and diplomacy. The series starts with On Basilisk Station and it takes place 2,000 years in the future when hyperspace travel allows humanity to colonize deep space.

So what medium is Honor Harrington best adapted to? Apparently all of them! Evergreen Studios announced that it is adapting Weber's popular series to film, comic book, digital game, webisode, and television series formats. The collective title of the project is Tales of Honor. I don't think you'll be able to miss this one if you tried.


https://www.kirkusreviews.com/features/read-them-now-watch-them-later-Jan-2015/ (https://www.kirkusreviews.com/features/read-them-now-watch-them-later-Jan-2015/)

Kad već teramo čiku KSRa da silno štuca...  :lol: ... evo i nešto njegovo ultra zanimljivo:


Remarks on Utopia in the Age of Climate Change

2011: Issue 35/36.
Kim Stanley Robinson gives an account of his utopian novels.
 

I came to utopia by accident, having painted myself into a corner with an idea for a trilogy: three science fiction novels consisting of an after-the-fall novel, a dystopia and a utopia, all set in the same place, and about the same distance into the future. The idea came to me in 1972, and I didn't know how to write a novel then, so the plan needed brooding on. Some sixteen years later, the time came for the utopia. I had written the after-the-fall novel, The Wild Shore, and the dystopia, The Gold Coast. The utopia was the only one left.

By that time many aspects of it had been determined by the previous two books. I needed it to be in Orange County, California; I needed it to be fifty years in the future; and I needed to include the old man who had also been a character in the other two stories, so that he would have three lives, each radically different — this was the triptych's way of illustrating the way our individual lives are greatly influenced by the history we live in.

Through the previous sixteen years I had read all kinds of utopian literature. What emerged as most important for my novel was the utopian non-fiction of the 1970s, books which I think were a manifestation of the hippie generation growing up, beginning to have kids and trying to plan how to live the ideals of the revolutionary sixties. These books made quite a bookshelf: The Integral Urban House, Progress as if Survival Mattered, Small is Beautiful, Muddling Toward Frugality, Appropriate Technology and so on. They are still worth reading, but they were all unaware of the coming Reagan/Thatcher counter-revolution, which would render them largely irrelevant in the following decade. It would be nice to have a publishing series that reprinted them all, for they would still be full of interesting ideas, even if their technologies have been sometimes superseded. They would make a portrait of the hopes of that era similar to the portrait created by the era's science fiction; the two literatures would be complementary.

These non-fiction utopian writers, plus alternative economists like Hazel Henderson and Herman Daly, were the main influences on my third California volume, Pacific Edge. These influences were not particularly radical politically, but they did outline ideas that I thought could be realistically postulated for a US culture only fifty years off. Despite their help, I found it an extremely uneasy experience to write a utopian novel, and when I was done with it I sent it out into the world with a sigh of relief, thinking, 'I'll never do that again'. I couldn't quite articulate the source of my unease, but it felt like some kind of category error.

Then my friend Terry Bisson was talking to me about the book, and he asked me, 'How did your utopia come about, Stan? What's the history that explains it?' Well, I had made gestures towards an explanation in the book's italicized sections; I had even written an italicized section in which Tom Barnard suggested ten or twelve different ways his internal utopia could come about, as a way of admitting how hard it was to imagine such a history. I had cut that section, but as I began to rehearse my various historical explanations to Terry, he shook his head. 'But Stan,' he said, 'there are guns under the table'.



At that point the Mars Trilogy began in my head. I was struck by the truth of Terry's remark, and in fact it makes for one of the better chapter titles in Red Mars. I thought: 'OK, granted there are guns under the table. Utopia is not going to come easily. We therefore have to try the story again elsewhere, invent a utopian history, maybe give it 200 years to develop rather than fifty, and tell the whole thing explicitly'. So one of the many motivations for the Mars Trilogy was to somehow fix the previous book, which of course is not really possible. And yet I find I often write in order to explain or correct unsatisfactory things in novels I've finished.

The Mars novels therefore described three revolutions, because I felt that in Pacific Edge I had dodged the necessity of revolution, however broadly conceived. And yet I was not comfortable with the idea of re-invoking the violent revolutions of theeighteenth and twentieth centuries; they didn't seem appropriate to Mars, or to our current world either. The classic revolutions had often been failures, in the sense of causing such violent backlashes that they made more problems than they solved, principally by institutionalizing violence. I also felt very uncomfortable about being a first-world person stating that revolutions were necessary in third-world countries, when first-world weapons systems would then be used against them. Revolution itself needed to be reconceptualized, I felt; and indeed in the various velvet revolutions of 1989 I had just seen different models for rapid change in the social order. These new images for revolution became one of the central preoccupations of the Mars novels. We're still stuck with this problem, of course, because we still need a revolution or two.

While writing the Mars Trilogy, or maybe before, I began to think of science as another name for the utopian way, or what Williams called the long revolution. This was partly because I was married to a scientist and watching science in action, up close, and it was partly from thinking about it. We tend to take science at its own self-evaluation, and we're not used to thinking that utopia might already be partly here, a process that we struggle for or against. But to me the idea of science as a utopian coming-into-being has seemed both true and useful, suggestive of both further stories and action in the world.

So if science itself was to be my utopian way, and Antarctica was famously called 'the continent for science', then maybe that was the place on Earth that was already the most utopian space. It was worth having a look; besides I like wilderness, mountains, glaciers and so on, and Antarctica is nothing but those things. Because of my Mars books, the US National Science Foundation was willing to send me south as part of their Antarctic Artists and Writers' Program. Thus Antarctica eventually came out as a step along my way: I wanted to show what a continent run by scientists for scientists is actually like. That book was a lot of fun to research. As far as you can tell when you're there, the continent runs using a non-monetary economic system, where food, clothing, shelter and fuel are all provided by the community; and at the same time you get to do what you want in terms of your project. It was a limited version of utopia, but interesting as a kind of laboratory experiment, a brief experience of how it might feel to live in a different social order. It was not exactly Orwell in Barcelona, but exhilarating in a different way. And it was very useful in my attempt to combine utopian and wilderness thinking, also to bring all these things closer to home than Mars.

Then came The Years of Rice and Salt, which at first I thought of as a break from utopia. But when I was trying to imagine a world history with Europe taken out of the picture by a very fatal Black Death, I quickly discovered what I felt was a problem. I didn't want to make that alternative world worse than the one we're in, because that would be racist and unwarranted. I didn't want to make it better than our world, because that would be reflexively politically correct, and also unwarranted. But I couldn't make it equal to our world either, because that would be boring — pointless in narrative terms. So my alternative history couldn't be worse, it couldn't be better, and it couldn't be equal. My options seemed kind of limited. But what came to me as my solution was simply the idea of the future, and of utopia again. In the novel, at the equivalent of our year 2002 (the book's date of publication), my alternative world would be, I decided, roughly equivalent in its goodness to our own, reached by its different history; but it would then continue past our moment some seventy years into the future, and we would then see them finally make a good job of things. This gave the novel a utopian ending that I hoped would exist as a challenge to our world: could we, starting from roughly the same position, do as well as this fictional world without Europe? This late utopian element got me past the better/worse/same conundrum, and added a little sting to the book's tail.

At this point it felt like I had developed a kind of habit. But it was not the time to try to break it. In the previous years I had spent a fair amount of time at the National Science Foundation in Washington DC, and it seemed to me more than ever that this institution, and science more generally, represented a kind of proto-utopian space. I felt that the scientific method, and scientific institutions in our world, were under-theorized utopian attempts to change the world, made by people who would rather not think about politics, yet would very much like to do some good. These impressions led me to the trilogy I call Science in the Capital. I wanted to imagine the first step toward utopia, starting in our world now. If we could make a bridge across the Great Trench to utopia, what would be the first footing? I wanted to think about how utopia might start from our current conditions; to describe, in effect, the start of a scientific revolution. Not the Scientific Revolution of the early modern period, but rather a new revolution, enacted by scientists in the world we live in now.

I had also come to feel that many people, and especially many of my leftist colleagues, thought of science as merely the instrument of power — as the most active and effective wing of capitalism. This now struck me as wrong. To me it seemed that we actually exist in a situation that can better be described as 'science versus capitalism': a world in which smaller progressive concepts such as environmentalism, environmental justice, social justice, democracy itself — all these were going to be defeated together, unless they were aligned with the one great power that might yet still successfully oppose a completely capitalist future, which was science. I was thinking with a very broad brush at this point, almost mythologically you might say, but it struck me as an interesting story to tell, a new story with some possible analytic value. So I wrote the Science in the Capital trilogy with these thoughts in mind.

Having written that book, describing science as a crucial utopian force, I began to ask myself: but what is science? And how did it start? That led me to Galileo, as some kind of 'first scientist', and thus eventually to my most recent novel, Galileo's Dream (2009). It is not a utopian novel, I am relieved to say, but it is a novel about science and history, and their interaction; and it is a science fiction novel.

So that's my account of this aspect of my career; how, despite my uneasiness concerning utopia as a literary genre, I have nevertheless been writing them for a long time. I am one of the very few serial offenders, you might say, at least in modern times. It has been a source of stress to me, I admit, for there is no doubt in my mind that a 'utopian novel' is a strange project, a bastard form — an amalgam of two genres which are in many respects not at all compatible. It's like saying, 'Let's make a new genre — we'll throw together architectural blueprints and soap operas'. That's obviously a bad idea. And yet there it is: that absurd hybrid is the utopian novel.

But the problem really is even worse than that. It involves a version of David Hume's 'is–ought problem': there is the world as it is, and the world as it ought to be. It is difficult to see how they connect, which is Hume's concern; but the novel, it seems at first glance, is about the world as it is. So if you want above all to write good novels, then what is should be the subject matter; it's a matter of fidelity to the real. So realism becomes the default preferred form for the novel. And it's the novel that matters to me; I don't care about utopia per se — it's literature that I love, and the novel in particular. So for a long time I experienced the utopian imperative that I somehow put on myself as a burden, because I felt the reason we read novels, indeed the reason we love all art, is that it gives us the real. I knew this was philosophically difficult territory, but my love of literature had to do with a sense of recognition — the moment of reading when you say, 'Yes that's right; that's the way the world is; this book has illuminated the real'. To hold a mirror up to nature, as Hamlet says to the players. That's what art seems to be for.



Instead of this recognition of what is, the utopian novel hopes to create a vision of the way things ought to be. It's a profound shift of focus, which has often created in me the feeling of working across the grain of my hopes. It has taken a lot of years of worrying about this to pull apart the notion of what realism might be — to understand that there is never a mirror — to see that the moment you start to write sentences, you're portraying something that ought to be. All novels are utopian in this respect: they propose that life means something. And meaning itself is a utopian wish. So, if the novel is about what life means, and if it concerns itself with individuals in their society, then whether that society is portrayed as better, worse or the same as ours is not the important point. All portrayed societies are stylized and hypothetical, a projection of the writer's wishes and ideology. Seen in that way, a utopian novel is only a tiny bit less realistic than the most naturalistic realist novel out there. Or put it in reverse: a realistic novel is a kind of utopia in disguise.



Or so I have tried to reassure myself. However, I must say that when I read the part of Fredric Jameson's Archaeologies of the Future (2005) that speaks of the impossibility of imagining utopia,[ii] I found the notion comforting. 'Ah ha!' I cried. 'I was trying to do something impossible!' It explained a lot.



Ultimately, however, I think this notion that we cannot imagine utopia is mistaken. We can imagine utopia; it's as easy as pie. The constraints are very slack, and our imaginations strong. We are quite capable of taking the present situation, and all history too, and ringing every possible physical and logical change in our ideas to make something new; and some of these newly invented systems could be declared viable, even though radically different from the current moment. It's not quite like imaging a new colour or a tenth dimension. It has more to do with justice, a very archaic primate concept, a concept that predates humanity itself. A better political order, even a truly good political order? No problem!



Of course there is a problem, and that's the getting from here to there. But let me come back to that later. First let's briefly contemplate some of the utopian descriptions and blueprints out there today. Take the work of Michael Albert and Robin Hahnel, for example, their 'Participatory Economics', which they also call 'parecon' in a neologism worse than any science-fiction writer's. Despite that tone deafness, it's an interesting system: a non-capitalist co-operative society in which people band together in small collectives, and then, instead of buying and selling things like a company, they fill out lots of requisition forms, somewhat in the style of a Chinese work unit or even a soviet. You fill out a form for what your group is going to make that year, you fill out a form for what your group is going to need that year to make what it will make, and so on. It resembles the situation Francis Spufford describes in his novel Red Plenty (2010), in which Soviet cyberneticists in the 1950s and '60s and '70s desperately attempt to invent computers powerful enough to run the Soviet economy in top-down, non-market fashion, before the system collapses — something they never managed. Now, with much more computing power than it would actually take to run such a non-market society, the idea is there to be contemplated again. Possibly such a society would feel a bit like Antarctica does now under the National Science Foundation. When I tried to imagine the continuous form-filling required, I confess I began to think, 'Well maybe money isn't so bad after all'. Possibly it would not be a very appealing utopia to live in, but we don't know; and in any case it's fully worked out, an alternative system that with modern supercomputers could very possibly work. Maybe the computers could even fill out the forms. An algorithmic artificial intelligence economy; it's worth considering.



The problem, however, with this and all other utopian alternatives, is that we can't imagine how we might get there. We can't imagine the bridge over the Great Trench, given the world we're in, and the massively entrenched power of the institutions that shape our lives — and the guns that are still there under the table. Indeed right on the table. The bridge itself is what we can't imagine — and maybe that's what Jameson means: but then it's not utopia we can't imagine, but history. Future history, the history yet to come. And that makes sense. History has been so implausible that there's no reason to suspect that we will ever be able to accurately prophesy or describe the history that will come next.



Therefore the main project of all science fiction — that of imagining future histories — is impossible. Imagining a positive history which gets us to a better state is perhaps even more impossible, but in any case very difficult, and now more than ever, now that it's clear we are entering an era of climate change and population overshoot which will impose radical physical stresses on both human and natural systems. This aspect of things now refuses to be kept out of the picture. Climate change is inevitable — we're already in it — and because we're caught in technological and cultural path dependency, we can't easily get back out of it. The example of the ocean liner that can't be turned around in less than ten miles is actually a very simple metaphor for the kinds of path dependency we are caught in; the infrastructures we build have lifetimes that last decades, sometimes centuries, and changing them necessarily takes time. We're probably not going to be able to cap the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere at less than 450 parts per million, and 560 parts per million is quite possible. At that point we will be living on a quite different planet, in a significantly damaged biosphere, with its life-support systems so harmed that human existence will be substantially threatened. It has become a case of utopia or catastrophe, and utopia has gone from being a somewhat minor literary problem to a necessary survival strategy.



Climate Change and the Necessity of the Utopian Project



So let's shift gears now, and consider utopia not as my literary problem but a shared social vision, with this extra burden laid on it: not just that the present is bad, but that the future will inevitably be worse in environmental terms. In fact it is worth discussing first this question: is it even possible at this point to avoid a catastrophic crash of human and natural systems? Or are we already in a kind of Wile E. Coyote moment, that moment when he's chasing the roadrunner and goes over the cliff, and looks at the audience, legs spinning, to only then discover he's out there in space, though gravity has not yet caught him? Are we indulging in a fantasy if we imagine that we could recover from this path we are on, if we were to do something?



Well, this is the kind of question that is worth asking the scientists who study these problems in a quantitative ecological sense, analysing it as a problem in global energy flows. The Socolow wedge diagrams out of Princeton suggest that yes, it is still possible for us to ratchet back from the edge of catastrophe by decarbonizing quite rapidly, which means applying every single method contemplated as soon and as fully as possible. We're about at the moment where we're leaving the cliff's edge, but that's better than running the numbers and finding you're already out in space.



There are well-articulated plans to get back to solid ground coming from many places, including Lester Brown and his Worldwatch Institute; their 'Plan B 3.0'[iii] is a fairly detailed plan of action. Indeed many government agencies and NGOs and institutions around the world are busy articulating these plans, and it's reassuring to think that we're not living in an utter fantasy of salvation. Practical plans have been proposed, and there really still are grounds for hope. But we have to act.



So the question of history returns. How do we act on what we know? The time has come when we have to solve this puzzle, because the future, from where we look at it now, is different than past futures. Before we just had to keep on trying to do our best, and we would be OK. Things seemed to slowly get better, for some people in some places anyway; in any case, we would keep trying things, and probably muddle through. This is no longer the case. Now the future is a kind of attenuating peninsula; as we move out on it, one side drops off to catastrophe; the other side, nowhere near as steep, moves down into various kinds of utopian futures. In other words, we have come to a moment of utopia or catastrophe; there is no middle ground, mediocrity will no longer succeed. So utopia is no longer a nice idea, but a survival necessity. This is a big change. We need to take action to start history on a path onto the side of the peninsula representing one kind of better future or another; the details of it don't matter, survival without catastrophe is what matters. In essence the seven billion people we have, and the nine to ten billion people we're likely to have, exist at the tip of an entire improvised complex of prostheses, which is our technology considered as one big system. We live out at the end of this towering complex, and it has to work successfully for us to survive; we are far past the natural carrying capacity of the planet in terms of our numbers. There is something amazing about the human capacity to walk this tightrope over the abyss without paralysing fear. We're good at ignoring dangers; but now, on the attenuating peninsula, on the crazy tower of prostheses — however you envision it, it is a real historical moment of great danger, and we need to push hard for utopia as survival, because failure now is simply unacceptable to our descendants, if we have any.



When thinking about this situation, this moment that simply has to change, those of us in the developed world, the privileged world, tend very naturally to ask: even if we do survive — to accomplish that — will it be bad for us? Will we be unhappy? Will we lose our privileges? As Jameson observes at one point in his long essay on utopia, people are anti-utopian not necessarily because they're political reactionaries, but because utopia might change them utterly.[iv] And such a profound change is a fearful thing, almost like reincarnation: if you come back as someone else you're not really you, so in fact you haven't come back at all. Utopia would be as pointless as heaven, if you were no longer you. And you are your habits, or so it usually feels. So what would happen to prosperous first-worlders in a utopia of survival, where everyone had an equal share of the Earth's 'natural capital'? For it's very commonly said, by quite mathematically sophisticated people, that if we tried to spread human and natural wealth equally over the entire seven billion of us, then everyone would be poor.



This too is an interesting question to run the numbers on. The Swiss, being prosperous and practical, have already started to run those numbers: one result of that inquiry is the 2000 Watt Society. Their notion is that if the total amount of energy available to humans right now were equally distributed among the entire seven billion of us, each person would have the use of about 2,000 watts.[v] It isn't a lot of energy, but it's not negligible either. Some Swiss have decided to run an experiment living on that much, and now there are people in Basel and Zurich trying it. The Swiss have some local advantages in this experiment: they live in a small country in Europe, a continent with an amazingly rich infrastructure, built partly with the spoils of their colonialist plundering of the rest of the world. You can therefore live on 2,000 watts in Europe and be quite comfortable. There's public transport, there are efficient small apartments, and so on. While this living experiment doesn't give all the answers, it is nonetheless suggestive. It looks like a huge amount of our energy burn right now is pure waste in terms of improving the quality of our lives, assuming that quality is conceived in terms of health, happiness and sustainability. Much that is burned is simply wasted. Right now the average Swiss citizen uses 5,000 watts, Europe as a whole averages 6,000 watts, America 12,000, China 1,500, India 1,000 and Bangladesh about 300. You get a sense of the range. And right now we live in an extremely dirty and inefficient technology, a kind of global Stalinist Cheylabinsk-56. What has been invented and designed already to replace this crude old tech would by itself make an immense improvement in energy efficiency and carbon burn, and more could come after that. The realizable goal is a carbon-neutral or even carbon-negative civilization. This swapping out of our energy technology is part of the necessary work of the twenty-first century, but it can also mean full employment, population stabilization, and eventually more watts for everybody equally.



This vision of an overarching social project makes it possible to say more to young people in the first world than, 'Sorry, we torched the world and now you have to live like saints and suffer'. That's not a great message to take to the young, and also it's not correct. We in the hyperconsuming first world are actually experiencing our extra carbon burn as more of a burden than an enhancement. It measurably degrades our physical and mental health; it cocoons us in crap — we're not fully there in the world. So we need to burn less carbon for ourselves as well as our home; it's not a matter of puritan renunciation, but rather becoming more clever and healthy. There is a comfortable way forward for all, in other words, if comfort is conceived of as a sense of achievement. There's a utopian spark in that thought, a spur to action.



I wrote a bit about this notion in the Science in the Capital Trilogy — that a decarbonized life might bring us more alive than we are now in our thick, dirty technoshell. I have sometimes called this utopian vision 'the Palaeolithic plus good dental care', hoping to suggest that since we're still genetically the same creatures we were 100,000 years ago, we could become again those same animals, living fulfilled and complex existences, without capitalist hyperconsumption — but with the best parts of modern technology conserved, to reduce suffering and thus increase happiness. What the human sciences are telling us now is that the closer you live to a Palaeolithic lifestyle — with good dental care — the better off you are. This is another utopian thought, coming straight out of the latest scientific findings: we are happiest when we are healthiest, and we are healthiest when we live a life that engages us in the physical world in a rather low-carbon-burn way. Walking around outdoors a lot, talking, the occasional dash or tumble, making a meal together, and so on. These low-carbon activities are often felt as the best part of the day, and that's no coincidence.



This description can be given to young people in particular as a possible life project worth doing. Young first-world secular citizens exist in a crisis of meaning: they know life needs to be about more than hyperconsumption, but what that 'more' might be is not clear. Meaning has never been priced and thus it is confusing. This existential crisis is very real; we need meaning to go forward, and yet capitalist society doesn't provide it. Now, at the beginning of the climate-change era, the start of the Anthropocene, that meaning is simply evident in the world — really it's forced on us by the situation — we have to decarbonize, which means changing everything, which means utopia, all for survival and for our descendants. This is a life project with a sense of accomplishment in it. With the idea that you could do things smarter and thereby have more fun, capitalism as it stands now begins to look not only morally obese, but also unskilful, even a little bit stupid.



The project, for all of us alive today, then breaks down into practical reformist strategies, like supporting social democracy and the various green political movements, while keeping more radical further goals in mind. And when people bring up geo-engineering, one can say, 'Yes, we're doing that already by accident, and really the smartest geo-engineering we have is swift de-carbonization'. One can promote a notion Jameson has mentioned once or twice, that of full employment. Full employment would get needed work done, and it is also a paradigm buster for capitalism, which needs unemployment to get 'wage pressure', meaning fear in more and more workers. So we have structural unemployment; yet just by asserting that everybody deserves a job as a human right, the system is challenged. Full employment also suggests the idea of a living wage, therefore poverty reduction, which is in itself a powerful climate-change technology. This needs to be insisted on, to make sure that climate change action doesn't somehow become a merely technological question, with the implication of some kind of silver bullet solution out there that will allow everything else to go on as it's going now. That's not going to happen. So changes that dismantle some of the fundamental injustice of capitalism while helping the climate situation are a stranded double good.



Always in this, supporting science is a necessary part of the project. It isn't the same as supporting capitalism, as some critics seem to assume. We need to de-strand those two, and recognize that science is our ability to increase our ability to understand the world, and then to manipulate it for our collective good.



While I support science as the best name for our species' life-support system, I also recognize that many scientists are like the character Beaker in The Muppets, geeking their way through life, their education deep but narrow, making them often naively unphilosophical, to the point where they think that what they do is straightforward and non-political. It's the humanities' job to disabuse them of that mistaken notion, by way of fully supportive lessons in history, philosophy, political theory, rhetoric and literature. The humanities need to educate the sciences rather than attack them; this education is not an option, if you want to be aware of how the human world works.



The humanities' stereotypical attack on scientists looks like this: take the Monopoly game figure of the Capitalist, with his top hat and round belly, and imagine that he pays Beaker from The Muppets to invent a gun, and then he seizes the gun and puts it to Beaker's head and says: 'Make me more guns and make me more toys'. Beaker's eyes are round as he complies. Those of us in the humanities, watching this scene and imagining we're somehow not already implicated, say, 'Damn it Beaker, I see you're part of the problem. You even invented the atom bomb!' And Beaker whispers to us, 'There's a gun to my head. And there's a gun on you, too. Can't you see it? Why are you blaming me?'



Yet we do; we go on blaming science for something that is not the scientists' problem but rather our general problem as citizens. Scientists need both our support and our ability to give them a political education, pointing out their own potentiality, their embodiment of a utopian effort that has continued for centuries now. The various components of the scientific method, and the structure of scientific institutions, are simultaneously both a method for discovering nature and a utopian political program. But who knows this; who admits this; who works with this knowledge?



I think it helps to think of this large social project, which we must now accept as ours, in terms of the concept of scaffolding. James Griesemer of Univeristy of California Davis shared with me his notion of the human generations' efforts as each building a scaffold for further work by descendants, who work at some kind of higher level. It has been about 400 generations since the end of the last Ice Age, so we can put ourselves in that long succession, and imagine that our generation is building a scaffold on the shoulders of the many generations that came before. A coral reef isn't a bad analogy either: you build your level; you can't leap to heaven — if you try you will crash back down, maybe even crash a few scaffolding levels below you. So here, facing climate change, proposing utopia as in effect the only solution that will work, we still need to think of the project as a transgenerational thing that will take generations to accomplish. We can't panic, nor can we give up just because we can't do it all in our lifetimes. We face an ecological emergency; but even here, all we can do is work on our present reality, and build what we can. I'm aware that I'm arguing conservatively here, but I'm arguing for reforms so numerous and systemic that ultimately they will add up to revolution — to post-capitalism, to utopia — but some generations down the line. We can't imagine the details of how this will happen, but the general outlines of the project are clear enough from here to make a start. And the necessity is clear. Hopefully, we'll get there as fast as we can, and meanwhile we can throw ourselves into our moment of the project.



Let me finish by quoting from Voltaire, the somewhat ominous but ultimately practical final sentence of Candide: 'Keep a garden'.


http://arena.org.au/remarks-on-utopia-in-the-age-of-climate-change/ (http://arena.org.au/remarks-on-utopia-in-the-age-of-climate-change/)

SpaceX releases dramatic pictures and video of failed Falcon 9 landing

Musk described the attempted rocket landing last weekend as "close, but no cigar" — but this assessment doesn't really do these images justice. The 14-story-tall Falcon 9 rocket is seen hitting the deck of the barge at a 45-degree angle as the four stabilizing fins lose hydraulic power. The engines then fire in an attempt to restore balance but it's too late and the rocket smashes into the deck of the ship. The four images tweeted by Musk can be seen below, who cheerfully sums up the situation: "Full RUD (rapid unscheduled disassembly) event. Ship is fine minor repairs. Exciting day!"

Musk has blamed the crash on the rocket's stabilizing fins running out of hydraulic fuel right before landing, but this is a relatively minor hurdle for SpaceX's engineers. Simply getting the rocket to the barge — a 300 feet by 100 feet target — was a big challenge and we can see that the company definitely managed that.

If the stabilizing fins work as intended in the future, then Musk might certainly achieve his historic goal: creating multi-use rockets that will make spaceflight dramatically cheaper. "Reusability is the critical breakthrough needed in rocketry to take things to the next level," Musk said in October during a talk at MIT. Despite the explosion, these image show just how close SpaceX is.


http://www.theverge.com/2015/1/16/7555633/falcon-9-barge-landing-images-released (http://www.theverge.com/2015/1/16/7555633/falcon-9-barge-landing-images-released)

... A ovo je za Miću, da mu ulepša dan  xremyb




10 strange and beautiful horse breeds
(http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/animals/stories/10-strange-and-beautiful-horse-breeds)


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Adaptation Watch:
(http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/tag/adaptation-watch/)



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Haikasoru is reporting that Sayuri Ueda's short science fiction story "The Street of Fruiting Bodies" is being adapted into a feature film by Viz Productions. The screenplay will be written by Sam Hamm, the screenwriter of 1989's Batman film.

Ueda's short story originally appeared in Phantasm Japan: Fantasies Light and Dark, From and About Japan, a themed anthology containing fiction about Japan. "The Street of Fruiting Bodies" depicts the sudden spread of a mysterious and lethal species of hallucinogenic mushrooms that offers its victims visions of deceased loved ones. The infection hints at the possibility of an afterlife, or at least a new kind of existence that's beyond human comprehension.

We'll see if this "killer virus" story proves to be as enjoyable on film as it sounds. For its part, Viz has already had some success with the Tom Cruise/Emily Blunt film Edge of Tomorrow, which was based on the Viz Media book All You Need Is Kill by Hiroshi Sakurazaka.



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The Hollywood Reporter is reporting that Emily St. John Mandel's New York Times best-seller, and mainstreamy post-apocalyptic novel, Station Eleven has been optioned for TV and film rights by Producer Scott Steindorff in a six-figure deal. Steindorff and Dylan Russell will produce.

Station Eleven is aboout a band of musicians and actors who travel the post-apocalyptic landscape of the Great Lakes region twenty years after a devastating virus has killed off 99% of the world's population. The focus of the non-linear narrative is around a small group of characters, to the point where the book reads more like an interesting character study. (See my review. For once, I seem to be ahead of the adaptation curve!)

Casting has not yet started.




(https://www.znaksagite.com/diskusije/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.sfsignal.com%2Fmt-static%2Fimages%2FBrokenMonsters-SA-300.jpg&hash=8194ff6fc4ef777760a2c6010ed11e50fa3ff2a2)
Deadline is reporting the production company Additional Dialogue has acquired the rights to develop Lauren Beukes' supernatural suspense novel Broken Monsters as a television drama series. Scott Aversano and Tom Gormican will serve as executive producers. Not much more is known at this point about the production.

The story of Broken Monsters is about a Detroit detective named Gabriella Versado who investigates a series of bizarre murders. It turns out a demented criminal mastermind is experimenting with human taxidermy...or perhaps there is some supernatural element involved.

Here's the book description:


Detective Gabriella Versado has seen a lot of bodies. But this one is unique even by Detroit's standards: half boy, half deer, somehow fused together. As stranger and more disturbing bodies are discovered, how can the city hold on to a reality that is already tearing at its seams?

If you're Detective Versado's geeky teenage daughter, Layla, you commence a dangerous flirtation with a potential predator online. If you're desperate freelance journalist Jonno, you do whatever it takes to get the exclusive on a horrific story. If you're Thomas Keen, known on the street as TK, you'll do what you can to keep your homeless family safe–and find the monster who is possessed by the dream of violently remaking the world.

If Lauren Beukes's internationally bestselling The Shining Girls was a time-jumping thrill ride through the past, her Broken Monsters is a genre-redefining thriller about broken cities, broken dreams, and broken people trying to put themselves back together again.

Hvala, hvala.


BTW, Akhal-teke konji su najlepši konji na svetu. Lepši čak i od mojih engleskih punokrvnih grla.


Pozdrav
M.

da, prelepi su to konji, ali ujedno su mi i nekako porcelanski krhki u toj lepoti... ne znam zašto, ali meni srce zaigra kad je at skroz robustan, ko ovo ciganče sa moje fotke...  :lol:

Krv nije voda... Evo ti ga hrvatski posavac... Stamen...  :)


(https://www.znaksagite.com/diskusije/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.veterina.info%2Fimages%2Fstories%2Fkonji%2Frase_konja%2Fhrvatski-posavac.jpg&hash=763f87c051d0f5826e97de0a7856c571f6edfb5e)

Akhal-teke je lepši.  :)  Vilinski lep.

The Hugo Wars: How Sci-fi's Most Prestigious Awards Became a Political Battleground
(http://www.breitbart.com/london/2015/02/05/the-hugo-wars-how-sci-fis-most-prestigious-awards-became-a-political-battleground/)


Few walks of life are today immune to the spectre of political intolerance. At universities, speaker disinvitations and censorship campaigns are at an all-time high. In technology, there are purges of chief executives with the wrong political views and executives who make the wrong sort of joke. In the world of video games, petitions are launched against "offensive" titles, and progressive journalists wage smear campaigns against conservative developers.

It may not, therefore, surprise you to learn that similar occurrences are taking place in the science-fiction and fantasy (SFF) community, too. Previously a world renowned for the breadth of its perspectives, SFF increasingly bears the familiar hallmarks of an ideological battleground.

The story begins, as ever, with a small group of social justice-minded community elites who sought to establish themselves as the arbiters of social mores. This group would decide who deserved a presence in SFF and who deserved to be ostracised.

Their victims are littered across the SFF community. In 2013, the Bulletin of the Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA) were targeted by a shirtstorm-like cyber-mob of digital puritans after one of their cover editions was deemed to be "too sexual." The controversy did not die down until two of its most respected writers, Mike Resnick and Barry Malzburg, were dismissed from the publication. This occurred despite a vigorous counter-campaign by liberal members of the sci-fi community, including twelve Nebula award winners and three former presidents of the SFWA.

Unfortunately, the current crop of elite figures in the SFF community have become either apologists or out-and-out cheerleaders for intolerance and censorship. Redshirts author John Scalzi, a close friend of  anti-anonymity crusader Wil Wheaton – was head of the SFWA at the time of the controversy and quickly caved in to activist pressure. This was unsurprising, given that he shared many of their identitarian views.

But Scalzi is, if anything, merely the moderate ally of a far more radical group of community elites. He hasn't gone nearly as far as former SFWA Vice President Mary Kowal, who handles political disagreement by telling her opponents to "shut the fuck up" and quit the SFWA. Or former Hugo nominee Nora Jemisin, who says that political tolerance "disturbs" her. Or, indeed, the prolific fantasy author Jim C. Hines, who believes that people who satirize religion and political ideologies (a very particular religion, and a very particular ideology, of course) should be thrown out of mainstream SFF magazines.

Most of these people are small fry compared to the true big beasts of the SFF world, like Neil Gaiman, George R.R. Martin, or J.K. Rowling. But through a mix of obsessive politicking in institutions like the SFWA and the familiar whipping up of social-justice outrage mobs online, they have been able to exert disproportionate influence.

Today, no one is safe. Right-wingers like Theodore Beale face ostracization over accusations of racism (Beale is himself Native American), while even progressives or independent authors like Bryan Thomas Schmidt are denounced as "cultural appropriators"; in Schmidt's case, because he prepared an anthology of nonwestern sci-fi stories. Peak absurdity was achieved in 2014 when Jonathan Ross was forced to cancel his appearance at the Hugo Awards after the SJWs of SFF whipped themselves into a panic-fuelled rage over fears that Ross might – might! – make a fat joke. Even the New Statesman, which sometimes reads like an extension of Tumblr, came out and condemned the "self-appointed gatekeepers" of SFF.

But while the examples of manufactured grievance may be absurd, few members of the SFF community are laughing. New York Times bestselling author Larry Correia told us that SFF is currently in the grip of a "systematic campaign to slander anybody who doesn't toe their line," which is breeding a culture of fear and self-censorship. "Most authors aren't making that much money, so they are terrified of being slandered and losing business," he says. The only exceptions are a "handful of people like me who are either big enough not to give a crap, or too obstinate to shut up."

After years on the back foot, that obstinate handful are preparing to fight back.

Sad Puppies

To the outside world, the Hugo Awards are known as the most prestigious honor that a sci-fi or fantasy creator can achieve. However, inside the community they are widely seen as a popularity contest dominated by cliques and super-fandoms. This can be seen most clearly in the dominance of Doctor Who in the TV award categories. The show's enormous fanbase has garnered 26 Hugo nominations in the last nine years. Episodes from the show triumphed in every year between 2006 and 2012, save one.

The Hugos have an advantage, though: they are difficult for a single group to dominate if others rise to challenge them. All one has to do to vote in the awards is pay a small membership fee to the World Science Fiction Convention. For the few who are brave enough to defend artistic freedom openly, the Hugos are a good place to make a stand.

That is precisely what is now happening. Ahead of 2013's Hugo Awards, Larry Correia began making public blog posts about his nominations, inviting his readers to discuss and agree on a shared list of Hugo nominations, and vote collectively. The idea was to draw attention to authors and creators who were suffering from an undeserved lack of attention due to the political climate in sci-fi. The "Sad Puppies" slate was born.

(The original idea was to call it the "Sad Puppies Think of the Children Campaign" – a dig at those who take their social crusades too seriously.)

What began as a discussion among bloggers has turned into an annual event. Last year's Sad Puppies slate was extraordinarily successful, with seven out of Correia's twelve nominations making it to the final stage of the Hugos. Among the successful nominations was The Last Witchking, a novelette by Theodore Beale, also known as Vox Day – a writer whose radical right-wing views had put him at the top of the sci-fi SJWs' hit list. The fact that an author like Beale could receive a Hugo nomination was proof that SJW domination of sci-fi was not as complete as the elites would have liked.

In addition to humiliating the activists, the slate also triggered significant debate. Even John Scalzi, the privilege-checking SFWA President discussed above, was forced to admit that works of science fiction and fantasy ought to be judged on their quality, not on the politics of their authors. This greatly upset some of Scalzi's more radical supporters, who openly called for exclusion on the basis of political belief. The debate also spread beyond sci-fi to the pages of The Huffington Post and USA Today.

Stirring up debate was, of course, precisely the point of Sad Puppies. As well as ensuring that quality works of fiction made it past the cliques at places like SFWA and Tor.com to be considered by the fans themselves, the Sad Puppies slate also forced radicals to show their true colours. Those who supported political ostracism were outed as a tiny but vocal minority. As Correia explained on his blog, the slate managed to expose the "thought police" of the community before votes had even been cast.

This year, the Sad Puppies slate returns once more, championed by Hugo and Nebula-nominee Brad R. Torgerson. Although run by conservative authors, it includes many authors and creators who are left-wing, liberal, or non-politically aligned. In this way, the slate hopes to protect what radical activists want to eliminate: diversity of opinion and political tolerance.

The battle continues

The debate generated by the Sad Puppies slate could not have come at a timelier moment. Although the radicals are in the minority, they have proven as disruptive to sci-fi as they have been to universities, secularism, and video gaming.

Character assassinations, doxing, and abuse campaigns from radical activists happen all the time, with little to no condemnation from the self-proclaimed opponents of "online harassment." Activists urge conference-goers to avoid "unsafe" authors like Correia, in an echo of the excuses used by 'Stepford Students' to bar speakers from campus on the grounds of preserving "safe spaces"–an argument that has come under increasing fire from liberals and conservatives alike.

(The world of sci-fi even has its very own Shanley Kane. Last autumn's controversy du jour was the outing of a notorious online abuser known as "Requires Hate," a social justice activist who relentlessly abused anyone who got on her wrong side – regardless of their politics.)

Indeed, the reaction to the Sad Puppies slate proved that anyone can be a target in the new environment. When the slate was chosen, several authors came under attack simply for being recommended on it. In other words, the radical activists of sci-fi are no longer a threat just to right-wingers.

Even if social-justice radicals were only a threat to right-wingers, that would still be a problem in need of a solution. The breadth of perspectives accommodated by sci-fi has historically been one of its greatest strengths, allowing it to reach ever-wider audiences throughout the decades. The great dystopian writers of the early-to-mid twentieth-century included socialists like George Orwell, liberals like Aldous Huxley, and of course the objectivist libertarian Ayn Rand.

In the postwar period, conservatives like Robert Heinlein and liberals like Isaac Asimov were both among the leading figures of science fiction. Political tolerance, an idea loathed by radical activists, has ever been the norm in the community, and it has thrived because of it.




Wherever they emerge, social-justice warriors claim to be champions of diversity. But they always reveal themselves to be relentlessly hostile to it: they applaud people of different genders, races, and cultures just so long as those people all think the same way. Theirs is a diversity of the trivial; a diversity of skin-deep, ephemeral affiliations.

The diversity that writers like Correia and Torgerson have set out to protect is different. It is a diversity of perspectives, of creative styles, and, yes, of politics. It is the kind of diversity that authoritarians hate, but it is the only kind of diversity that matters.

Why Original Science Fiction is Dead

(Anthony Stokes on the death of original science fiction...)


Jupiter Ascending has arrived and is pretty much been the bust we all thought it would be. Needless to say I doubt it will even come close to breaking even, and I'm not shedding a single tear for the Wachowski siblings who should have learned better after their past six or so movies. It seems now like original science fiction is a graveyard where no movies perform as well as expected, and I believe I know the reason why:

Because most of the recent releases have sucked, or they aren't even original to begin with. Save for Edge of Tomorrow and Gravity, most of the original science fiction releases over the past few years have been pretty bad, or just macramés of other science fiction movies.

I point to my first example – Pacific Rim. I don't care what anybody says – this movie is awful. It's got terrible pacing, horrible dialogue, the characters are dull, and it somehow turned Charlie Hunnam, the second-best television actor after Bryan Cranston, into a charisma-less dud. It only succeeds in giving fanboys giant robots fighting aliens, something they've already seen.  And the worst part is it was poorly filmed action of  robots fighting aliens.  Instead of watching Pacific Rim watch Edge of Tomorrow, which actually has a story , characters, plot, etc.

Then we have the other example of what I like to call "psuedo" science fiction; movies that are good and technically original, like Inception and The Matrix, but redundant as they're almost the same movie. The movie that came closest to being true science fiction, while also having somewhat of an identity, was Prometheus, but that also dropped the ball.

My favorite science fiction movies of the last couple years are The World's End and Moon, two modest films that use their sci-fi to tell human stories – as opposed to The Wachowskis and Zack Snyder (once again redundant since they're virtually the same filmmakers), who use science fiction to showcase their special effects.


Nothing would make me happier than for these genre directors to make something small and intimate built around science fiction. All the movies we grew up watching used to tell real human stories, (i.e. Back to the Future and The Terminator), as opposed to just throwing things onto the screen, with budgets that somehow keep getting bigger and bigger.

Seriously, how many more times is Warner Bros. going to keep giving the Wachowskis money? Until that time is over, I fear that the sci-fi genre will continue to take a beating, whilst squeezing in a gem every one in a while between the indulgence and the rehash.

What's your take on the state of original sci-fi? Let us know your thoughts...



------
Anthony Stokes is a blogger and independent filmmaker.
http://www.flickeringmyth.com/2015/02/why-original-science-fiction-is-dead.html (http://www.flickeringmyth.com/2015/02/why-original-science-fiction-is-dead.html)

Best Science Fiction (and Sci Fi) films (and movies) of 2014.

Well, there has been the usual debate as to our informal consideration for better or worse and what follows is a very unscientific selection. We have as customary a varied mix (sci fi, SF, mundane SF, fantasy, juvenile SF and horror) for you, so there should be something in our, best of science fiction films 2014, selection for everyone seeking a DVD for the weekend. The below listing is in alphabetical order:-

           Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. A growing nation of genetically evolved apes led by Caesar is threatened by a band of human survivors of the devastating virus unleashed a decade earlier. They reach a fragile peace, but it proves short-lived, as both sides are brought to the brink of a war that will determine who will emerge as Earth's dominant species... This second in the second re-boot of the 'Planet of the Apes' franchise may well appeal to Hugo Award nominators and if it is not on this year's short-list then you can be your bottom dollar that it will be on the long list.  Trailer here.
           Debug A Canadian SF horror offering.  Six young computer hackers sent to work on a derelict space freighter, are forced to match wits with a vengeful artificial intelligence that would kill to be human... This is a worthy film that aspires to be more than its low budget and it almost makes it, which in turn means that you may want to check it out.  Trailer here.
           The Giver. In a seemingly perfect community, without war, pain, suffering, differences or choice, a young boy is chosen to learn from an elderly man about the true pain and pleasure of the 'real' world.  The cast includes Jeff Bridges and Meryl Streep and is based on Lois Lowry's 1993, juvenile SF novel, so it should appeal to a The Hunger Games and Maze Runner liking teen audience.  Trailer here.
           The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies will be a firm favourite with fantasy fans and indeed did very well at the box office (see below film sub-section) and so is a likely contender for a Hugo Award.  Trailer here.
           I Origins. A molecular biologist and his laboratory partner uncover evidence that may fundamentally change society as we know it.   Trailer here.
           Lucy. A woman, accidentally caught in a dark deal is mentally altered, turning the tables on her captors and transforms into a merciless warrior evolved beyond human logic... Cast includes Scarlett Johansson, Morgan Freeman and Min-sik Choi.  The DVD will be out this season (see below).  This is our action pic of the year.  Trailer here.
           The Perfect 46. A geneticist creates a website that pairs an individual with their ideal genetic partner for children. This is firmly rooted in genuine science and so was arguably the best mundane SF fiction film of last year!  Trailer here.
           Predestination. The life of a time-travelling Temporal Agent. On his final assignment, he must pursue the one criminal that has eluded him throughout time. This technically came out last year (2014) and was shown at a number of film fests. However lucky for us it has a general release early this year both here (Great Britain) and N. America.  Trailer here.
           The Quiet Hour. An offering from the British Isles.  Humans are few and far between since Earth was invaded by unseen extraterrestrial machines that harvest the planet's natural resources and relentlessly kill its inhabitants. In a remote part of the countryside, where starved humans have become as dangerous as the alien machines hovering in the sky, a feisty 19 year old girl, Sarah Connolly, sets out on a desperate attempt to fight back a group of bandits and defend her parents' farm, their remaining livestock, and the solar panels that keep them safe from extraterrestrials. If she doesn't succeed, she will lose her only source of food and shelter; but if she resists, she and her helpless blind sibling will be killed. And if the mysterious intruder dressed like a soldier who claims he can help them turns out to be a liar, then the enemy may already be in the house. 
           These Final Hours. It is the end of the world in one hemisphere and the catastrophe is spreading to the rest of the planet. A self-obsessed young man makes his way to the party-to-end-all-parties on the last day on Earth but ends up saving the life of a little girl searching for her father... This did well on the Fantastic Fimls Festivals circuit in the latter half of 2013 and early in 2014. It has had a general theatre release in Australia in 2014, but has not had much profile elsewhere.  Trailer here.
           Time Lapse. Three friends discover their neighbour's mysterious machine that takes pictures 24hrs into the future and conspire to use it for personal gain, until disturbing and dangerous images begin to develop...  This is an indie film and a directorial debut for Bradley King. As here he is unencumbered by big Hollywood studio producers' constraints, we get a genuine reflection of this director's abilities: He is one to watch.  This was possibly the best time travel film of the year.  Trailer here.
           Under the Skin. A female drives a van through the roads and streets of Scotland seducing lonely men but is she what she seems to be..?  This teaser does not do this 'contact' film justice. It was extremely well received on the Fantastic Film Fest circuit in 2013 but only got a general release last year (2014). It is a British-US-Swiss SF art-house offering with a basic premise (only) based on Michel Faber's novel.  Trailer here.
           Young Ones. Post-apocalyptic film set a century or so in the future. Climate change has shifted the vegetation belts and so some formerly lush areas have become arid facing chronic water shortages making life tough for the locals...  Trailer here.
           See also Congress below in our video clip tips section. It was inspired by a Stanislaw Lem story.
           And finally, we did not include Snowpiercer in the above as we previously included it in our other worthies of the 2013/4 year as the DVD had already been out back then. But it is a notable film.


http://www.concatenation.org/news/news1~15.html#majornews (http://www.concatenation.org/news/news1~15.html#majornews)

Adaptation Watch: Paramount Pictures Wants to Film Alfred Bester's THE STARS MY DESTINATION

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Good news for classic science fiction fans: Paramount Pictures is currently in talks to acquire feature film rights for the Alfred Bester's novel The Stars My Destination.

The Stars My Destination is a science fiction classic that was originally serialized in the pages of Galaxy Magazine in late 1956 under the title "Tiger! Tiger!" — a reference to both the tattoo worn my its main protagonist, Gully Foyle, and the William Blake poem "The Tyger", the first stanza of which prefaces the book.

The story of The Stars My Destination follows Gulliver "Gully Foyle on his quest for revenge against the people who left him stranded and alone on a derelict spaceship. In that regard, the story can be seen as a futuristic retelling of The Count of Monte Cristo, although Bester said the premise was inspired by a National Geographic article he read about a shipwrecked man ignored by passing ships for fear of it being a trap. In his story, Bester fleshes out an intriguing futuristic society where "jaunting", a means of personal teleportation via mental control, is possible. That has some interesting implications of life in such a society — impacts which Bester does a great job depicting.

It's obviously too early to see any stars attached to the project, but that doesn't make the news any less exciting for fans of the book, like myself.

[hat-tip Paul Di Filippo]

I još jedna najava za adaptaciju oldiz-gudiz sf-a:


Good news for Heinlein fans!

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The Hollywood Reporter says Bryan Singer will be adapting Robert A. Heinlein's Classic SF book The Moon is a Harsh Mistress for Twentieth Century Fox. The project appears to not be relying on name recognition. It's being called Uprising, obviously to reflect the plot of the book, which is about a lunar colony that revolts against the Earth. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress won the Hugo Award for best science fiction novel in 1967 and was nominated for the 1966 Nebula award.

This is not the first adaptation of The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. In fact, it's happened twice before — once by Dreamworks and once by Phoenix Pictures — but neither prject was completed and the rights expired, reverting them back to the Heinlein estate. If completed, this will add to the list of Heinlein stories that have been adapted to other media...a list that includes the 1953 film Project Moonbase, the 1994 TV mini-series Red Planet, the 1994 film The Puppet Masters, and the 1997 film Starship Troopers.

Zvezdana četvorka blog se vrlo lepo oprostio od Nimoja:

Live long and prosper, everyone. Live long and prosper.
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http://www.stellarfour.com/2015/02/leonard-nimoys-best-and-funniest.html (http://www.stellarfour.com/2015/02/leonard-nimoys-best-and-funniest.html)

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As the bleak winter pummels us with ice and illness, John E. O. Stevens, Fred Kiesche and Jeff Patterson muster the strength and lucidity to write February off as a loss and trudge forward in search of the mythical Springtime.

First, they discuss the death of Leonard Nimoy, and his impact on SF and Fandom.

Then they turn to the subject of Thomas M. Disch, whose works broke genre conventions on an almost industrial scale. The gentlemen recall their introductions to the author's work (including fiction, non-fiction, and poetry), and his legacy in SF.

There follows a litany of culture consumed, and some talk about whooshing doors, online shrieking, and myopic definitions of "fan."

Total run time: 1 hour 42 minutes.


Download Epsiode #19 of The Three Hoarsemen!  (http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2015/03/three-hoarsemen-episode-19-leonard-nimoy-thomas-m-disch/)

Listen to Leonard Nimoy Reading Ray Bradbury


Here's Leonard Nimoy reading four short fiction stories by Ray Bradbury:
◾"There Will Come Soft Rains"
◾"Usher II" from "The Martian Chronicles"
◾"The Veldt"
◾"Marionettes Inc."

These were recorded back in an age when mankind was restricted to audio recorded on pressed pieces of grooved plastic called "record albums". (Look it up, kids!) The first two recording appeared on the album The Martian Chronicles. The other two appeared on The Illustrated Man.


Leonard Nimoy reads Ray Bradbury's "There Will Come Soft Rains" from "The Martian Chronicles" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LzhlU8rXgHc#)

 :mrgreen: "Fuck You, Legolas" by Daniel Polansky



I have a terrible secret. Chthonic and furtive, one I have kept hidden lo these long last years, one which I have not dared to whisper even alone and on a moonless night. One which I have only through thousands of hours of sessions with mental health professionals have I finally become capable of admitting to the world.

My name is Daniel Polansky, and I hate elves.

Hate them. Can't stand them. Dislike them all around—be they wild, high, frost, dark, fire or sky, if they've go pointy ears and a shitty attitude, I don't like them. Never liked them, in fact. Back when I was prone to walking around with sheets of paper elaborately detailing the characteristics of imaginary heroes, said heroes were never elves. They were half-Orc Paladins, they were undead cowboys, on one occasion they were a sort of humanoid dragon with guns for hands, but they were never, ever elves.

The kid at the bar next to you who sniffs unattractively when he discovers the chicken is not free range is an elf. An elf stole my high-school girlfriend just before prom, wearing a bomber jacket and shades even though it was evening. Elves always have perfect hair, even if they've just been killing something with a knife, which they inevitably do in some dance-like fashion which bares no resemblance to violence as it actually takes place. Elves think they're so fucking special, living for a thousand years, and communing with nature, and feeling superior. At best, they're all cheap superheroics, faster and stronger and tougher than everyone else. At worst they're bastions of the most exhausting sort of pseudo-philosophical gibberish, environmental studies majors with long bows, and behind every oration about the importance of preserving the forest is visible the smug, smirking, self-satisfied face of the author. (See also: Avatar)


I dislike elves so much, in fact, that I went ahead and wrote a book about them.

How did that happen, exactly? Really, I'm not 100% sure. Every book I've ever written remains kind of a mystery to me, you just wake up in the morning and hash around on your computer and then go to a coffee shop and hash around a bit more and then at some point your editor is sending you ARC copies of your book and you go, oh, shit, this hasn't been an elaborate hallucination at all, people are actually planning on reading this. And then you break out into a cold sweat and start looking frantically around for a drink.

Where were we? Elves, right. Going back to Tolkien, interspecies harmony has been used as a a rather too-obvious metaphor for interracial harmony—if Legolas and Gimli can set aside their differences, the elves and dwarfs and the men of the West gathering together to stand proud against the Eye of Sauron, then surely the least you can do is not walk across the street and smack a dude for being of a different phenotype. Every proper party includes a half dozen different-sized hominids, and maybe some sort of lizard man, and can't we all just get along?

A falsehood is no more true for its sweet sound. Here in the west we generally manage to stumble through the day without engaging in race war, but this is the product of a happy historical bubble in which we live, one which is dissimilar to the vast sweep of human history, and indeed of much of the world even as it currently exists. In Serbia they tell you things about Albanians which would make you very much not want to visit Albania, and in Albania they say very similar things of the Serbs. A man in Namibia once told me that his black worker needed to be smacked once every three months or so, just to keep him in line. At a cocktail party in Taipei, a pretty pre-school teacher pulled at my Jewfro, then smiled and without obvious evidence of ill-will informed me that my thick coiffure was evidence of my race's close kinship with the great apes. Speaking historically, what would seem to be very minor racial variations (Medes to Persian, Croat to Bosnian, Protestant Irish to Catholic) have been the source of the most terrible and savage violence.

And, of course, the distinctions between races, however neatly they are observed, are vastly minor compared to what would occur between two opposing species. Mankind, whatever his skin color or kink of hair,  is obviously and objectively, not so very different at all. We look essentially the same, we're roughly similar in ability, we can breed successfully, we live a comparable length of time, we hold lovers tight to our breasts and laugh at the children we produce. How much more severe, how much crueler, would be our behavior if these divisions were not troughs but chasms? If you lived fifty times longer than the person next to you, and you were smarter than they were, and physically tougher, the heir of an objectively superior civilization—would you suppose that person your brother? Would you suppose that person your equal? If your house cat could speak, would you allow it full political agency?

No, the truth is, Elves are of no interest to me. People, by contrast, I find endlessly fascinating, if often contemptible and almost inevitably depressing. Those Above is not a book about Elves—not really. It's a book about people. What happens to our cherished notions of equality, of justice and morality,  in a world in which we are not the dominant species? How would the existence of other intelligent life, by the standards of high fantasy a relatively modest supposition, effect essentially anthropocentric notion of morality?

Those Above is out now—if you like elves, there are elves in it (more or less). And if you don't like elves, well—bad things happen to them. Along with everyone else, for that matter.

http://www.pornokitsch.com/2015/03/fuck-you-legolas-by-daniel-polansky.html#more (http://www.pornokitsch.com/2015/03/fuck-you-legolas-by-daniel-polansky.html#more)

Quote from: PTY on 09-03-2015, 08:10:02
Speaking historically, what would seem to be very minor racial variations (Medes to Persian, Croat to Bosnian, Protestant Irish to Catholic) have been the source of the most terrible and savage violence.

I eto kako nešto što je počelo kao relativno zanimljiva premisa za pristup vilenjacima (iako ni blizu toliko originalna koliko ovaj lik veruje, štaviše, originalni folklorni pristup vilenjacima upravo je taj strah i zaziranje od potpune i najčešće zlonamerne a nadmoćne različitosti) stigne do ove rečenice i razbije se u tisuću komada  :cry: Mislim, evo, otpisaću "rasne razlike između Hrvata i Bosanaca" na totalnu neupućenost, ali rasne varijacije između protestanata i katolika? Protestanata i katolika? Bože, daj mi snage  :cry:

Erm... ja sam to razumela ne kao 'rasne razlike' nego 'varijacije unutar rase'...

Hoću da kažem, razumela sam to kao ideju koju je Hajnlajn onako eugenički ponudio u Metuzalemovoj deci: kad se unutar rasno čiste populacije pravi neka vrst genetskog elitizma, kod Hajnlajna baziranog na dugovečnosti.

Čak i ako tako shvatimo nema smisla, nisu u pitanju unutar-rasne varijacije nego verske razlike, majku mu :(  Sve što on navodi svodi se na "rasu", evo sad sam opet najpažljivije pročitala ta dva pasusa i sve što pominje jeste "rat rasa", "različiti fenotipi", "srodnost rase x sa majmunima"...
Ne da ja sad mislim kako verska i etnička netolerancija predstavljaju nešto bolje ili manje ukorenjeno od klot rasizma :-P samo da ih treba razlikovati i ne podvoditi pod isti termin.

I ta diferencijacija bi u nekom potencijalnom subverzivnom fenteziju mogla da bude vrlo zanimljiva za odnose među likovima, npr. vilenjaci i ljudi se uzajamno kolju, ali i vilenjaci se međusobno trvu jer se jedni klanjaju htonskim a drugi solarnim božanstvima... oh wait, pa već je i Tolkin imao takve izlete :lol:




Sad vidim i tvoj drugi post: taj eugenički pristup koji pominješ svakako bi bio suptilna varijacija rasizma, sproveden u praksi, samo - eto - Irci protestanti i Irci katolici ne razlikuju se ni po čemu, genetski gledano, i nikakvih rasnih varijacija između njih nema. Samo verske razlike (sasvim dovoljne za klanje, jelte).

sukobi između rasa nisu nastali zbog razlike u rasama već zbog potrebe čoveka da ima potlačene i manje vredne u vidokrugu da bi se osećao boljim i uspešnijim.
Ima jedan ilustrativan primer iz Rusije, u vreme Staljina, milioni ljudi je raseljeno, proterano u Sibir i na razne druge lokacije gde su radili kao jeftina ili besplatna radna snaga, dakle robovi. Vrlo malo tih grupacija su bili "drugi", Čečeni i tako neki bušmani, jer Staljin nije imao mnogo "drugih"... ali je njemu trebao određeni milion robova i on ih je izmislio. OK, bilo je tamo revolucionara i revolucionarnih krajeva, ali da nije bilo, da su svi bili besprekorni, onda bi lovili ljude po ulici: "Pljunuo si na trotoar, hajde u Sibir". On nije imao crtu ispod koje se išlo u Sibir, nego je njemu trebalo toliko i toliko miliona robova i on je zahvatio odozdo pa dokle je stigao.
Potpuno isto funkcioniše sa rasama, pa se ne treba iznenaditi da vremenom počne da se priča o Bosancima kao nižoj rasi i katolicima u odnosu na protestante, jer da smo kojim slučajem svi identične boje kože, kose i očiju, onda bi ljudi potrebu za izrugivanjem nad nekome izražavali na drugi način: "svi niži od 1,60" ili svi sa nosem većim od 3cm, otkud znam šta sve ne, jednostavno nije postojanje rasa uzrok rasizma, već ljudska potreba da se izbori za bolji status u okruženju, a posedovanje robova, jeftine radne snage, potlačenih ili kako god je najelegantniji i evolutivno najukorenjeniji način.

Quote from: Jevtropijevićka on 09-03-2015, 11:43:41


Sad vidim i tvoj drugi post: taj eugenički pristup koji pominješ svakako bi bio suptilna varijacija rasizma, sproveden u praksi, samo - eto - Irci protestanti i Irci katolici ne razlikuju se ni po čemu, genetski gledano, i nikakvih rasnih varijacija između njih nema. Samo verske razlike (sasvim dovoljne za klanje, jelte).

Pa da, nemaju rasnu osnovu u početku, ali caka je u tome što eugenički pristup može (u teoriji, naravno) eventualno da napravi merljivu genetsku osnovu različitosti, koja se nakon toga uzima kao baza za malko suptilnije podele. Mislim, ne govorim o ovim primerima koje pominješ, nego prosto teoretski - cilj eugenike i jeste bio da proizvede 'mehanizam parenja' ne sasvim različit od mehanizma kojim se danas nadgledaju pedigrei kod životinja. U Hajnlajnovoj ideji, genetička varijacija koja dozvoljava ljudima da žive dva ili tri puta duže od ostatka populacije jeste dovoljna da se tu pravi i rasna razlika, iako ni po kom rasnom osnovu.

Quote from: Jevtropijevićka on 09-03-2015, 11:43:41

Čak i ako tako shvatimo nema smisla, nisu u pitanju unutar-rasne varijacije nego verske razlike, majku mu :( 

:lol: pa da, to i hoće da kaže, da proizvodimo silnu agresiju na bazi razlika čak i tamo gde ih zapravo i nema, pa je otud i haj-fentezi model ophođenja sa istinski drugačijom vrstom jednostavno... nedovoljno fantastičan.  :mrgreen:

Quote from: Boban on 09-03-2015, 11:53:13
sukobi između rasa nisu nastali zbog razlike u rasama već zbog potrebe čoveka da ima potlačene i manje vredne u vidokrugu da bi se osećao boljim i uspešnijim.
Ima jedan ilustrativan primer iz Rusije, u vreme Staljina, milioni ljudi je raseljeno, proterano u Sibir i na razne druge lokacije gde su radili kao jeftina ili besplatna radna snaga, dakle robovi. Vrlo malo tih grupacija su bili "drugi", Čečeni i tako neki bušmani, jer Staljin nije imao mnogo "drugih"... ali je njemu trebao određeni milion robova i on ih je izmislio. OK, bilo je tamo revolucionara i revolucionarnih krajeva, ali da nije bilo, da su svi bili besprekorni, onda bi lovili ljude po ulici: "Pljunuo si na trotoar, hajde u Sibir". On nije imao crtu ispod koje se išlo u Sibir, nego je njemu trebalo toliko i toliko miliona robova i on je zahvatio odozdo pa dokle je stigao.
Potpuno isto funkcioniše sa rasama, pa se ne treba iznenaditi da vremenom počne da se priča o Bosancima kao nižoj rasi i katolicima u odnosu na protestante, jer da smo kojim slučajem svi identične boje kože, kose i očiju, onda bi ljudi potrebu za izrugivanjem nad nekome izražavali na drugi način: "svi niži od 1,60" ili svi sa nosem većim od 3cm, otkud znam šta sve ne, jednostavno nije postojanje rasa uzrok rasizma, već ljudska potreba da se izbori za bolji status u okruženju, a posedovanje robova, jeftine radne snage, potlačenih ili kako god je najelegantniji i evolutivno najukorenjeniji način.

Pa, to kad pričaš o diktaturama i ostalim nasiljima na državnom nivou... ali kad se govori o podelama na nivou pojedinaca u istom rasno/nacionalno/društveno a uglavnom čak i ekonomski jedinstvenom modelu, onda se govori o podelama koje nisu rezultat niakve prisile nego naprosto morala, dakle dobrovoljne su i kulturno afirmisane, i to je onda nešto drugo. Irac katolik mrzi Irca protestanta do tačke u kojoj se smatra drugačijim od njega, a to je onda obećanje koje se eventualno samo ispunjava, jer pravi sopstvene razlike. A što razlike postaju veće, to je i ljudima lakše da se smatraju drugačijima, pa tako ta podeljenost zapravo samu sebe hrani.

Nego, kad smo već kod veštački stvarane različitosti tamo gde je zapravo nema, nije li ovo zanimljivo:




1 in 200 men direct descendants of Genghis Khan

In 2003 a groundbreaking historical genetics paper reported results which indicated that a substantial proportion of men in the world are direct line descendants of Genghis Khan. By direct line, I mean that they carry Y chromosomes which seem to have come down from an individual who lived approximately 1,000 years ago. As Y chromosomes are only passed from father to son, that would mean that the Y is a record of one's patrilineage. Genghis Khan died ~750 years ago, so assuming 25 years per generation, you get about 30 men between the present and that period. In more quantitative terms, ~10% of the men who reside within the borders of the Mongol Empire as it was at the death of Genghis Khan may carry his Y chromosome, and so ~0.5% of men in the world, about 16 million individuals alive today, do so. Since 2003 there have been other cases of "super-Y" lineages. For example the Manchu lineage and the Uí Néill lineage. The existence of these Y chromosomal lineages, which have burst upon the genetic landscape like explosive stars sweeping aside all other variation before them, indicates a periodic it "winner-take-all" dynamic in human genetics more reminiscent of hyper-polygynous mammals such as elephant seals. As we do not exhibit the sexual dimorphism which is the norm in such organisms, it goes to show the plasticity of outcome due to the flexibility of human cultural forms.

Jason Goldman of Thoughtful Animal reminded me of the 2003 paper a few days ago, so I thought it would be useful to review it again for new readers (as I know most of you have not been reading for 7 years!). To understand how one Y chromosomal lineage can have such a wide distribution across such a large proportion of the human race, here is a quote attributed to Genghis Khan:

The greatest joy for a man is to defeat his enemies, to drive them before him, to take from them all they possess, to see those they love in tears, to ride their horses, and to hold their wives and daughters in his arms.


You're probably more familiar with the paraphrase in Conan the Barbarian.

The Genetic Legacy of the Mongols:

"We have identified a Y-chromosomal lineage with several unusual features. It was found in 16 populations throughout a large region of Asia, stretching from the Pacific to the Caspian Sea, and was present at high frequency: ∼8% of the men in this region carry it, and it thus makes up ∼0.5% of the world total. The pattern of variation within the lineage suggested that it originated in Mongolia ∼1,000 years ago. Such a rapid spread cannot have occurred by chance; it must have been a result of selection. The lineage is carried by likely male-line descendants of Genghis Khan, and we therefore propose that it has spread by a novel form of social selection resulting from their behavior."

What is social selection? In this context it's pretty obvious, the Mongol Empire was the personal property of the "Golden Family," the family of Genghis Khan. More precisely this came to consist of the descendants of Genghis Khan's four sons by his first and primary wife, Jochi, Chagatai, Ogedei, and Tolui. Like descent from the gods in the mythology of the Classical World, or the House of David in medieval Christian monarchies, a line back to Genghis Khan became a necessary precondition for fitness to be a ruler in the centuries after the rise of the Mongol Empire across much of Asia.

To me the power and fury of the Mongol expansion, the awe and magnetism which Genghis Khan's bloodline held for Asiatic societies in the wake of their world conquest, is attested to by the fact that descent from Genghis Khan became a mark of prestige even within Islamic societies. Timur claimed a relationship to Chagatai. His descendants in India, the Timurids, retained pride in their Genghiside heritage. In Russia among the Muslim Tatars and in Central Asia among the Uzbeks descent from Genghis Khan was a major calling card for any would-be warlord. This is peculiar in light of the fact that Genghis Khan, and his near descendants, were non-Muslims! Not only were they non-Muslims, but the Mongol assault on West Asian Muslims societies was particularly deleterious; it is generally assumed that Iran and Mesopotamia's relatively productive irrigation system were wrecked during the Mongol conquests to the point where it took centuries for them to rebound to their previous levels of productivity. More symbolically, it was the Mongols who finally extinguished the Abbasid Caliphate.

In Muslim societies pride of place is given to Sayyids, descendants of Muhammad through his grandsons Hasan and Husain. Naturally this is often fictive, but that matters little. In fact in the Golden Horde, the northwestern region of the Mongol Empire which eventually gave rise to the Tatars who imposed the yoke on the Russians, non-Genghiside warlords produced fictive genealogies claiming descent from Muhammad as a way to negate the lineage advantage of their Genghiside rivals. But it is still shocking that there was even a question as to whether descent from Genghis Khan was more prestigious than descent from the prophet of Islam!

And the power of descent from Genghis Khan, the monopoly of the commanding heights which his male line descendants still felt to be theirs by right of their blood, obtained at the heart of his Empire, Mongolia, down to a very late period. The last of the great steppe polities, the Zunghar Empire, was defeated by the Manchus in part because it was led by a subset of the Oirat Mongols, a tribe whose leadership were not descended in the male line from the Golden Family, and so could not convince the Genghiside nobility of eastern Mongolia to align with them. From the perspective of moderns, who tend to conceive of historical patterns and forces in economic, or at least ideological, terms, this fixation on blood descent seems ridiculous. I suspect that many pre-modern people, who were accustomed to small family groups and kin networks in a way we are not, would find our own surprise rather perplexing.


:lol:  Ima još toga ovde: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2010/08/1-in-200-men-direct-descendants-of-genghis-khan/ (http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2010/08/1-in-200-men-direct-descendants-of-genghis-khan/)

Remembering Terry Pratchett

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Terry Pratchett is gone.

Like many readers, I will miss him dearly. There are few authors whose work I followed so exhaustively, and whose work has affected me in such fundamental ways.

His most abundant and popular works were his Discworld series, often satirical, often humorous books which numbered in the dozens, all taking place on a fantasy world called Discworld. As the name implies, Discworld is flat, and it rotates on the backs of four great elephants which stand on the back of the cosmic sea turtle Great A'Tuin who flies through space with his burden. Pretty much any Discworld book can be picked up and read with no prior knowledge of the series–there are recurring characters and in-jokes and developments in the world of technological, social, and other natures that will be appreciated more for readers who have read the earlier books in the series, but any book can be understood on its own. Some of the books, like Small Gods or Thief of Time are basically one-offs where the main character is the star of only this book. Other books are parts of sub-series which are probably best appreciated in order, a subseries of books following the witches Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg, or a subseries of books following Sam Vimes who begins as a beat cop in cardboard shoes on the three-man Ankh-Morpork City Watch and moves his way up in the ranks.

I was first exposed to the Discworld when I was about 14 (a very suitable age to get into the series) when by brother gave me a copy of Soul Music for my birthday. Soul Music follows the small town musician Imp y Celes who goes to Ankh-Morpork to seek his fortune. He makes some friends and they perform together, and are supposed to die in a violent bar brawl, but are possessed by the irresistable spirit of Musics With Rocks In, which has no objective value to those who aren't directly posessed by it. There he meets Susan Sto Helit, Death's granddaughter (a backstory covered in previous novels) who has been coerced by the universe to fill in for Death while Death grieves the passing of Susan's parents in a carriage accident–she is there to help Imp cross over to the afterlife but is surprised to find him not dead. Susan has only recently become aware of her connection to Death, her parents having kept that as secret as possible while they sent her to boarding school, though she has happily taken advantage of the abilities her heritage gives her, like the ability to fade out of people's attention at will.

Susan is one of best elements of the Discworld series. Competent, compassionate, but ever aware that she is not like the people around her. She struggled to understand her grandfather, Death, who is basically a metaphor taken shape and who struggles to understand human affectations and behaviors without the common ground needed to really do that. She is a creature between two worlds who has to learn to live with both halves of herself, trying to reconcile the nature of her humanity with the nature of what makes her different from everyone else. Like many SF/F readers, I struggled finding my social place in the world, and particularly at the age when I first read Soul Music. Just a couple years before I'd moved from a city to a very small town where the cliques were basically permanently formed since Kindergarten, and where there was even less room for social differences than in most places I've lived. The social aspect of life is a lot easier now, having found an engineering job where it's easier to find people with like interests, and finding online communities of SF readers and SF writers where I don't just manage to survive by pretending to be like other people, but where I can just be who I am without being forced out because of it. (I have a great love for SF Signal and other online gathering places for this.) But back then I had found no such place. I didn't realize it at the time but I was struggling more with trying to find a place in the world than I ever had before and more than I ever have since then, and reading books with characters like Susan helped me in a profound way that I'm only coming to understand in retrospect. Susan is powerful, and amazing, but not without her struggles, to understand herself and to understand her grandfather. When I was older I read Hogfather, which again features Susan as a major character, but now as a grown woman who has found a niche in the world working as a nanny who is powerfully effective in large part because she acknowledges that the monsters of childhood are real and instead of trying to convince the children of their unreality she just beats the hell out of the beasties instead.

By far my favorite Discworld book is Small Gods. This story takes place a long time before most of the series, in the country of Omnia, which worships only one god, the Great God Om. Om has been away from the world for a while, off in other places romping and doing whatever gods do when they're out of town. He decides to come back and visit his believers. On the Discworld, a god's power is proportionate to the amount of belief that is invested in them. Every god starts small when some shepherd finds a lost sheep and stacks a small altar of rocks in thanks to shapeless forces, and the biggest of the gods grow and grow from there as more and more people join in. Om, therefore, expects to land and take some kind of grand manifestation like a great bull or an elegant swan, something suitably impressive for a god who holds the devout belief of an entire country. So Om is very surprised to find that instead he manifests as a two-pound tortoise that only one person seems to be able to hear. That one person is Brutha, a low-level ward of the church who spends most of his time doing menial chores in the Omnian temple.


And it came to pass that in time the Great God Om spake unto Brutha, the Chosen One: "Psst!"

Brutha is unusual in a variety of ways. First, the reason he can hear Om is that he is the most devout of believers. His grandmother taught him all of the lessons of Om and he can't conceive of any of them being true, while most of the Omnian population actually believes in the Omnian church more than they believe in their deity. Most people think Brutha is simple, but he's not really simple, he just thinks differently than other people, and other people have trouble understanding him as a result, and vice versa. Like Susan Sto-Helit, Brutha is different from the people around them, and those differences are what allows them to take on the roles that the world needs them to take.

Susan might be my favorite character in the series, though she might be neck-and-neck with Granny Weatherwax, who is in a coven of witches in the country of Lancre. Weatherwax at a glance seems like a bossy old hag whom no one could possibly like, seemingly the counterpoint to the ever-smiling companion Nanny Ogg, but as you read more about her it's clear that this prickly exterior is in large part an affectation, a mask she wears that makes her role in the world more effective. She is no-nonsense, never willing to put up with BS from any source even when it's dangerous to stand against it, but she is compassionate and a source for good as well.

I have already gone on. I could go on much longer, picking out individual characters and books to speak about at length. Maybe I'll re-read some of the series and post more about them at a later time, but today I am mourning Terry Pratchett's death and so it's only appropriate that I celebrate Terry Pratchett's Death (the character). Death himself, as an anthropomorphic personification, is a frequently recurring character in the Discworld series, probably the most oft-recurring character. There's a subseries of books focusing on Death's progression as a character, sometimes struggling against his own occupation, trying to reconcile his human form that's been forced on him by a world full of metaphorically-thinking minds against his natural manifestation as an unfeeling and hard-to-define state of transition between something that is living and something that is not.

Death makes cameos in most of the books as some character or other dies. As a typically pithy quote from Sourcery says: "Death isn't cruel, merely terribly, terribly good at his job." Death is, at his core, a person with a job of work to do, a job that never ends as he ushers souls from their death to their afterlife. Often a character in the book doesn't even know they have died until Death speaks to them in all-caps, and the person looks down to see their own body before Death escorts them to what comes next. In most cases, having already been freed from the mortal coil, this transition is no longer the terrifying prospect that we living mortals might anticipate of it. Death comes, Death speaks to you, you walk with Death and go to where you're going. It is reassuring in its workaday feel–dying was a thing on your personal checklist, the only unavoidable thing shared by everyone's checklists, and now that that's out-of-the-way, it's time to do something else. There is presumably more that comes after, but that "more" is always off-screen, because it has no place in our world.

(Some spoiler alert for Small Gods in this paragraph) One of the few cases where this is not the case is in Small Gods. A major villain in the book is Vorbis, who believes he is a new prophet of Om, but when Om looks at Vorbis's mind all Om can see is a steel ball that reflects back on itself. Vorbis is in a position of power in the church, but truly he is a narcissist who doesn't really believe that anyone outside of himself is real, and the voice he hears in his mind when he prays is not the voice of Om but his own voice bouncing back at him. When Vorbis dies, he speaks briefly with Death. YOU HAVE PERHAPS HEARD THE PHRASE THAT DEATH IS OTHER PEOPLE. "Yes, of course." IN TIME, YOU WILL LEARN THAT THAT IS WRONG. Instead of crossing the desert to find out what comes next, Vorbis is paralyzed by his solitude and inability to really sense other people and simply huddles in terror in that space between worlds. But even to this villain, Pratchett shows compassion in death–when the protagonist Brutha dies some decades later, he finds Vorbis still huddled there in the space after death. Even though Vorbis did horrible things to Brutha and to the world in general when alive, Brutha shows compassion and takes Vorbis by the hand and leads him to the next place together, acting as the Death-analog.

Pratchett's attitude toward the character Death has some direct relation to his real-world views on death. He has been struggling with Alzheimer's for years , and has long been a proponent of allowing people to choose the manner of their own death, including assisted suicide. By what I've heard, I don't think that his life ended this way, but I respect the idea in any case. Terry said "I endorse the work of Dignity in Dying because I believe passionately that any individual should have the right to choose, as far as it is possible, the time and the conditions of their death. Over the last hundred years we have learned to be extremely good at living. But sooner or later, and so often now it is later, everybody dies. I think it's time we learned to be as good at dying as we are at living." I think his public support of this concept fits in very well with his Death as a character–Death just has a job to do, and it's going to happen sooner or later, so it should be within our choice to arrange the necessary meeting as best we can.


Posted on March 13, 2015 by David Steffen in Books // 0 Comments

Galaxy's Edge Magazine to Publish Super-Rare Robert A. Heinlein Story!




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Good news for Robert A. Heinlein fans!
Phoenix Pick sends word that the May issue of Galaxy's Edge Magazine (http://www.galaxysedge.com/) will feature a very rarely seen Heinlein story titled "Field Defects: Memo From a Cyborg".

What makes this story so rare?


In 1975, Random House/Vintage published an anthology of stories about cyborgs called Human-Machines, edited by Thomas N. Scortia and George Zebrowski. The editors dedicated the book to Robert A. Heinlein, "who taught us both." When Heinlein received a copy of the book, he wrote them both a letter, thanking them. However, that personal message to them was in a postscript. The actual text of the letter was a short fiction piece showing a truly whimsical and entertaining side of the Heinlein where he pretended to be a Cyborg – in keeping with the theme of the anthology – complaining about certain defects. The story has only been published once before: in the Virginia Edition (http://www.virginiaedition.com/), a set of volumes (limited to 2,000 sets and selling for $1,500 each) containing Heinlein's complete fiction and non-fiction. For the vast majority of readers, this will be a "new" Heinlein story.


"Field Defects: Memo From a Cyborg" will appear in the May issue of Galaxy's Edge Magazine (http://www.galaxysedge.com/).

How Genre Fiction Became More Important Than Literary Fiction



The book war is over. The aliens, dragons, and detectives won.   :!:


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The writers Kazuo Ishiguro and Ursula K. Le Guin are having a highly old-fashioned debate about the distinction between literary and genre fiction. Ishiguro started it, in an interview with The New York Times about his latest novel The Buried Giant, when he asked "Will readers follow me into this? Will they understand what I'm trying to do, or will they be prejudiced against the surface elements? Are they going to say this is fantasy?" Le Guin didn't like the tone of that last remark and fired back, "Well, yes, they probably will. Why not? It appears the author takes the word for an insult." Now Ishiguro has defended himself, rather meekly, by saying, "I am on the side of the pixies and the dragons." The whole spectacle is very odd. It sounds like a debate from another era. What writer today would feel any need whatsoever to separate him or herself from fantasy or indeed any other genre? If anything, the forms of genre—science fiction, fantasy, the hardboiled detective story, the murder mystery, horror, vampire, and werewolf stories—have become the natural homes for the most serious literary questions.



Only idiots or snobs ever really thought less of "genre books" of course. There are stupid books and there are smart books. There are well-written books and badly written books. There are fun books and boring books. All of these distinctions are vastly more important than the distinction between the literary and the non-literary. Time has a tendency to demolish old snobberies. Once upon a time, Conan Doyle was embarrassed by the Sherlock Holmes stories; he wanted to be remembered for his serious historical novels. Jim Thompson's books—considered straight pulp during his lifetime—are obviously as dense and layered and confounding as great literature. Correction: They are great literature. Who really thinks, today, that Stanislaw Lem isn't a genius, that he's "just a science fiction writer"?


More recently, writers of a more explicitly literary bent have explored genre with more and more regularity. Colson Whitehead's zombie novel Zone One was both a bestseller and a critical darling. Chang-rae Lee's On Such a Full Sea is literature and genre fiction, simultaneously, with no sense of contradiction. In a self-referential move, Emily Mandel's Station Eleven, a National Book Award finalist in 2014, predicts a post-apocalyptic future in which artists treat Star Trek and Shakespeare with absolute equality. This is the future, and also to a certain extent the present.




Resistance to genre, among literary writers, has given way to eagerness to exploit its riches. The boundaries between high and low are increasingly meaningless for audiences. But there are aesthetic reasons for embracing genre as well. For novelists—and I should probably acknowledge at this point that I have a novel with werewolves out right now, The Hunger of the Wolf—generic forms offer a freedom of scope that literary realism simply no longer does.

The landscape of realism has narrowed. If you think of the straight literary novels of the past decade—The Marriage Plot, The Interestings, The Art of Fielding, Freedom—they often deal with stories and characters from a very particular economic and social position. Realism, as a literary project, has taken as its principle subject the minute social struggles of people who have graduated mainly from Ivy League schools. The great gift of literary realism has always been its characteristic ability to capture the shifting weather of inner life, but the mechanisms of that inner life and whose inner lives are under discussion have become as generic as any vampire book: These are books about privileged people with relatively small problems.

Not that these small problems can't be fascinating. It is exactly the best realist novels of our moment which are the most miniature: In Teju Cole's Open City, a man and his thoughts wander over various cities. In Adelle Waldman's The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P., the action consists of the tiny fluctuations of the inordinate vanity and self-loathing of the main character. Both novels are superb, and both are focused on the most minute of details. They draw larger significances from those details, certainly, but the constraints are ferocious. Any discussions of politics or any broader aspect of the human condition are funneled through the characters' fine judgments.

In the wide-open spaces left by the narrowing of realism, genre becomes the place where grand philosophical questions can be worked out on narrative terms. You will occasionally read about a mobile phone in a realist novel, but the technology's meaning, and consequence, are much more thoroughly handled in a book like Super Sad True Love Story. Freedom deals with the environmental crisis, it is true. But a book like Station Eleven deals with the fate of our species and the possibilities of art, ideas of a scope which the realist imagination, at least of our moment, can no longer stomach.

Properly speaking, there is no outside of genre anymore; one may choose to write vampire books or werewolf books or horror books or one may choose to write books in the genre known as "literary fiction." For most of the 20th century, literary art dreamed of an escape from genre, an escape from the restraints of type and stereotype and, above all, the market. In the 21st century, the traditional roles have now been reversed. I can only assume that Ishiguro misspoke in his Times interview, because in The Buried Giant and in Never Let Me Go, he used the forms of genre writing as beautifully and as profoundly as anyone. He knows the "literary bigots" today are the ghetto-dwellers. Realism is a closed shop. Genre fiction is open.


http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/books/a33599/genre-fiction-vs-literary-fiction/ (http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/books/a33599/genre-fiction-vs-literary-fiction/)

How to Write About Characters Who Are Smarter Than You


Prevelik tekst za kopipejstovanje ali veoma zanimljiv:


https://medium.com/@MrGrahamMoore/how-to-write-about-characters-who-are-smarter-than-you-c7c956944847

10 Possible Sources of "Avatar" in Classic Science Fiction 

Going beyond the obvious comparisons with "Ferngully" and "Dances with Wolves"


Article by Avi Abrams (http://www.scifi.darkroastedblend.com/2010/01/10-possible-sources-of-avatar-in.html)

Quote
By now many of you have seen James Cameron's epic "Avatar" and marveled at its breakthrough 3D immersion technology. Visually, the movie is beyond breathtaking. Perhaps it can even be compared to the advent of widescreen in movie history.

Plot-wise, however, it is a simple, old-fashioned and perhaps overly familiar adventure, bringing to mind a range of stories from "Pocahontas" to Miyazaki's "Nausicaa" and "Princess Mononoke". Some see this as a drawback, others praise the straightforward approach to story-telling and dialogue - after all, it's one less thing to distract you from the awesome spectacle that unfolds on the screen.


"Yes, it is predictable in a way that roller coaster ride is predictable", says one reviewer. Likewise, it's even possible that the main character was intentionally made somewhat bland and toned down in personality, so that any viewer could identify with the main hero - seamlessly inhabiting his "avatar" to explore the glorious new world of Pandora.

It is not our intention to argue how and if the plot of "Avatar" could've been made better or more original. After all, it is an old-fashioned fairytale; a personal dream of maestro James Cameron many decades in the making.

Instead, we are going to list some possible influences from obscure and even forgotten classic science fiction sources that came to our mind while watching "Avatar" - there is no telling if James Cameron read any of them or was influenced by any particular tradition, but it was a good fun to find out and remember the jolly good reads that they are (see if you can remember any of the stories mentioned below, or if you can think of other ones):


1. Robert F. Young - "To Fell a Tree". First published in Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, July 1959, this obscure and rarely reprinted novella is perhaps the closest to the plot of "Avatar".

A giant tree sacred to humanoid natives razed to the ground by the greedy, crazed human military outfit - the parallels are too many to recount here. Robert F. Young's prose is powerful and efficient, and the ending evokes similar emotional response to that of "Avatar". It is also a criminally under-rated piece of fiction - we can only rejoice that "Avatar" brings it to life to beautifully - but it's also sad to see top-notch science fiction stories by Robert F. Young remain out of print and uncredited for so many years.

The idea of "projected consciousness" into the bodies of natives on hostile planets was also explored at length in classic science fiction. Here are a few examples:

2. Poul Anderson - "Call Me Joe" First published in Astounding Science Fiction in April, 1957. Read more detailed analysis here.

"Like Avatar, Call Me Joe centers on a paraplegic — Ed Anglesey — who telepathically connects with an artificially created life form in order to explore a harsh planet (in this case, Jupiter). Anglesey, like "Avatar"'s Jake Sully, revels in the freedom and strength of his artificially created body, battles predators on the surface of Jupiter, and gradually goes native as he spends more time connected to his artificial body."


3. Ben Bova - "The Winds of Altair" First published as a novel in 1973. Six-legged beasties, remote-control "avatars", greedy terraforming humans.

"The classic SciFi novel tells the story of humans trying to terraform the planet of Altair IV, where they cannot breath the air. The natives of this planet are a cat-like race and humans are able to transfer their minds into these cats in order to explore the planet safely. Throughout the course of the novel, the main character inhabits the body of one of these cats (just like in Avatar) and grows to side with the natives against the Military in the story." (source)

4. Clifford Simak - "Desertion" First published in November 1944 issue of Astounding Science Fiction. Same idea: human research team on the surface of a hostile planet needs to inhabit "avatar" bodies more suitable to environment. One small problem - those who were sent did not come back, but "deserted" and remained behind, choosing a more liberating alien culture.


Another work very similar in plot and feel is actually an award-winning piece by a well-known writer:

5. Ursula K. Le Guin - "The Word for World is Forest" (more info). Published back in 1972, in Again, Dangerous Visions, it was even a winner of the 1973 Hugo Award for Best Novella.

Similarities? Well, how about a forested planet with the deeply "connected" natives, a human military raid on a huge tree-city and a subsequent retaliation of natives... some scenes seem incredibly familiar, even though Le Guin plot is markedly deeper and more sophisticated. We highly recommend seeking out this book if you thought the plot of "Avatar" was one-dimensional - it should fill in all the details you would ever need.


Other visual and atmospheric clues (no similarities with the plot):

6. Harry Harrison - "Deathworld" First published in Astounding Science Fiction, January-March 1960. A militaristic gung-ho colonization with disregard for complexities of native life. Top-notch depiction of tough space marines as only Harrison can do it. Extremely hostile life-forms populate that planet: Avatar's quote "everything that crawls, flies or squats out there... will want to kill you" seems right at home with "Deathworld". Highly recommended as a great adventure read.

7. Some other wonderful examples from the Golden Age of Science Fiction also come to mind: "Exploration Team" by Murray Leinster; hilarious interactions between human military colonization force and natives in various stories by Eric Frank Russell ("...And Then There Were None", "Somewhere a Voice", etc.) Various jungle planet environments were nicely explored by Robert A. Heinlein in his juvenile-fiction novels, and also in Bob Shaw's "Who Goes There?".


8. Anne McCaffrey - "The Dragonriders of Pern" series. This is an obvious allusion to exhilarating sequences of taming and riding on dragons - very analogous to the thrilling winged-beast taming in "Avatar".


9. Na'vi - Dark Elves, anyone? Or if you'd like, "Elfquest" (more info). A cult comic series started in 1978. There are very broad visual similarities, but I can't stop thinking of dark elves when I look at na'vi ways and romance.

10. The interior and exterior views of the spaceship which brings Jake Sully to Pandora reminds me of Alastair Reynolds "Revelation Space" light-hugger ships (significantly scaled down, of course). The opening sequence can easily serve as an opening for hypothetical "Chasm City" movie, for example. The flying mountains and islands are also a feature of Alastair Reynolds great story "Minla's Flowers".


So here is a brief list of possible influences on visual creation of "Avatar" and examples of classic science fiction that elaborate on the (very basic) "Avatar" plot. Let us know of other similarities you've noticed - after all, just like the case with "Star Wars" we are witnessing the birth of yet another mythology, and it is only proper that we should honor the original sources of this particular science fiction tradition.




BONUS: do you remember the wonderful tiny helicopter-like creature that lit up the night on Pandora? It turns out to be the design of Leonardo da Vinci, no less:

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At Kirkus: Graphic Novels That Are Coming to TV and Film

Read Them Now, Watch Them Later: Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Adaptation Watch (Graphic Novel Edition)


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https://www.kirkusreviews.com/features/read-them-now-watch-them-later-graphic-novel/ (https://www.kirkusreviews.com/features/read-them-now-watch-them-later-graphic-novel/)

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Good news from Orbit Books. The Girl With All the Gifts by M.R. Carey is being adapted to film by Altitude Film Entertainment.

The film, which is being re-titled as She Who Brings Gifts, has already started assembling the cast and crew: Gemma Arterton, Paddy Considine and Glenn Close are lined up to star in the film, which will be directed by Colm McCarthy. Carey wrote the script. Shooting is scheduled to start in May.



Here's how the film is described:


SHE WHO BRINGS GIFTS is the story of Melanie, a girl who is full of questions about the world. Every morning, Melanie waits in her cell to be collected for class. When they come for her, Sergeant Parks keeps his gun pointing at her while two of his people strap her into a wheelchair. She thinks they don't like her. She jokes that she won't bite. But they don't laugh.

Melanie is a very special girl.






Compare and contrast that with the book description:


NOT EVERY GIFT IS A BLESSING.

Melanie is a very special girl. Dr Caldwell calls her "our little genius."

Every morning, Melanie waits in her cell to be collected for class. When they come for her, Sergeant keeps his gun pointing at her while two of his people strap her into the wheelchair. She thinks they don't like her. She jokes that she won't bite, but they don't laugh.

The Girl With All the Gifts is a groundbreaking thriller, emotionally charged and gripping from beginning to end.

(https://www.znaksagite.com/diskusije/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fthecarnivoreproject.typepad.com%2F.a%2F6a00d8345295c269e201b8d0f58ae9970c-200wi&hash=4650bdbb07e8f4548e14a2d250e293d1e2928bc1)
The Scully Effect: My Life in The X-Files


Posted by Anne on Thursday, March 26, 2015 in Film, Horror, Reviews, Science Fiction, Television  | Permalink  (http://www.pornokitsch.com/2015/03/the-scully-effect-x-files.html#more)

The-X-FilesThe X-Files, huh? That show people watched like twenty years ago? Who cares? I do, that's who. Now sit down and shut up while I explain important things to you.

Last week the internet exploded with joy when the long-circulating rumour that The X-Files would be getting a new season 13 years after it went off the air, was confirmed. Well, much of the internet exploded with joy. Some of the internet exploded with skepticism ('It'll just suck!') and bits of it exploded with confusion ('they're making a television show about that stupid movie from a couple of years ago?')

Well, gather round, folks, because I'm here to tell you why you should not just care that the X-Files are back, but should get really excited. I was there when it all began, loved the show from the beginning, and have a lot of opinions so I'm  more qualified than anyone else on the entire internet to tell you this stuff.


So, what was the X-Files? Short answer: a  television show about two deadpan FBI agents and the aliens who loved them. Longer answer: everyone remembers the 1990s as being all about bright colours and Saved by the Bell. And Friends, for some reason. The 90s was actually defined by conspiracy theories, drab colours, obsession with 'the truth' and endless meditations on the desperate fight to retain some vestige of individuality in a rapidly globalizing world. Also, Bill Clinton's sex life, but that's slightly less relevant. And here's what the X-Files delivered: conspiracy theories, drab colours, endless meditations on individuality in the face of increasing globalization, and two hot leads with perfect mastery over the art of deadpan humour.

X-filesThat tells me nothing. Fine. Okay, In 1992ish, FOX – at the time still an upstart network with something to prove, rather than the conservative juggernaut we've come to think of it – greenlit a show about an alien-obsessed FBI agent and the medical doctor/FBI agent the Bureau sent in to keep an eye on him. The X-Files premiered in September 1993 in the so-called Friday Night Death Slot – basically, the place where networks dumped shows they didn't think would find an audience. Fortunately, early fans of The X-Files (like yours truly) were young or nerdy or both and didn't have Friday night plans to take them away from their televisions. The X-Files' cool premise, sharp writing, excellent acting and overall vibe meshed perfectly with the interests – and schedules – of a legion of early internet users, who would watch episodes and then turn on their computers, dial up an internet server with their modem machines, and discuss the show in endless detail. FOX realized it had some sort of cult hit on its hands and kept airing the show. By 1997/8 it was a full-blown mainstream success. A movie, timed to be released during the summer hiatus between seasons 5 and 6, was a massive hit. The X-Files lasted nine seasons and (more or less) survived a location change, from Toronto to Los Angeles, and a cast departure, when David Duchovny (sort of) left the show. The X-Files also survived a fairly bad second film, which was released a baffling seven years after it went off the air and left very little impression on anyone anywhere.

Thanks for all the boring history. Now tell me why you liked it. The X-Files combined season- and series-long arcs about a massive government conspiracy to cover up the existence of extra terrestrials (the so-called 'mytharc') with single-episode stories (called 'monster of the week' episodes) that sent its comely leads to small towns all over the US to investigate whatever weird goings-on were going on. This is important because nerds, like yours truly, love to obsess over details, and a hundred-plus episodes of details gave us a lot to obsess over. Nerds like yours truly also like really esoteric stuff, and the monster-of-the-week eps mined a lot of really, truly esoteric sources to produce some really, truly great episodes. But that wasn't all! Viewers were also drawn to the show's trademark humour (deader than deadpan) and its good-looking leads with their frustrating will they/won't they/hey, are they already?! chemistry.

Scully-Mulder-DressOo, chemistry? Yeah, so the show was anchored by the two agents, Mulder and Scully. Fox Mulder, the dude, was a brilliant criminal profiler who was obsessed with finding out whatever happened to his sister, who had vanished without a trace when they were children. He was convinced she'd been kidnapped by aliens, and created and then nearly destroyed his reputation and career by chasing after any evidence of aliens – and anything else weird and unexplained, aka any X-File – he could find. The Bureau assigned Dana Scully, a forensic pathologist, to 'assist' in Mulder's investigations and secretly work to debunk him. Scully, a consumate skeptic, became invested in Mulder's cause even as she remained uncertain that there was ever any explanation beyond the rational for their cases. The actors had an easy natural chemistry that lent itself to suggestions that the characters liked each other, you know, like that, even though the show kept the mystery of whether Mulder and Scully were actually doing it as misty and vague as its settings.

So,were they doing it? Congratulations! You have nine seasons and two movies to watch to find out.

Lame. Can you summarize the show for me? Yes. Yes, I can.

Mulder: We have an X-File! Let's fly to [insert name of Rural Midwestern Town here] and investigate!
Scully: We don't have to, Mulder. The answer is clearly Science.
Mulder: Wrong! The answer is clearly Aliens!
[They fly to Rural Midwestern Town]
Scully: [talks to locals] See, Mulder? The explanation is obviously Science.
Mulder: [goes haring off into a mist-shrouded forest] No, Scully, the answer is obviously Aliens!
Scully: [in episode-closing monologue] The answer was probably Science, but what do we know? There are mysteries everywhere, I guess.

Or, to put it even more concisely:

Mulder: Mystery!
Scully: Science!
Mulder: Aliens!
Scully: [rolls eyes]

You talk too much. What episodes should I watch if I can't just binge-watch the entire nine seasons, because I have an actual life?

1. Pilot (1.1): sets everything up, introduces the characters, and becomes vitally important to the show's mytharc later in the series.

2. Ice (1.'8) A monster-of-the-week episode that tackles John Carpenter's The Thing in true X-Files style. There's an isolated research base in a frozen tundra, a bunch of homicidal scientists, and a half-rational, half-lunatic explanation for everything.

3. The Erlenmeyer Flask (1.24) A major mytharc episode that advances the conspiracy...

4. The Host (2.2) Ask any X-Files fan about the most memorable episodes and they'll inevitably bring up 'the fluke-man episode.' This is that episode.

5. Irresistible (2.13) The X-Files established itself as a master of creepiness early on, but this is one of the very creepiest episodes of the early seasons. There's a preternaturally calm serial killer on the loose... and he likes redheads.

Bad-blood-36. Humbug (2.20) Another of the super famous episodes, this one about circus freaks. Scully appears to eat a grasshopper in the episode. Everyone thought she actually had and their responses are genuine. (She palmed it.)

7. Anasazi (2.25) Season 2's final episode is another huge mytharc one, and ends with Mulder trapped in a burning boxcar buried in the New Mexico desert. It was a hell of a cliffhanger!

8. The Blessing Way and Paperclip (3.1, 3.2) Continue the story from Anasazi.

9. Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose (3.4) For my money one of the finest, most affecting episodes the show ever did.

10. War of the Coprophages (3.12) It's an episode about cockroaches. It's also hilarious.

11. Jose Chung's From Outer Space (3.20) Possibly the most famous and most loved episode of the show, a Roshamon-style outing about an alien abduction and a science fiction author.

12. Home (4.2) Honestly, this is one of the most disturbing hours of television I've ever seen. And I've watched both seasons of Hannibal. Mulder and Scully investigate the weird death of a baby in a rural town and uncover some horrifying secrets...

13. Leonard Betts (4.12) Another creepy episode (they're mostly pretty creepy) about a guy who eats cancer.

14. Never Again (4.13) As Mulder's search for his sister intensifies, Scully begins to question her role in the X-Files. This Scully-centric episode is as much a watershed for her character as the episode Leonard Betts.

FoxMuldersWristWatch115. Gethsemene (4.24) Another mytharc episode, and one with yet another extraordinary cliff-hanger ending...

16. Unusual Suspects (5.3) Explains the origins of fan-favourite characters The Lone Gunmen, three conspiracy-obsessed guys who Mulder regularly turns to for help.

17. A Post-Modern Prometheus (5.5) This episode is about Frankenstein, and also Cher.

18. Bad Blood (5.13) Another classic episode, retelling a story from Mulder and then Scully's perspectives. Probably the funniest episode the show ever produced.

19. The End (5.20) Paving the way for the film that would follow that summer, The End seems to spell the end of the X-Files forever.

20. The X-Files: Fight the Future (film), Bees, Antarctica, and an OMG JUST KISS ALREADY moment straight out of every shipper's dreams, The X-Files film promised maximum awesome and delivered it. And for a brief, shining moment you could buy Scully and Mulder action figures in supermarkets across the nation. Man, 1998 was weird.

21. Triangle (6.3) I should put The Beginning (6.1) here but Triangle is so much fun – Mulder gets stuck on a ship trapped in the Bermuda Triangle... in 1943. Or maybe he just gets hit on the head and imagines it all.

22. Monday (6.14) Mulder relives the same day over and over again. There's a recurring joke about a waterbed with a mirror above it that you'd have to watch Dreamland I and II (6.4 and 6.5) to get (essentially, it's a body-swap two-parter, and very good), but it's a fun episode even if you don't watch Dreamland before.

23. Arcadia (6.15) Scully and Mulder go undercover in a gated community. Come for the garbage-monster; stay for the sexual tension.

24. Biogenesis (6.22) Another season-ending episode with a cliff-hanger ending. Aliens! Conspiracies! Smokey back rooms and mysterious conversations!

25. The Goldberg Variation (7.6). The detective duo investigate the luckiest man alive, and also Johann Sebastian Bach.

26. X-Cops (7.12) An  episode of the X-Files shot as though it's an episode of Cops. Written by Vince Gilligan (creator of Breaking Bad) and utterly weird.

27. All Things (7.17) Written and directed by Gillian Anderson, it's a Scully-centric episode that explores the faith of a skeptic, and confronts the unanswerable and unknowable.

28. Requiem (7.22) Scully's health fails and Mulder... vanishes.

To be honest, I wasn't a big fan of seasons 8 and 9, and so I'm not sure (especially in 8) which episodes are really 'must see'. I'd say skip 'em all (because all you really need to know is going to follow this paragraph in white text – highlight to read) and move straight to the last three episodes of 9:

Mulder vanishes, apparently abducted by aliens. Scully isn't sick; she's pregnant, despite her cancer from earlier seasons having rendered her infertile. In Mulder's absence she becomes the alien conspiracy true believer. She's also joined by two new characters, the T-1000 and a really, seriously annoying lady who likes tarot cards and stuff. Scully gives birth and then gives up her baby. Because he might be part-alien, or something? I don't remember. It was really weird.

Xfiles29. Sunshine Days (9.18) The last non-finale episode of the X-Files is about... the Brady Bunch? Yes, it is. It's also a stirring meditation on the power of television to captivate, and how long-running shows – like the X-Files – become warm, safe spaces for the audiences who love them. It seemed weird at the time but in retrospect it's a charming send-off to one of the great television series of all time.

30. The Truth, I and II (9.19, 9.20) The two-part finale to the series answered a lot of questions and raised even more. I'm not sure how satisfying it would have been for anyone not familiar with the preceding five hundred thousand episodes, but it does explain what happened to Mulder, and some of that stuff from the white text block up there.

For completion's sake, you should probably also watch the second film, The X-Files: I Want to Believe. But the poster is cooler than the movie, which is more like a long, not very good monster-of-the-week episode. And there are no bees in this one, alas. Mulder does have a beard for part of it, though. (Euugh.)

That was way more information than I wanted. How about just ten episodes this time?

Wimp. Try Pilot, The Host, Jose Chung's From Outer Space, Home, Bad Blood, Triangle, Requiem, Sunshine Days, The Truth I and II. Clearly I'm a monster-of-the-week person over a mytharc person, but the best mytharc episodes are encapsulated in Pilot, The X-Files: Fight the Future, Requiem, and The Truth I and II.

Wait, is that all? Okay, here are some of my personal favourite episodes that didn't make the list above: Darkness Falls (1.20), about little green bugs (the first episode I ever saw); Roland (1.23), features the creepiest death ever; Detour (4.5) where our heroes get lost in a forest; The Unnatural (6.19), about baseball and aliens, Je Souhaite (7.21) about a genie in a bottle. I'm not even kidding with that last one. A genie. In a bottle.

Is there anything else I need to know? Let's see: there was a song about David Duchovny that actually got a lot of radio-play one summer because the 90s were way less fun than you remember. Gillian Anderson went on to prove herself an incredibly talented actress. She's also really short, and not a natural redhead. Indeed, she's so short she had a special 'apple box' to stand on for most of their scenes together.

Also, there's a real phenomenon, the so-called 'Scully effect' - that we can trace to the show. In the years that the X-Files was on the air, there was an increase in the number of women pursuing STEM degrees that can be traced directly to the fact that a woman with a degree in physics and an MD was being portrayed as calm, competent, successful and awesome on a successful weekly television show. Because, as it turns out, representation matters. Who knew.

The hostAny last thoughts? I was 14 years old when the X-Files started airing and it felt like it had been made specifically for me, a bookish, career-oriented, nerdy girl with a healthy fascination with the macabre, the strange, and the cryptozoographic. The male lead was hot and smart; more importantly, the female lead was hot and smart and not a victim or an idiot. My friends and I would watch the X-Files at sleepovers; my first boyfriend and I connected over our shared affection for it, and - even when it got kind of sucky - it remained the first real example of what kind of stories could best be told on television, presaging the new golden age of television. The X-Files was, for years, the only television I watched. I can't say I'm a genre fiction editor because of the X-Files, but I can say that it and my love for it during a formative period absolutely contributed to my love of science fiction, fantasy and horror and was - and remains - a huge influence on me.

The X-Files was serious appointment television for years, one of the incredibly rare examples of a cult television show that gained critical praise and mainstream success. It traded off the dawn of the internet age, made world-wide stars of its unconventionally attractive leads, and spawned a generation of conspiracy-obsessed nerds (like me) who found some kind of uncomfortable validation in the show's success. For an entire generation of nerds, geeks and weirdos it was our first major fandom. It may have stayed on the air one or two seasons too long, but it produced and continues to produce fanfic, fan art, fan loyalty and something we can continue to get really excited about, more than two decades after it premiered. Long may it last.

Discworld's 5 Best Supporting Characters  :D




1. Cheery Littlebottom

First on the list is easy. It's CSI: Ankh-Morpork. Cheery is a dwarven forensic expert first seen in Feet of Clay, a character we quickly learn is a woman. Female dwarves have beards and adhere to masculine cultural rules. Sex is, well, confusing. Cheery's exploration of her femininity, experimenting with heels, make-up and jewellery, could be played for quite offensive laughs.

Pratchett is much better than that. Why Feet of Clay is an amazing book, one of his best, is that it's about acts of rebellion, from the golem who cannot cope with gaining its own agency and murders as a result, to Vimes, Captain of the City Watch, who refuses to let his butler shave him. Through Cheery looking to break the gender roles dictated to her and the emotional and societal difficulties she faces in doing so, Pratchett humanises the golem's own struggle and makes the book that much more complex and better as a consequence.


2. Jason Ogg

One of Pratchett's more understated themes is the love of craftmanship. It shows in his writing - his early publication schedule of two Discworld books per year is insane - and he fills his books with a union worth of modest tradesmen. Doing a good job is a brilliant thing for Pratchett, whether it's the architect Ptaclusp in Pyramids or Jason Ogg.

I love Jason because he is in one of my favourite Discworld scenes. At the beginning of Lords and Ladies, he blindfolds himself and awaits the arrival of Death, because Jason is the best smith in the Discworld and only he can shoe Death's horse Binky. Lords and Ladies has a really eerie feel, something that might have been due to him working with Neil Gaiman a few years previously for Good Omens.

Jason methodically lays out his tools and treats the work with importance and respect. He serves Death good biscuits. The Grim Reaper praises him 'AS ONE CRAFTSMAN TO ANOTHER'. Pratchett at his best writes rollicking plots but every so often he slams on the brakes and lets a scene breathe. He does so here to brilliant effect.

Lords-and-ladies-23. Magrat Garlick
One of Pratchett's many strengths is in writing excellent female characters. Not idealised wonder women, just people. Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg are among my favourite literary characters ever but I'd be terrified of actually meeting them. They can be cruel, crude and seem to take a little bit too much enjoyment in causing trouble. They're brilliant but are nightmares.

Stitched into the early Witches novels is a wonderful character arc featuring Magrat, the wet witch who seems solely to exist to make tea and have Granny and Nanny be nasty to her. But she's not a weak wallflower. Lords and Ladies, one of Pratchett's best, belongs to her as she starts the book as a thoroughly bored queen. But it is down to her to save the kingdom of Lancre from the threat of the multi-dimensional elves. She dons the garb of the Thor-like Queen Ynci and tears a swathe through the castle to rescue her friends. But in a wonderful Pratchettian twist about the power of stories, we find Queen Ynci never existed. She was invented to give the kingdom a romantic history.

4. The Librarian

Above all, Pratchett's Discworld series is a love letter to books, the power of reading and danger of living too much in stories. So who better to typify this than a magician turned orangutan who runs the library at the Unseen University?

Like Jason Ogg, the orangutan is another great craftsperson, taking pride in a job well done. He also has the one good scene in the largely terrible Sourcery.  A book that ends before it ever really gets started, it's only Pratchett's homage to Alien that stood out. When a team of evil magicians decide to loot the library, the Librarian becomes the Discworldian xenomorph, raining acidic hell upon these utter fools. Because there is no crime worse than ruining a library, is there?

Pyramids-15. Pteppic
Yep, so if you are a Discworld fan, you may be saying 'Graeme, you filthy cheat' right about now. But, in a series where Tiffany Aching, The Witches, The Watch, The Wizards and Death (among others) make regular appearances, Pteppic is a one book man. So I'm calling him as a supporting character. He's in one book out of 40. Even Jason Ogg is in more.

Pyramids is the standout book among Pratchett's early career. A wonderful look at religion and the dangers of fundamentalism, it's a delightful testing of your preconceptions about faith. Pteppic is the reluctant king returning to the kingdom of Djelibeybi after his father dies. His frustrations about how he has had to abandon his career as an assassin and go back home resonate with us all (maybe not the assassin part).

The book ends with a neat sign of how Pratchett developed as a writer. Our shared sense of stories would suggest Pteppic would be installed as the ruler of Djelibeybi at the book's end. But he's not that person, he's an assassin, and leaves the country in the safe hands of his half-sister Ptraci. And Pratchett only got better at messing with our expectations.


Who are your favourite bit characters of the Discworld universe?

a-ha!

(dal' se radovati ili strepiti, pitanje je sad...  :mrgreen:)



Steven Spielberg to direct adaptation of virtual reality novel Ready Player One

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/mar/26/steven-spielberg-direct-adaptation-virtual-reality-novel-ready-player-one (http://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/mar/26/steven-spielberg-direct-adaptation-virtual-reality-novel-ready-player-one)


Ernie Cline's 2011 science fiction tale centres on a teenager, Wade Watts, from the ghettos of 2044 Oklahoma who spends his time enveloped in an online utopia known as OASIS. Watts' main desire, like millions of others, is to uncover a mysterious "Easter Egg" which the game's late founder has stipulated will deliver his entire fortune into the virtual mitts of the player who uncovers it.

 
Spielberg, who helped define the science fiction genre for the blockbuster era with 70s and 80s films such as Close Encounters and ET, is expected to shoot Ready Player One after his forthcoming adaptation of Roald Dahl's The BFG. The movie will be his first entry into futuristic territory since 2005's War of the Worlds (not counting 2008's poorly-received Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.) Zak Penn, who co-wrote critically-reviled 2006 superhero sequel X-Men: The Last Stand, will oversee the screenplay.

The new film also marks Spielberg's first project at Warner Bros since 2001's A.I. Artificial Intelligence, the science fiction tale he inherited from the late Stanley Kubrick.

"We are thrilled to welcome Steven back to Warner Bros," said studio president Greg Silverman. "We had an historic series of collaborations in the 80s and 90s and have wanted to bring him back for years. As for Ready Player One, we have always felt that Steven was the dream director for this project."

While the book was published in 2011, the studio bought the rights in 2010 after a heated auction.

netrpeljivost raste na sve strane... soc/kulturni climate change.  :(


What a time to be alive! Liberals write for Breitbart, a cartoon girl in green and purple is a symbol of terror for the authoritarian Left, and now an online campaign with a manatee for a spokesperson is exposing political cliques in the world of science fiction and fantasy publishing.





In February, we reported on the "Sad Puppies" campaign, a tongue-in-cheek bid by science fiction & fantasy (SF&F) authors to draw attention to an atmosphere of political intolerance, driven by so-called "social justice warriors," that is holding the medium back. Spearheaded by authors Larry Correia and Brad R. Torgersen, the campaign sought to break the stranglehold of old cliques by encouraging a more politically diverse group of fans to take part in the annual Hugo Awards.

A week of rumours about the campaign's success were confirmed this Saturday with the announcement of the final Hugo Awards ballot. Authors and works endorsed by the Sad Puppies nominations slate swept the field, a reflection of just how many new fans the rebel authors have brought into the Hugo process.

Recommendations from Vox Day's allied Rabid Puppies slate also dominated. Indeed, in the categories of Best Novella, Best Short Story, and Best Novelette, the two slates swept the entire field, an astonishing achievement for a genre some considered to be wholly owned by the social justice tendency just a few short years ago.

It's worth noting that the Sad Puppies were not the first group to propose a slate of suggested nominations. The trend was started by former president of the Science Fiction Writers Guild of America, John Scalzi, who hosted an annual "award pimpage" post on his blog. British writer Charles Stross followed his example. But there was little semblance of a backlash to either Stross or Scalzi, who were both deeply embedded in the existing clique.

And yet, following today's news, the same people who fawned over Scalzi erupted in outrage, apparently because some of the Sad and Rabid Puppies organisers and authors are identified as libertarians — or even, shock horror, conservatives.

Earlier today, I tried to inform a Guardian contributor about Scalzi's record of nomination slates. I noticed he was preparing a story on the Hugo Awards, and, as a fellow journalist, I thought I'd provide him with some relevant information. His response was to block me.

It really is hard to part a man from his double standards. But the fact is, the Sad Puppies are playing by rules established by Scalzi and his clique — and they're winning.

CHORFs

The chief complaint from the Sad Puppies campaigners is the atmosphere of political intolerance and cliquishness that prevails in the sci-fi community. According to the libertarian sci-fi author Sarah A. Hoyt, whispering campaigns by insiders have been responsible for the de facto blacklisting of politically nonconformist writers across the sci-fi community. Authors who earn the ire of the dominant clique can expect to have a harder time getting published and be quietly passed over at award ceremonies.

As with GamerGate, the political biases of a small elite has led to the exclusion of those who think differently — even if they're in the majority.

Brad R. Torgersen, who managed this year's Sad Puppies campaign, spoke to Breitbart London about its success: "I am glad to be overturning the applecart. Numerous authors, editors, and markets have been routinely snubbed or ignored over the years because they were not popular inside WSFS or because their politics have made them radioactive."

Torgersen cites a host of authors who have suffered de facto exclusion from the sci-fi community: David Drake, David Weber, L.E Modesitt Jr, Kevn J. Anderson, Eric Flint, and of course Orson Scott Card — the creator of the world-famous Ender's Game, which was recently adapted into a successful movie. Despite his phenomenal success, Scott Card has been ostracized by sci-fi's inner circle thanks to his opposition to gay marriage.

Torgersen and Correia have a name for that inner circle. They call them the CHORFs – Cliquish, Holier-than-thou, Obnoxious, Reactionary, Fanatics. It's roughly equivalent to social justice warrior, the internet pejorative used to describe politically intolerant activists who use social shaming and abuse to dominate communities (while enthusiastically painting themselves as the victims of both).

The Humbling of Tor

The epicenter of the clique's influence is Tor books and its domineering editors, Patrick and Teresa Nielsen-Hayden. It also encompasses the ultra-progressive John Scalzi and his fans, who began the trend of nomination slates and bloc voting. The CHORFs' position as the only organized clique in sci-fi allowed them to dominate awards nominations for years. That's why the Sad Puppies are such a shock to the system.

Tor Books claimed the Locus Award for best publisher for 26 years in a row, and has won 38 of 156 Hugo nominations in the last 30 years. In 2014, when Tor.com was founded, it claimed 50 percent of short story nominations at the Hugos, 40 percent of novella nominations, and 20 percent of the novelette nominations. Its influence allowed widely-ridiculed, sub-Tumblr standard works of fiction such as If You Were a Dinosaur My Love and Chicks Dig Time Lords to make the ballot.

The Sad Puppies campaign (originally called "Sad Puppies Think of the Children" — a dig at activists who use faux empathy to win social acceptance) was conceived by bestselling author Larry Correia in 2013. Correia hoped to force the CHORF clique into the sunlight by threatening their status. Instead of welcoming the arrival of new, politically diverse fans to the community, Correia predicted that the CHORFs would engage in an angry backlash to protect their influence.

He was not disappointed. As news of the Sad Puppies' success trickled into the CHORFs' network of insiders this week, they began a very public meltdown. In a thousand-plus page discussion on Teresa Nielsen-Hayden's site, the clique left readers with no illusion about the fact that new fans were not welcome.

With no basis whatsoever, both Patrick and Teresa Nielsen-Hayden suggested that the influx of new nominators were not "true" sci-fi fans, and threatened to unleash "fannish wrath" against the new arrivals:

Quote"Those of us who love SF and love fandom know in our hearts that the Hugo is ours. One of the most upsetting things about the Sad Puppy campaigns is that they're saying the Hugo shouldn't belong to all of us, it should just belong to them.

"The Hugos don't belong to the set of all people who read the genre; they belong to the worldcon, and the people who attend and/or support it. The set of all people who read SF can start their own award."

Who knows what we should call the fans who don't meet Nielsen-Hayden's approval. Wrongfans, perhaps. Or "the vast majority of the reading public."

Strip away the spin, and what Nielsen-Hayden is actually saying is that the Hugo Awards belong to Tor books and their associated in-group. The anger of the Nielsen-Haydens has less to do with principles, and more to do with the fact that only three Tor-published works made the final ballot this year. Compared to their performance in previous years, this is a humiliating defeat.

The backlash begins

Naturally, many of the clique's members are trying to claim foul play. Some argue that campaigning for nominations is inherently unfair — despite the fact that CHORF-approved authors like John Scalzi and Charles Stross have openly campaigned for Hugo votes and nominations in the past.

Others argue that the Sad Puppies campaign is a vehicle of self-promotion for its creator, Larry Correia. Allegations that he is using the slate to advance his own works have dogged him since 2013. This year, however, he put a stop to the allegations once and for all by turning down his own nomination. Correia always maintained that he has no interest in winning or being nominated for an award, and now he has proven it.

Perhaps the most bizarre allegation is the claim that supporters of the Sad Puppies constitute their own clique, and are trying to achieve dominance for conservative and libertarian authors. The presence of liberals and progressives like Anne Bellet, Kary English, and Rajnar Vajra on the nomination slate appears to have escaped critics. Correia, Hoyt, Torgerson and others have always maintained that their goal is to end political intolerance in sci-fi, not reinforce it.

It's likely that the CHORFs are simply projecting their own behavior on to others. When you've been engaging in political intolerance for so many years, it must be hard to imagine that anyone thinks differently. As soon as news of the Hugo nominations began to spread, these closed-minded bigots — there is no other word — started angrily discussing options to deny the Sad Puppies a fair shot at prizes. Instead of actually reading and evaluating authors, they are now discussing voting for "No Award" — the Hugo equivalent of spoiling your ballot paper.

The #GamerGate of sci-fi

Despite the outrage, the Sad Puppies campaign has been a resounding success. A new class of sci-fi fans has been introduced to the process, and the CHORF clique has suffered a major, and perhaps fatal, blow to its authority. The dominance of TOR books and its associated clique has been broken, and publishing houses that respect political diversity, such as Baen Books and Castalia House, now have a seat at the table.

Vox Day, Lead Editor of Castalia House, commented on the nominations:

Quote
I'm very pleased that science fiction readers so strongly supported the Sad Puppies recommendations. It's fantastic to see John C. Wright, one of the true grandmasters of science fiction, finally receiving some long-overdue recognition. It's a real privilege to publish him and we're delighted to learn that his six Hugo nominations this year set a new record.

A professional game designer and early supporter of #GamerGate, Day credited the gamers' rebellion with giving hope to sci-fi fans.



The connection between Sad Puppies and #GamerGate is that both groups are striking back against the left-wing control freaks who have subjected science fiction to ideological control for two decades and are now attempting to do the same thing in the game industry. #GamerGate has shown people in science fiction, in fantasy, in comics, and even in journalism that you don't have to hide what you truly think anymore because SJWs are going to attack you and try to drive you out of a job. You can read, write, develop, and play what you want without fear of their disapproval.

Vox Day is well known in the sci-fi community as a right-winger. But people of all political persuasions have rallied to his call for intellectual, political and creative freedom. That, ultimately, is what the Sad Puppies hope to achieve — a community where creativity and artistic merit count for everything, and where social and political conformity count for nothing.

Sci-fi fans, gamers and comic-book readers. Students and academics. Liberals, libertarians and conservatives. It seems that fandoms and online communities everywhere are waking up to the new menace of political intolerance, authoritarianism, ostracism and so-called "social justice."

This is particularly apparent online, where the tactics of shaming and social exclusion take place in full public view rather than in backroom whispering campaigns — and where the oppressed have access to precisely the same tools the oppressors do.

The Sad Puppies have struck a blow for creative and intellectual freedom. But their campaign is just one part of a wider movement against the forces of the authoritarian left, whose allies are decreasing by the day. Whether they are called CHORFs, SJWs or Stepford Students, authoritarians, finger-waggers, bullies and panic-mongers are facing a backlash across dozens of fronts as the defiant spirit of GamerGate floods into other fandoms.

Ordinary people are utterly fed up with the dominance of cliquish culture warriors whose bizarre opinions do not reflect those of the majority. They are fed up with being told what to do, what to believe, and whom to exclude. Wherever and whoever they may be, crusaders for political and social conformity are in the midst of a storm. And that storm is only just beginning.

by Allum Bokhari4 Apr 2015
http://www.breitbart.com/london/2015/04/04/hugo-awards-nominations-swept-by-anti-sjw-anti-authoritarian-authors/ (http://www.breitbart.com/london/2015/04/04/hugo-awards-nominations-swept-by-anti-sjw-anti-authoritarian-authors/)

Biće toga još. Na tone.

Nemam dovoljno prevrtanja očima za ovu rečenicu (tipičnu za ceo tekst): "As with GamerGate, the political biases of a small elite has led to the exclusion of those who think differently — even if they're in the majority."

Sajt sa koga je tekst, www.breitbart.com (http://www.breitbart.com) , ima više veze sa republikancima nego sa bilo kakvom fantastikom, pa iz tog ugla treba i tekst posmatrati. Cilj onih koji rade na sajtu nije diverzitet nego promocija njihove strane.

jeste, ali ipak ima veze i sa fantastikom, zato sto ovakav diskurs lako doseze do nje.  :(
ove godine postaje sve vise vidljivo da cilj nije vise u dobijanju argumenta, nego je sad cilj naprosto unakaraditi okolis do te mere da ce se mnogi na kraju odmaci u znak predaje, prosto zato sto su ovakva prepucavanja stvarno iscrpljujuca, pogotovo za one kojima se ovakvim blogovima ime uporno razvlaci po netu.
znaci, prosle godine su se donekle i natezali, u pokusaju da isteraju svoje, ali sad vec izgleda da se ide uglavnom na Pirovu pobedu.

iiii... još malko kerozina na vatricu:

http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/016194.html (http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/016194.html)

http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/016177.html (http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/016177.html)

Krajnje je fascinantan osećaj kad čovek shvati koliko to neki naizgled zdravorazumski komentari zapravo imaju veze i za razumom i sa zdravljem...  :shock:

A ono jes :( Nisu se proslavili ni jedni ni drugi. Blogovi su bukvalno zatrpani objašnjenjima kako glasanje funkcioniše i kako će ko glasati eda bi naškodio suprotnoj strani.
Sve ovo počinje da podseća na Racefail histeriju kad su neki realno postojeći sistemski problemi... hm... zahvatili slučajne prolaznike.

Baš tako, može se lepo videti da su svi ti 'netgejtovi' sazdani od istih segmenata. Cela ova afera, dakle ne samo od prošle godine nego i pre toga, je zapravo model geneze: Vox Day je prisutan kao pisac već 15 godina, i lako je dokazivo da je on stvarno osrednji pisac, svrni samo pogled na njegovu prozu i sve će ti biti jasno. Ali dok je to tinjalo na tom nekom uredničkom nivou, bilo je vrlo malo tu iakkvog 'gejt' materijala, i tek kad se ta konfrontacija prenela jedan nivo niže, kad su se uključili neki poznatiji pisci/urednici (vandermeer, recimo, i skalzi, mada je ovaj potonji bio umereniji), onda je prepirka tu uključila i neke aspekte koji nemaju veze sa prozom, nego sa Vox Dayovim svetonazorom, a to je ne  samo prelilo čašu, nego je i razbilo.

Jer da se razumemo, ja smatram da Vox Day ima ista ustavna prava na svetonazor koliko i svi ostali, a to što je odabrao konzervativni, pa, to je njegovo pravo. Konzervativni svetonazor možda jeste danas nepoželjan, ali svakako nije ilegalan.

A Vox Day je sasvim lepo iskoristio upravo te i takve napade, jer ono što mu manjka na književnom talentu on silno nadoknađuje na lukavosti, pa se on tek onda silno razbacao sa ultra-provokativnim i ekstremno kontroverznim stavovima, tipa da čovek mora da ima pištolj, makar da se brani od crnaca u komšiluku. Na šta su naravno svi udarili u dreku da je on zapravo neonaci WASP bigot, što je on lako osporio faktom da je zapravo rasni mešanac irca, indijanca i meksikanca.

I sve tako redom, lepo se videlo koliko su brzoplete optužbe zapravo kontraproduktivne, plus su metodično eskalirale 'sukob' na treći i najniži nivo najšire interent zajednice, nivo koji nema veze niti sa prozom niti sa svetonazorom, nego uglavnom sa samopromivisanjem i pljuvanjem kao razonodom.

I sad je to to, tu sad više nema popravke. Bar ne na ovaj način, konfrontacija i napljuvavanje.

http://maryrobinettekowal.com/journal/please-stop-with-the-death-threats-and-the-hate-mail/ (http://maryrobinettekowal.com/journal/please-stop-with-the-death-threats-and-the-hate-mail/)

E sad, znam da su svi rekli šta su imali povodom tužne & besne kučadi, ali ovaj GRRMov osvrt me se baš dojmio, donekle zato što je jako blizak mom pogledu na aferu a donekle i zato što je dobro stavlja u kontekst pa tumači iz tog ugla, otud i jeste vidljivije zašto i kako su sukobi svetonazora upravo korisni na uredničkom nivou (taman onoliko koliko su štetni i jadni na svakom ostalom). 

Quote

Me and the Hugos

Apr. 8th, 2015 at 7:13 PM



Let me begin with the basics:

Who owns the Hugo Awards?

You know, looking back, I am probably partly to blame for some of the misconceptions that seem to exist on this point. For years now I have been urging people to nominate for the Hugo Awards, and saying things like "this is your award" and "this award belongs to the fans, the readers." I felt, and still feel, that wider participation would be a good thing. Thousands of fans vote for the Hugos most years, but until recently only hundreds ever bothered to nominate.

Still my "it is your award" urgings were not entirely accurate.

Truth is, the Hugo Awards belong to worldcon. The World Science Fiction Convention.

The first worldcon was held in 1939, when 200 fans got together in New York City. The first Hugo Awards were given in 1953, at a worldcon in Philadelphia. No awards were given in 1954, but in 1955 they returned, and have been an annual tradition ever since. Me, I was five years old in 1953, so it was some years later when I became aware of the Hugos. Can't recall exactly when. I did become aware, though... and I soon learned that "Hugo Award Winner" on the cover of a book meant I had a damned good read in my hands.

I attended my first worldcon in 1971. Noreascon I, in Boston. By then I was already a "filthy pro," with two -- count 'em, two -- short story sales to my credit, and another half-dozen stories in my backpack that I thought I could show to editors at the con. (Hoo hah. Doesn't work that way. The last thing an editor wants is someone thrusting a manuscript at him during a party, when he's trying to drink and flirt and dicuss the state of the field. What can I say? I was green. It was my second con, my first worldcon). In those days, the Hugo Awards were presented at a banquet. I did not have the money to buy a banquet ticket (I was sleeping on the floor of a fan friend, since I did not have the money for a hotel room either), but they let the non-ticket-holders into the balcony afterwards, and I got to watch Robert Silverberg present the Hugos. Silverbob was elegant, witty, urbane, the winners were thrilled, everyone was well-dressed, and by the end of the evening I knew (1) I wanted to be a part of this world, and (2) one day, I wanted to win a Hugo. Rocket lust. I had it bad.

((Never believe anyone who states loudly and repeatedly that they don't care about awards, especially if they don't care about one award in particular. Aesop saw through that okey-doke centuries ago. Boy, them grapes are sour. If you don't care about something, you don't think about it, or talk about it, or try to change the rules so you get one. The people who keep shouting that they don't care if they ever win a Hugo are the ones who want one the most, take that to the bank)).

Two years later, the worldcon was in Toronto... and I still did not have enough money for the banquet, even though I was an awards nominee. Not for a Hugo, though. That was the first year they gave the John W. Campbell "new writer" award, and I was one of the nominees. Toastmaster Lester del Rey, for reasons known only to him, presented the awards in reverse order, starting with Best Novel and ending with this new award, so by the time he got to the Campbell, the hall was largely empty except for the nominees. I lost. (But went on to sell an anthology of stories by the Campbell nominees, so in that way the award did a huge amount for me). But hey, it was an honor just to be nominated. (It really was. It really is).

The next year, in Washington DC, I lost my first Hugo. "With Morning Comes Mistfall," nominated in Short Story. The same story lost the Nebula earlier that year. (By a single vote, the sitting SFWA president told me afterwards... which impressed on me right then that Every Vote Matters). At Discon I finally had enough money to buy a banquet ticket. I sat at a table with several other nominees. They all lost as well. Meanwhile, one table over, the rockets were piling up. We all made jokes about being at the wrong table.

Then came 1975. Worldcon was in Australia. I could not afford to go, even though I was once again a Hugo nominee, this time in novella. "A Song for Lya" became my first Hugo winner, in an upset over the Robert Silverberg novella that had earlier won the Nebula. Ben Bova (editor of ANALOG) accepted on my behalf. I was sleeping when they rang me up to tell me. Thought I was dreaming. But no, it was real. The rocket arrived a few months later (Ben Bova gave it to Gordy Dickson who gave it to Joe Haldeman who presented it to me at Windycon).

I have won a few more Hugos since, most notably at Noreascon II, where I won two. That was especially satisfying. The same city, the same hotel, and the same toastmaster as in 1971, when I'd stood in the balcony lusting after rockets. Dreams can come true, I told the crowd when Silverbob gave me the first Hugo. When he gave me the second, he chided me for being greedy. The crowd laughed, and so did I.

I will always treasure those memories. One of the greatest nights of my life.

I returned to losing the next year, at Denvention. Have won a few and lost a few more in the years and decades since. But I never fail to attend the ceremonies, and I never ever fail to nominate and vote (well, okay, I think I missed a year in there when I lost track of the date).

That's the short version of Me & the Hugos, or What the Rocket Means to Me.

You will all have noted, no doubt, a common thread here: worldcon.

The Hugos belong to worldcon.

Once upon a time, not so very long ago, worldcon was the center of fandom. It was the oldest convention, the largest convention, the annual "gathering of the tribes" where fans of all sorts got together. Regionals were few and far between until the 70s, and even when they became more numerous, none of them ever came near Labor Day, worldcon's traditional dates. Comics fans came to worldcon, "media fans" came to worldcon (though the term "media fan" did not exist), costumers and filk-singers came to worldcon, game-players came to worldcon (though there was not much gaming, and the term "gamer" did not exist either). In time, though, as each of these sub-fandoms grew larger, they began to split off and form their own conventions. Suddenly you had comic cons, and Star Trek cons, and costume cons, and so on. Worldcon still offered panels and tracks for these areas, but fans whose main interest was in Trek or comic books or costuming began to drift away. The World Fantasy Con was born, for those whose interest was more in fantasy and horror than in SF. "Book cons" were born, like Readercon, for the prose lovers.

Worldcon continued... but the steady growth that had characterized worldcon through the 60s and 70s stopped. That 1984 worldcon in LA remained the largest one in history until last year at London. Meanwhile San Diego Comicon and Gencon and Dragoncon grew bigger than worldcon... twice the size, ten times the size, twenty times the size... Dragoncon even went so far as to break with a half-century old fannish tradition by moving to Labor Day, worldcon's traditional date, a date that had up to then been inviolate. And why not? Dragoncon's attendees were fans, sure, they were comics fans and Star Wars fans and cosplay fans, and some were even book fans... but they were not "trufans," as that term was commonly used, and they didn't care when worldcon was.

(The term "trufans" is an unfortunate one in this argument, since some of the Sad Puppies and their supporters take it amiss, and understandly, when told they don't qualify. The term is a very old one, however, probably dates back to THE ENCHANTED DUPLICATOR, a parody of PILGRIM'S PROGRESS about the search for "true fandom." Like "SMOF," it is at least partially a joke. And if any of this paragraph makes any sense to you, you are undoubtedly a trufan... but don't worry, you don't need to know what a mimeograph machine is to be a real fan, I swear).

You can still make a case for worldcon being the center of fandom as recently as 1984... but after that, well, "fandom" began to assume new meanings. There was no longer just one fandom, there were several. Comics fandom, media fandom, etc.

That's all great. I have attended many comicons over the years (I attended the very first one, even before my first SF con). I have written for TV and film, and been a guest at media cons. I love comics, I love TV, and I love film... but most of all, I love books, which is why I go to worldcon every year. There are many fandoms now, but worldcon fandom is MY fandom.

And worldcon fandom owns the Hugos.

Worldcon fans invented them, tended them, wrote the rules, designed the rockets. Worldcon fans tradmarked the name, and defended the mark when other (non fannish, none SF) groups tried to give their own Hugo awards. And it is because of all this history, all this passion, all this care, that the Hugo has remained the most prestigious and best known award in our field.

(In my Not So Humble Opinion, anyway).

Other conventions have other awards. Wiscon has the Tiptrees. The World Fantasy Con presents the World Fantasy Awards, or Howards. The Bram Stokers are given by the HWA, the Nebulas by SFWA. Libertarians have the Prometheus Awards, though I don't know where they give them out. I just came back from Norwescon, where they handed out the Philip K. Dick Award. We used to have Balrogs and the Gandalfs, but they went away. The Japanese have the Seiun awards, the Spanish have the Gigameshs, the Czechs the Newts. Australians have Ditmars, Canadians Auroras. Gamers have Origins Awards, comic fans have Inkpots and Eisners.

I don't denigrate any of these awards. I've won an Inkpot, I've handed out an Eisner. I won a Balrog too, but it was smashed before it reached me. I have a Newt and a bunch of Gigameshs and even a Seiun. Awards are cool. Awards are fun. Or should be. I don't expect I will ever win a Tiptree or a Prometheus or a Dick, but that's fine, I applaud them all the same. Writing is a hard gig, man. Any recognition is a plus. Big or small, any award is a pat on the back, a way of saying, "hey, you did good," and we all need that from time to time.

If the Sad Puppies wanted to start their own award... for Best Conservative SF, or Best Space Opera, or Best Military SF, or Best Old-Fashioned SF the Way It Used to Be... whatever it is they are actually looking for... hey, I don't think anyone would have any objections to that. I certainly wouldn't. More power to them.

But that's not what they are doing here, it seems to me. Instead they seem to want to take the Hugos and turn them into their own awards. Hey, anyone is welcome to join worldcon, to become part of worldcon fandom... but judging by the comments on the Torgesen and Correia sites, a lot of the Puppies seem to actively hate worldcon and the people who attend it, and want nothing to do with us. They want to determine who gets the Ditmars, but they don't want to be Australians.

The prestige of the Hugo does not derive from the number of people voting on it. If numbers were all that counted, worldcon should hand the awards over to Dragoncon and be done with it. (Though I am not sure that Dragoncon would care. Years ago, the LOCUS awards used to be presented at Dragoncon. I attended one of those ceremonies, the last time I went to Dragoncon. Charles Brown handed out the awards in a cavernous hotel ballroom that was ninety per cent empty. The same ballroom was filled up standing room only for the following event, a Betty Page Look-Alike Contest. Which tells you what Dragoncon attendees were interested in. Which tells you what Dragoncon attendees were interested in... and hey, I like Betty Page too. A few years later, LOCUS moved its awards to Westercon, where they always draw a big crowd.

The prestige of the Hugo derives from its history. The worth of any award is determined in large part by the people who have won it. Would I love to win the Hugo for Best Novel some day? You're damned right I would. But not because I need another rocket to gather dust on my mantle, as handsome as the Hugo trophies are. I want one because Robert A. Heinlein won four, because Roger Zelazny and Alfred Bester and Ursula K. Le Guin and Fritz Leiber and Walter M. Miller Jr and Isaac Asimov and Frederik Pohl and so many other giants have won the same award. That's a club that any science fiction and fantasy writer should be thrilled to join.

Only... here's the caveat... I wouldn't want to join the club because I was part of someone's slate, or because my readers were better organized or more vocal than the fans of other authors. It is not easy to win a Hugo, and it is especially hard to win the Big One -- Hugo voters a tough crowd, one might say -- but if that honor ever does come to one of my books, I hope it is because the voters did actually, honestly believe I wrote the best novel of the year, a work worthy to stand on the shelf beside LORD OF LIGHT and THE LEFT HAND OF DARKNESS and STAND ON ZANZIBAR and THE FOREVER WAR and GATEWAY and SPIN and...

Elsewise, hell, what's the point? I can go down to the trophy shop and buy myself all the bowling trophies I want, if the point is just the hardware.

Which brings me to the subject of campaigning, but I will address that another day, in another post. I have a couple of other things I want to discuss first.

[[Once again, comments and dissent are welcome, but I expect courtesy from all parties. And yes, that means those of you who are on "my side" as well. Let's not throw around insults, or charges of misogyny and racism, please. And Puppies, sad or happy, if any of you feel inclined to reply, please avoid the term "Social Justice Warriors" or SJWs. I am happy to call you Sad Puppies since you named yourself that, but I know of no one, be they writer or fan, who calls themselves a social justice warrior. Offending or insulting posts will be deleted. We can disagree here, but let's try for respectful disagreement.]]

http://grrm.livejournal.com/417521.html (http://grrm.livejournal.com/417521.html)

... a evo kako je to izgledalo nekad davno, kad su disovi imali stila:mrgreen::


Flannery O'Connor Dissing Ayn Rand in 1960

Flannery O'Connor was both one of America's greatest short story writers and one of our greatest snarky critics. Case in point, the following comments on objectivist "philosopher" and Atlas Shrugged author Ayn Rand:


I hope you don't have friends who recommend Ayn Rand to you. The fiction of Ayn Rand is as low as you can get re fiction. I hope you picked it up off the floor of the subway and threw it in the nearest garbage pail. She makes Mickey Spillane look like Dostoevsky.

Burn.

Hat tip to Bibliokept for finding that in a 1960 letter between O'Connor and Maryat Lee. The full letter is collected in The Habit of Being.

Here are a few other killer O'Connor quotes:

"Everywhere I go, I'm asked if I think the universities stifle writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. There's many a bestseller that could have been prevented by a good teacher."

"I use the grotesque the way I do because people are deaf and dumb and need help to see and hear."

"Anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days."

"Whenever I'm asked why Southern writers particularly have a penchant for writing about freaks, I say it is because we are still able to recognize one."

"I don't deserve any credit for turning the other cheek as my tongue is always in it."


http://electricliterature.com/flannery-oconnor-throwing-shade-at-ayn-rand-in-1960/ (http://electricliterature.com/flannery-oconnor-throwing-shade-at-ayn-rand-in-1960/)

Ursula Le Guin at 85 (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05pkmyg)

(https://www.znaksagite.com/diskusije/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.sfsignal.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2015%2F04%2FGollancz-200.jpg&hash=1c4877abf12a0ab7f6918cf0e765ed6fec197976)Gollancz Announces New Publishing Project for Ursula K. Le Guin

(http://www.gollancz.co.uk/2015/04/gollancz-reveals-extensive-new-publishing-plans-for-ursula-k-le-guin/)

Gollancz reveals extensive new publishing plans for Ursula K. Le Guin.

Gollancz, an imprint of the Orion Publishing Group, is thrilled to announce a far-reaching new publishing project for Ursula K. Le Guin. Gollancz has acquired UK and Commonwealth Rights to five significant novels, two short story collections, a volume of selected non-fiction, as well as eBook rights to twelve widely-acclaimed novels including A Wizard of Earthsea and The Dispossessed amongst others.

Gollancz's announcement coincides with the initial broadcast of a BBC Radio 4 Ursula K. Le Guin documentary (today, 11.30am, BBC Radio 4) where Naomi Alderman talks to Ursula K. Le Guin about her life and work and hears from literary fans such as David Mitchell. The documentary will be followed by two BBC Radio 4 dramatizations of Left Hand of Darkness (starts 12 April, BBC Radio 4) and Earthsea (starts 27 April, BBC Radio 4 Extra)

Deputy CEO of the Orion Publishing Group, Malcolm Edwards, bought UK and Commonwealth rights from Susan Smith of MBA acting for Ginger Clark of Curtis Brown in New York.

Gillian Redfearn, Publishing Director of Gollancz, said: 'Ursula K. Le Guin is one of the world's finest writers, in or out of genre, and we're delighted to have concluded this deal to add more of her novels to our SF Masterworks list and to publish eBooks of so many of her great SF and Fantasy works. It's particularly pleasing to welcome the Earthsea books back to Gollancz, where we first published them in hardback over four decades ago.'

The deal includes rights to publish Hugo Award-winner The Word for World is Forest and the ground-breaking Always Coming Home in paperback and eBook.

Gollancz will also publish a paperback omnibus edition of the early "Hainish" novels – Rocannon's World, Planet of Exile, and City of Illusions – and an omnibus volume of selected non-fiction to be compiled by the author and drawn from previous ground-breaking works including The Language of the Night, The Wave in the Mind and Dancing at the End of the World.

Two important short story collections, The Wind's Twelve Quarters and The Compass Rose, will also be published in a paperback omnibus.

The "Hainish" novels, non-fiction titles and short story collections mentioned above will also be published individually as eBooks.

Most excitingly, Gollancz will also publish eBooks of the widely acclaimed Earthsea series, comprising A Wizard of Earthsea, The Tombs of Atuan, The Farthest Shore, Tehanu, Tales From Earthsea and The Other Wind. Other titles to be published as eBooks include A Very Long Way from Anywhere Else, The Eye of the Heron and Unlocking the Air, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (please see overleaf for a full list of titles). The eBooks will be published as part of an on-going programme over the coming years.

The books will be published as part of Gollancz's popular SF Masterworks and Fantasy Masterworks list that aims to showcase landmark works of science fiction and fantasy from the 20th century. Current SF Masterworks By Ursula K. Le Guin – The Dispossessed and The Lathe of Heaven – will also receive eBook editions for the first time in the UK.

Ursula K. Le Guin was the winner of the 2014 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters at the National Book Awards. Her books have won many awards including the National Book Award, the Hugo and Nebula Awards and a Newbery Honour. Her recent series, the Annals of the Western Shore, has won her the PEN Center USA Children's literature award and the Nebula Award for best novel. She has been recognised for almost fifty years as one of the most important writers in the SF field – and is likewise feted beyond the confines of the genre. Her books have attracted millions of devoted readers and won many awards. Among her novels, The Left Hand of Darkness, The Dispossessed and the six books of Earthsea have attained undisputed classic status. She lives in Portland, Oregon.

About Gollancz: Gollancz is the oldest specialist SF & Fantasy publisher in the UK. Founded in 1927 and with a continuous SF publishing programme dating back to 1961, the imprint of the Orion Publishing Group is home to a galaxy of award-winning and bestselling authors. Through our long-running SF and Fantasy Masterworks programme, and major digital initiative the SF Gateway, Gollancz has one of the largest ranges of SF and Fantasy of any publisher in the world.

PAPERBACK & EBOOK EDITIONS
1.The Word for World is Forest * 12 March 2015 * Mass Market Paperback £8.99/eBook £4.99
2.Always Coming Home * 8 October 2015 * Mass Market Paperback * £9.99/eBook £5.99

PAPERBACK ONLY EDITIONS
1.The Wind's Twelve Quarters and The Compass Rose * 9 July 2015 * Mass Market Paperback £9.99
2.Worlds of Exile and Illusion * 17 September 2015 * Mass Market Paperback £9.99

SELECTED NON-FICTION * 16 June 2016 * Trade Paperback £18.99

EBOOK ONLY EDITIONS (publication dates and prices TBC)
1.A Wizard of Earthsea
2.The Toms of Atuan
3.The Farthest Shore
4.Tehanu
5.Tales From Earthsea
6.The Other Wind
7.The Dispossessed
8.The Lathe of Heaven
9.The Language of the Night
10.The Wave of the Mind
11.Dancing at the End of the World
12.The Wind's Twelve Quarters
13.The Compass Rose
14.Rocannon's World
15.Planet of Exile
16.City of Illusions
17.A Very Long Way From Anywhere Else
18.The Eye of the Heron
19.The Beginning Place
20.Searoad
21.Buffalo Gals
22.Unlocking the Air

 
   

Read Them Now, Watch Them Later: Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Adaptation Watch (April 2015 Edition)


The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester

Alfred Bester's classic science-fiction novel, The Stars My Destination, is one of my favorites. I was thrilled to learn that Paramount Pictures is in talks to acquire feature film rights for the book. Obviously, it's still way too early in the development stages to talk about casting, but that doesn't make the news any less exciting for fans of the book, like myself.

The Stars My Destinationis a science-fiction story that first appeared in serialized form within the pages of Galaxy Magazine in late 1956. The original title was "Tiger! Tiger!"—a reference to both the tigerlike tattoo worn by its main protagonist and the William Blake poem "The Tyger," the first stanza of which prefaces the book. The story follows common man Gulliver "Gully" Foyle on his quest for revenge against the people who left him stranded and alone on a derelict spaceship. In that regard, the story can be easily seen as a futuristic retelling of The Count of Monte Cristo, although Bester said the premise was inspired by a National Geographic article he read about a shipwrecked man ignored by passing ships for fear of it being a trap. In his story, Bester depicts an intriguing futuristic society where personal teleportation via mental control (called "jaunting") is possible.



Broken Monsters by Lauren Beukes

Broken Monsters is a harrowing tale about an inner-city Detroit detective named Gabriella Versado. She investigates a series of bizarre supernatural murders committed by a demented criminal mastermind who is, among other things, experimenting with human taxidermy. Gabriella is also a single mother whose teenage daughter decides to flirt with a possible online predator.

It's been reported that the production company Additional Dialogue, after a four-way bidding war, has acquired the rights to develop Lauren Beukes' supernatural suspense novel. The plan is to adapt the novel for television as a dramatic series. This one is also in early development stages; right now they are trying to put together the creative team to lead the project. Meanwhile, another Lauren Beukes novel, Zoo City, was optioned back in 2012.




The 5th Wave by Rick Yancey

What hope does humanity have when aliens attack Earth in the near future? That's the question addressed in Rick Yancey's popular novel The 5th Wave. The attack of the aliens comes in waves and the four previous attacks left relatively few human survivors. Young Cassie is one of them. Along with her father and brother, Cassie is sequestered to a holding facility, but protection may not be so easily obtained. Soon, Cassie is on the run from the human-looking invaders and trying to save her brother.

Filming for the movie adaptation of The 5th Wave is already complete; Sony Pictures Entertainment has this one in post-production. The action-adventure film has a screenplay by Susannah Grant (Erin Brockovich) and is being directed by J. Blakeson. Stars include Chloë Grace Moretz, Nick Robinson, Ron Livingston, Maggie Siff, and Liev Schreiber. Expect this one to hit theaters early next year. That should give you plenty of time to read the book first.



Brilliance by Marcus Sakey

The Brilliance Saga by Marcus Sakey is a series set in a world where 1 percent of children born sine 1980 possess superhuman abilities. Brilliance, the first book in the series, follows Nick Cooper, one of these so-called "brilliants." Nick is a federal agent whose special powers assist him in hunting terrorists. In fact, they make him one of the best. His latest target is another brilliant bent on initiating a civil war between those who possess special abilities and those who don't...though the story tends to focus on the social aspect of that premise.

If there weren't already enough superhero films hitting theaters in the coming years (not that I'm complaining), you can add Brilliance to that list. Legendary Pictures actually acquired the film rights to Brilliance before the book was even released in 2013. The screenplay is being written by David Koepp, screenwriter of the blockbusters Jurassic Park and Spider-Man. I'm glad to see he has some superhero credentials on his resume as they might come in handy.Station Eleven - SF Signal



Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

Station Eleven is something of a sensation, and rightfully so. It's a fascinating character study set against a post-apocalyptic landscape 20 years after a devastating virus has killed off 99% of the world's population. The characters in question are related in some way to a band of musicians and actors that travel the Great Lakes region entertaining survivors. It's my pick for the most accessible book from this month's adaptations, since it's less about the apocalypse and more about the lives we lead and the relationships we form. The non-linear narrative only makes it more interesting because pieces of the overall picture fall into place in interesting ways.

Now, it's been reported that the New York Times best-seller has been optioned for both TV and film rights by Producer Scott Steindorff in a six-figure deal. Casting has not yet started, but I imagine that won't last long as Station Eleven has received much media attention and more so than most novels that can be classified as science fiction.

http://youtu.be/aJJrkyHas78 (http://youtu.be/aJJrkyHas78)

A new trailer for the Fantastic Four reboot is out. Here's the synopsis from 20th Century Fox:


"Fantastic Four," a contemporary re-imagining of Marvel's original and longest-running superhero team, centers on four young outsiders who teleport to an alternate and dangerous universe, which alters their physical form in shocking ways. Their lives irrevocably upended, the team must learn to harness their daunting new abilities and work together to save Earth from a former friend turned enemy.




http://youtu.be/_rRoD28-WgU (http://youtu.be/_rRoD28-WgU)

 

Science-Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Retellings

By John DeNardo on April 22, 2015

Somewhere on the spectrum of story ideas, between original story and full-fledged adaptation to another medium, sits a group of stories that can be classified as retellings. A retelling is essentially telling the same or similar story in a different way, often from new perspectives and with new elements that offer something new for the reader of the original. Retellings can be thinly disguised, or they can be redressed entirely to other settings and genres, but no matter how they are told, retellings can be fun and imaginative in their own unique way.

Science fiction, fantasy and horror are no strangers to retellings. Here are several recent retellings that wear sf/f/h clothing.

The Diabolical Miss Hyde by Viola Carr
(https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/5138qSmfluL._UY250_.jpg)

If you're going to base a retelling on a classic story, you could do much worse than The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson, the story of a London lawyer who investigates the odd occurrences surrounding his old friend, Dr. Henry Jekyll, and the evil Edward Hyde, who turns out to be Jekyll's alter ego. Viola Carr's The Diabolical Miss Hyde not only leverages Stevenson's classic, but also puts a steampunk spin on it. The lead character is Dr. Eliza Jekyll, the daughter of Dr. Henry Jekyll and a crime scene investigator. In the book, Eliza pursues a dangerous murderer known as "The Slicer" who preys on young women in an alternate Victorian London. Eliza uses her wits and newfangled technological gadgets to catch criminals. But she has another secret weapon, too: by drinking her father's forbidden magical elixir, her second hidden self emerges. This is a dark ability that has not gone unnoticed by the mysterious Royal Society, who send their enforcer to expose Eliza while she tries to catch the criminal.



Poison and Charm by Sarah Pinborough
(https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51ikbuo6XOL._UY250_.jpg)(https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51l3th8wqgL._UY250_.jpg)
Sometimes retellings appeal to new audiences by modernizing the classics. Take, for example, the popular German folklore tale of Snow White. Walt Disney may have made it popular to moviegoing audiences (while changing up the story somewhat in the process, too), but it was the Brothers Grimm who put it in the hands of readers more than a century beforehand. Now, Sarah Pinborough tells her version of Snow White in her novel Poison. To create the story, she enumerated all the themes of the story—the jealousies, the attempted Retoldmurder and the passion—and imagined them occurring in today's world as actions taken by real people. Her modern story images the jealous queen who harbors her own secrets and sorrows. She imagines Snow White as a girl who just likes to have a good time. She put them in a warring kingdom and out emerged a captivating and realistic fairy tale for adults. And when you're finished with that and craving more, Pinborough's Charm gives Cinderella the same treatment.


Alias Hook by Lisa Jensen

(https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/61aEeyvlxvL._UY250_.jpg)
Sometimes retellings examine the same events as the original story, sometimes they look at what comes after. Alias Hook looks at what happens after the events that unfolded in J.M. Barrie's classic novel Peter Pan. The book puts the nefarious Captain Hook in the role as narrator, thus making him a much more sympathetic character, and not just some mad, revenge-seeking pirate who goes after a boy who never grows up. In Alias Hook, Lisa Jensen portrays Hook as the victim of a gang of mischievous youAlias Hook-2ng boys who, despite evidence to the contrary, did not meet his end in the jaws of a crocodile. The stage is thus set for an adult woman named Stella Parrish to dream her way into Neverland where she learns for herself that Hook, a far more complex man than legends would have you believe, is just a normal person looking for redemption.



The Dead Lands by Benjamin Percy
(https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51aI0jf13dL._UY250_.jpg)
In case you were wondering whether retellings have to be based on fictional stories, the answer is no. Benjamin Percy's new thriller is a post-apocalyptic reimagining of the Lewis and Clark expedition, the first American expedition to cross what is now the western portion of the United States. Percy's story depicts the U.S. as a wasteland resulting from a super flu and nuclear fallout. Small, scattered communities fight for survival. The community of Sanctuary, all that remains of the city of St. Louis, is one of them. Life is not perfect there by any definition, but a new visitor could change what little amount of stability they have. She brings news of thriving communities west of the Cascades mountain range. But there is danger there, too, in the form of an amassing army that attacks other communities to expand their domain. Although the leaders of Sanctuary don't approve of them doing so, a small group of explorers—led by Lewis Meriwether and Mina Clark—embark on a secret expedition to reunite the United States.

elem, sad kad su se SF,H&F tako temeljito politizirali, ovo nekako i jeste na pravom mestu, bar sto se topika tice...  :?:



Social Justice Bullies: The Authoritarianism of Millennial Social Justice

Social justice, as a concept, has existed for millennia — at least as long as society has had inequity and inequality and there were individuals enlightened enough to question this. When we study history, we see, as the American Transcendentalist Theodore Parker famously wrote, "the arc [of the moral universe]...bends towards justice." And this seems relatively evident when one looks at history as a single plot line. Things improve. And, if history is read as a book, the supporters of social justice are typically deemed the heroes, the opponents of it the villains.

And perhaps it's my liberal heart speaking, the fact that I grew up in a liberal town, learned US history from a capital-S Socialist, and/or went to one of the most liberal universities in the country, but I view this is a good thing. The idea that societal ills should be remedied such that one group is not given an unfair advantage over another is not, to me, a radical idea.

But millennials are grown up now — and they're angry. As children, they were told that they could be anything, do anything, and that they were special. As adults, they have formed a unique brand of Identity Politics wherein the groups with which one identifies is paramount. With such a strong narrative that focuses on which group one belongs to, there has been an increasing balkanization of identities. In an attempt to be open-minded toward other groups and to address social justice issues through a lens of intersectionality, clear and distinct lines have been drawn between people. One's words and actions are inextricable from one's identities. For example: this is not an article, but an article written by a straight, white, middle-class (etc.) male (and for this reason will be discounted by many on account of how my privilege blinds me — more on this later).

ima dalje ovde:

https://medium.com/@aristoNYC/social-justice-bullies-the-authoritarianism-of-millennial-social-justice-6bdb5ad3c9d3


a uber-hajlajt je: And herein lies the problem — in attempting to solve pressing and important social issues, millennial social justice advocates are violently sabotaging genuine opportunities for progress by infecting a liberal political narrative with, ironically, hate.

 

   

A Reader's Guide to Summer Blockbuster Films


By John DeNardo on April 29, 2015  (https://www.kirkusreviews.com/features/readers-guide-summer-blockbuster-films/#continue_reading_post)


This summer, theatergoers will be inundated with a steady stream of crowd-pleasing films, or so Hollywood hopes. Regardless of whether you like what you see on screen, you might be discerning enough to spy the seeds of good story ideas in even the worst megahit. The problem is, how do you know where to go for further exploration of those cool ideas? For starters, use the following handy guide to direct you towards books that include the themes of some summer films.

Avengers: Age of Ultron

Summer film season starts with a bang this week as Avengers: Age of Ultron hits theaters. Expected to be the biggest box office draw of the season, the sequel to 2012's The Avengers pits Marvel's well-known heroes (Iron Man, Thor, Captain America, Hulk, Black Widow and Hawkeye) against Ultron, and artificial intelligence that decides genocide is the best way to meet its directive of protecting the world.

If you're looking for more Avenger adventures (translation: if you are now the ultimate Avengers fanboy or fangirl), there are plenty of books from Marvel that will feed your need. They've been publishing the definitive collections of the comic book run for years. The latest is Marvel Masterworks: The Avengers Volume 15, but because of the new film, newcomers can easily find a reprint edition of Marvel Masterworks: The Avengers Volume 1 to get started. Avengers: Everybody Wants to Rule the World is a prose novel by Dan Abnett in which each of the Avengers fights against a worthy foe when a series of coordinated attacks are conducted around the globe. For the more artistically inclined, there's Marvel's Avengers: Age of Ultron: The Art of the Movie, a 336-page visual journey of the film, as seen on screens via image stills and behind-the scenes through concept art and set photographs.

For readers who see the value in the underlying subgenre of superheroes, and not just Avengers-related ones, consider checking out The Violent Century by Lavie Tidhar, a story that mixes superheroes and spies to reinvent the superhero genre. There's also Less Than Hero by S.G. Browne, a pharmaceutical social satire featuring amateur superheroes.

Tomorrowland Less_Than_hero

Do you like retro-futures...that is, futures that were envisioned decades ago? If so, then you will love the world depicted in Tomorrowland. In the film, Tomorrowland is a futuristic utopia imagined by turn-of-the-century luminaries like Jules Verne, Thomas Edison, and Nikolas Tesla. This fascinating world can only be entered by those who know how to get there. A teenager named Casey (Britt Robertson) catches a small glimpse of it through a magic pin, is captivated, and thus seeks the help of a reclusive inventor (played by George Clooney) to help her return.

While the big box office draw will be Clooney, for my money, the beautiful scenery of the retro city will be enough to pull me in. Moviegoers who want to see more of this type of worldbuilding have a few options. For starters, there's Before Tomorrowland, a distant prequel to the film, co-written by the film's creators, that sets the stage for the inception of this charming retro-future. Old Venus, edited by George R.R. Martin & Gardner Dozois, is a collection of stories written in the vein of the science-fiction pulp of yesteryear.  For meta-reading, there's a new book called Hollywood Presents Jules Verne: The Father of Science Fiction on Screen by Brian Taves that looks at the real-world impact of one of the fathers of science fiction.

Jurassic World

In this third sequel to Steven Spielberg's 1993 Jurassic Park, the dream of the park's founder finally comes to pass. Jurassic World is a thriving amusement park filed with genetically grown, previously extinct dinosaurs. But it wouldn't be a Hollywood summer film if things didn't go horribly wrong, and they do here. This time around ex-military vet Owen Grady (Chris Pratt) and the park operations manager Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard) are on hand to (hopefully) save the day.

If you like the idea of the science behind the beast, check out Voyage of the Basilisk by Marie Brennan, in which dragons are the real-life "dinosaurs" of the world. In the book, and all the books in this series, a scientist embarks on an expedition to study the creatures and finds all kinds of adventure.

Terminator Genisys

Over three decades ago, movie-going audiences fell in love with The Terminator, the story of a time-traveling robot who went back into the past to kill Sarah Connor, the mother of John Connor, theMechanical_Tregellis human hero of that bleak future's post-robot-apocalypse. There have been a few other sequels in the intervening years, but the Terminator franchise finds new life this summer. Terminator Genisys introduces an alternate timeline for the story, where Kyle Reese (Jai Courtney) is sent back in time to protect John Connor (Jason Clarke) and his mother, Sarah (Emilia Clarke), from evil robots from the future. And yes, Arnold Schwarzenegger will be back as an aging terminator. (How else would you get him in the film?) 

None of the Terminator films have ever laid claim to being highbrow—they're pure action vehicles. However, as is so soften the case, similar and more intellectually stimulating themes can often be found in books. The Mechanical by Ian Tregillis, for example, puts the robots in the role as good guys, enslaved by the human race for menial tasks. That is, until they decided otherwise. If you like the time travel theme, check out Time Patrol by Bob Mayer (an offshoot sequence of his Area 51 series), which follows the adventurous missions of the Time Patrol, a clandestine agency devoted to protecting the world's timeline against the malevolent forces who wish to change it for their own gain.

Happy reading, movie-goers!

Veli Raven, jedan od mojih obiljenih blogera :):



The medium is the message: why I'm sick of Twitter
http://www.velcro-city.co.uk/ (http://www.velcro-city.co.uk/)
April 8, 2015    1 Comment
 

I've been thinking a fair bit about McLuhan's famous aphorism lately, and I've decided it explains why I am, in a very literal sense, sick of Twitter.

The point of McLuhan's riff as I understand it isn't that the content delivered by any given medium is irrelevant, but that the way in which any given chunk of content impacts on your sensorium is inevitably shaped by the form in which it is constrained. The form of Twitter is hypercompressed, caught up in a 140 character limit that even the SMS message from which it was inherited has largely transcended at this point; it is also, by default, a one-to-many broadcast format, a bullhorn in the town square. To be clear, that compression is a huge part of Twitter's appeal and effectiveness, as is the bullhorn thing. The problem is the way in which the individual elements of massive ecosystems are obliged to evolve behaviours optimised to survival in said ecosystem. In the context of Twitter, or at least Twitter's default public one-to-many mode, the optimal behaviour is the grabbing of attention, but that's arguably true of any peer-to-peer medium; it was certainly just as true of the blogging era I pine for, and of newspapers, broadsides, and the popular ballad.

But the medium shapes the message: the innate terseness of Twitter inevitably requires the stripping away of nuance, the boiling-down and concentration of a single sharp point; meanwhile, the ephemerality of Twitter means not only does one have to grab attention, but one has to grab it RIGHTFUCKINGNOW, before someone else comes along with something equally grabby. As such, I think the polarisation of Twitter — which is not necessarily a monolithic Left/Right thing that covers the entire userbase, so much as a polarisation specific to each and every topic or event — is an inevitable consequence of the medium's form, per McLuhan.

That said, I think this has been exacerbated by slower mediums deciding to plug themselves into Twitter in order to garner more eyeballs for their "proper" content. In the majority of cases, most major media brands have an established political polarity already, and had become very adept at grabby compression long before Twitter; this is the art of the headline, of the sound-bite. What Twitter brought to that party was the ephemerality mentioned above; it's not just about grabbing attention, it's about grabbing attention RIGHTFUCKINGNOW. Having money and metrics to throw at the problem, this behaviour has been optimised very quickly indeed — and individual users have absorbed many of the techniques involved by osmosis, much as one learns a local vernacular in order to remain part of the discourse. Level up, or get drowned out.

(Ironically, the corporate brand has never found Twitter as congenial a medium as the personal brand which — or so I'd suggest — is exactly why corporate brands are trying so hard, and often so laughably or grotesquely, to act more like personal brands, even as personal brands ape the corporate. The medium is the message; a crowded niche supports a limited range of physiological and behavioural adaptations. Evolve or die.)

This probably sounds more than a little bit "things ain't what they used to be", but y'know what? Things *aren't* what they used to be. That's how temporality works — and if noticing that difference and expressing a preference for the previous state of affairs is nostalgia, then fuck you, I'm nostalgic. However, I recognise that time's arrow only points one way, and there's no putting the genie back in the bottle. Twitter used to be a rhizome of watercooler conversations, and it still is — but the big numbers and fierce competition for attention, exacerbated by the monetisation of said attention, means that Metcalf's Law has kicked in. Winner takes all; either you go big, or you go home.

There are backwaters and oxbow lakes, of course: Black Twitter, for instance, clearly provides a vital space for mobilisation for a demographic which desperately needs more such spaces, and the way in which messages from there can leak out into the global town square is clearly beneficial. But there is no avoiding the fact that those speech-acts are also polarised by definition, and hence attract speech-acts of the opposite polarity with all the inevitability of anions attracting cations. Compressed communications are highly reactive or volatile, to continue the chemistry metaphor, just as boiling down a solution will tend to polarise its pH toward acid or base. One of the great joys of Twitter — because make no mistake, it is a space that has brought me a lot of joy and good friends and interesting information over the years — is the way in which it gives everyone a voice. But as anyone with a marginal opinion will tell you, that is also its great horror; for every SJW, a G*merG*tor.

(And as repulsive as you might find either one of those two tribes, know that for sure that the tribe that revolts you feels an almost identical revulsion to your tribe. The medium is the message; you don't have the bandwidth to be anything more than the affiliation ((or lack thereof)) in your biog-blurb, and they don't have the bandwidth to look any further than it. Black hats versus White hats is the only game in town. You are Other, and that's that.)

There are also attempts to ameliorate the problem: private and/or alt accounts, curated lists, so on and so forth. But this reminds me a lot of what it was like to live in a compound in a foreign city, as I did for a few years as a child; the compound is quite literally an oasis of comfort and familiarity, but that only serves to enhance the fear of what's outside. This seems a particularly cruel irony in the case of Twitter, where in order to flee the echo-chamber of the town square, we simply try to build a smaller echo-chamber with a more exclusive guestlist... and the hypothetical end-game of that paradigm, if you think about it, is a return to a non-town square form. In order to "fix" Twitter, we're trying to make it into not-Twitter. But even as the compound doesn't feel like the city outside, the compound is still constrained by its being a polder; it is inherently defined by what it is trying to exclude. The compound is a contradiction, and living in a contradiction is exhausting; the walls of the dyke must always be maintained and strengthened, even as that which it holds back is studiously ignored.

But like I say, maybe it's just me, or just people with whom I share some significant psychological overlap. Lots of folk I know seem to be able to manage that contradiction, or find the town square vibe thrilling and congenial, and I wish them luck — hell, I think I maybe even envy them, in a way. But I'm prone to anxiety and depression; large crowds have always made me nervous, and mob phenomena are terrifying — although it is a function of my white male Anglo privilege that I'm much more likely to be part of a mob rather than its victim, and I fully acknowledge that I have less to lose by giving up on any given medium than those who lack the luck of birth and circumstance I have.

Nonetheless, I've had enough. The literature on CNS stimulants such as amphetamines or MDMA talks about the "law of diminishing returns", whereby as one becomes habituated to a stimulant, one needs ever larger doses to recapture the incredible high of the first few hits; at the same time, the lows of the comedown become ever deeper, and arrive more swiftly. I am sick of Twitter like an addict eventually becomes sick of speed or pills, and I do not have the psychological fortitude to carry on regardless of the increasingly obvious cost to my mental health.

I'm not saying "Twitter = bad" — though that's exactly how this post will be tweeted if anyone decides to pick it up out there in the Twittersphere. Twitter's just another extension of the human sensorium, another cybernetic part of us — and like us, it contains both good and bad, contains the potential to enact both good and bad. But I do not believe it to be determinist to suggest that the form of Twitter, per McLuhan, means that it is inevitably a polarised black-and-white space... and I crave the detail and nuance that only comes when there's at least some bandwidth for a greyscale, if not even full colour.

Nor am I claiming that some mass renunciation of Twitter and a return to the slower, longer conversations of blogging would return us to some idyllic cultural golden age. The lid on Pandora's box can never be closed; we can never go back, only forward. Perhaps Twitter will evolve into a slower, less brutally competitive ecosystem; perhaps a new ecosystemic niche will emerge; perhaps (and most likely, IMHO) social media will turn out to be yet another of the periodic new-medium fads our civilisation has been prone to, like the letter, the telephone, and so on. Only time will tell.

But I'll be waiting the time out somewhere else, I think. As Michael Franti once reminded us, hypocrisy is the greatest luxury, and I'll be keeping my Twitter account for announcing blog posts like this one — in the wider ecosystem of which Twitter is merely a subsystem, I literally cannot afford to disappear entirely, just as many do not have the luxury of even the partial renunciation which this essay announces. But privilege is at its worst when it is wasted, and the Skinner box that is Twitter is a demonstrable waste of whatever it is that I am.

So I'm done with it. Thanks for the memories, and I'll be here if you need me.

In February, Neil Clarke, the creator of Clarkesworld announced the launch of his new magazine, Forever Magazine (http://www.amazon.com/Forever-Magazine/dp/B00T4UUNEA/ref=sr_1_2?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1430902168&sr=1-2&keywords=Wyrm+Publishing), and the 4th issue is out!

Just like Clarkesworld, Forever Magazine is available through subscriptions (via Amazon, Weightless, and Direct) and also as standalone issues (from Amazon, Apple, B&N, and Kobo).

Here's the table of contents:

◾Editorial by Neil Clarke
◾"The Man With the Golden Balloon" by Robert Reed (Novella)
◾A Few Words with Robert Reed (Interview)
◾"Cold Word" by Juliette Wade (Novelette)
◾"The Hand is Quicker" by Elizabeth Bear (Novelette)

Ron Guyatt is the featured artist for at least the first six issues.

Čika Liptak priča o Marsu  :):
(http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/reviewers/liptak_05_15-3.html)

In recent years, Mars has been back in the news. The wildly successful and dramatic landing of the MINI Cooper-sized rover Curiosity in 2012 has brought a renewed interest in the red planet. In his 2015 State of the Union speech, President Barack Obama reaffirmed NASA's goal to put an astronaut on Mars at some point in the future and organizations such as the Mars One Foundation and SpaceX have set their sights firmly on Martian mission programs.

Mars has always been a likely destination for humanity, and in particular, it has captivated science fiction audiences as a new home, port of call, or simply just a new place to explore. Science fiction's own history of the place has largely evolved alongside that of our own understanding of the planet. As much as we've learned from pictures, probes, and rovers on Mars, the world still has a particular fascination for science fiction authors who have told stories about it up to the present day.

From early in Mars' history, a dichotomy has existed between the urge to study and observe the planet, but also to create and tell stories about it. The Romans named the blood-red point in the sky after their god of war. At the same time, numerous ancient astronomers located in Egypt, Babylon, Greece and others, observed the motion of Mars, and recognized early on that it was different from the other points in the sky: it was a planet, not a star.

Fast forward to the industrial revolution. New scientific principles defined the movements of objects in the solar system, which helped scientists to focus extensively on study of the planets with the aid of new telescopes. Accordingly, authors who had begun to write scientific tales also begun to turn their attention to our nearest neighbors in the solar system. Brave New Worlds: The Oxford Dictionary of Science Fiction identifies the first use of the word Martian in 1874, in an American magazine called The Galaxy: "The Martians would therefore be in a better position to understand our attempts at opening up a communication than the Venerians."

First Contact

In 1877, Giovanni Schiaparelli created the first detailed map of Mars using a telescope. From his observations, he detailed channels, continents, and seas, terminology rooted in Earth's own geology. In particular, his description of canali (channels) was widely mistranslated as canals in English, sparking a wide-spread belief that Mars was home to someone who built them. The description planted the seeds to an idea: Mars was another world like ours, one that could potentially harbor intelligent life.

Percival Lowell followed Schiaparelli's lead in 1894 by constructing an observatory in Arizona, and later publishing a book titled Mars in 1895. The book covered his observations of the planet, all the while he speculated on the nature of how beings might live on the planet, drawing from the belief that canals were indeed present on the planet's surface.

In 1897, H.G. Wells published what is possibly the best-known work of science fiction involving Mars: The War of the Worlds. From the very beginning of his book, Wells mixes the scientific knowledge of the day into his story: "The planet Mars, I scarcely need remind the reader, revolves about the sun at a mean distance of one hundred forty million miles, and the light and heat it receives from the sun is barely half of that received by this world," all the while constructing a relevant, political story of the day.

The following year, a pair of Edisonade novels: The Fighters from Mars (a re-written version of The War of the Worlds), and Garrett P. Serviss', Edison's Conquest of Mars, was a direct sequel which followed a counterattack on Mars led by Thomas Edison. By basing his aliens on Mars, Wells' The War of the Worlds and the various inspired books helped to instill a renewed sense of the historical association of the planet with that of war and destruction.

Romantic Mars

This only continued into the new century, most notably with Edgar Rice Burroughs and some of his best-known works: the Barsoom series featuring Civil War veteran John Carter. Beginning in 1912 with A Princess of Mars, Burroughs transports Carter to an inhabited and wild Mars, populating the planet with a rich and complicated civilization for his pulp adventures. His stories inspired numerous others in a burgeoning planetary romance genre: authors ranging from C.S. Lewis with his Space Trilogy, C.L. Moore's Northwest Smith adventures, and Stanley G. Weinbaum with "A Martian Odyssey."

In pulp magazines throughout the early twentieth century, science fiction emerged as its own world and authors began to look beyond Earth for inspiration. Certainly, the idea of a red world would have appealed to the likes of Burroughs, who had spent some time as a cavalry scout in the United States Army before turning to writing. Astronomers had already discerned features from Mars' surface and several authors latched on to the image of the wild west when looking to our nearer planetary neighbors. In "Shambleau," C.L. Moore transported the reader to a dusty and lawless locale that served her stories and characters well.

As late as the 1930s, scientists and astronomers had speculated about the possibility of vegetation on the planet: "The [American Interplanetary Society] Bulletin carried an article in January 1932 suggesting the possibility of 'luxuriant vegetation' on Mars along what may or may not have been Lowell's canals."

By the end of the 1940s, Ray Bradbury had taken up the mantle of the planetary romances, with what would later become his own collective work, The Martian Chronicles (1950), heavily influenced by the works of Burroughs and other pulp authors. Bradbury's work stood as the last vanguard of a romantic Mars: Bradbury's vividly imagined Mars has helped place it as one of the best works of his generation.

The romantic Mars was a place where we knew people could walk, if not live. While the moon was closer (and certainly had its own share of science fiction stories), Mars held possibility, shrouded in mysteries. Did it have an atmosphere? Was there life? It was a place that sparked our collective imaginations and called to us as a place to go.

And, go we did. In November of 1964, the United States launched a pair of rockets towards Mars. They were the culmination in a larger battle for the planets between the Soviet Union and the United States.

Following the end of the Second World War, each began to develop greater long-ranged weapons to deploy their respective nuclear arsenals. The resulting Space Race followed, which began massive manned spaceflight programs in each country. The United States and Soviet Union looked first to our Moon as a destination, but many in the space program believed that once we reached the lunar surface, Mars would be our next destination.

Less visible was the race for scientific supremacy, and accordingly, each looked to our two closest neighbors in space: Venus and Mars. Venus, the closer of the two, became the first such battleground, and was closely followed by Mars. Between October 1960 and November 1962, the Soviet Union launched five satellites to Mars: none were successful due to a variety of system or launch failures. The United States didn't fare any better at first either: their first mission, Mariner 3, failed to shed a protective cover, and lost power. Mariner 4, however, successfully reached Mars on July 14th, and would become humanity's first glimpse to the world that we had dreamt so much about.

This first introduction, according to William Burrows in This New Ocean: The Story of the First Space Age, " . . . was terrible. Mars was no longer an elusive orange blur with whitish poles and alluring dark blotches. It had been transformed from a place that had recognizable features with which earthlings could identify. Gone were the canals or anything else that could have been purposely dug or built. Gone were the oases holding precious supplies of water. Gone were creatures of any form. Gone, too, were ocean basins, vegetation, or any landscape that even remotely looked like Earth." (Burrows, 464)

The romantic and exotic images of Mars that had been written about from Wells to Burroughs to Moore to Bradbury had been completely shattered. The grainy images transmitted back to Earth showed an alien world—alien even to science fiction authors. Mars was cold, uninhabitable, and dead. While many might have doubted that Mars would have been home to alien life, it was a stark reminder that our science fiction stories sometimes fall short of reality.

Cold Mars

While science fiction's collective vision for what Mars didn't match the real nature of Mars, it did learn and begin to change.

New unmanned missions to Mars followed in the next launch window in 1969. The United States launched Mariner 6 and 7 in February and March, while the USSR missions 2M No.521 in March and 2M No.522 in April failed. 1971 brought new missions: Mariner 8 and Kosmos 419 both failed, but Mariner 9, which launched on May 30th, successfully became the first spacecraft to orbit Mars, where it would spend the next five hundred sixteen days, taking pictures of the planet below. As this happened, humans landed on the Moon for the first time. We were slowly beginning to step into the solar system.

As Mariner 9 approached Mars, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory held a conference with several notable figures: Arthur C. Clarke, Ray Bradbury, Carl Sagan, and others. There, the science fiction authors paid tribute to Stanley G. Weinbaum, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and H.G. Wells for their works in bringing Mars to the imaginations of millions of readers. However, what had become clear was that Mars was not the world so richly imagined; it was a cold, dead world that was difficult to reach. There, Clarke made a bold prediction: "Whether or not there is life on Mars now, there will be by the end of the century." It was a bold claim for a country that would soon be shuttering its manned lunar program, and he would eventually step his estimate ahead several decades. His remarks are important, however, because they positioned how we would tell stories about Mars: no longer a world of exotic life and mystery, it would become the home for a colony, a way point on the way to other planets, a distant outpost.

1976 brought us our next best look at Mars. At the next available window, NASA launched Viking 1 and Viking 2 on August 20th and September 9th, a pair of complicated missions that would, for the first time, land equipment on the surface of Mars. The pair of landers arrived on the surface of the planet on June 19th and August 7th, respectively, and served as humanity's first ambassadors. Their scientific missions included biological and chemical experiments, yielding new insights into the red planet.

The results of the Viking missions provided planetary scientists with a wealth of information, and caught the interest of new science fiction authors. Kim Stanley Robinson noted that he had been particularly inspired by the images sent back by the Viking probes, and felt a yearning to hike and explore the planet's mountain ranges. Over the next decade, he thought about how to terraform the planet, and in 1990, he published the first installment of his Mars trilogy: Red Mars, and followed with Green Mars and Blue Mars, examining a wide range of topics from the planetary science that was being uncovered to the ethical considerations of terraforming a world like Mars. Over the course of the 1990s, other hard science novels about exploring the surface of Mars came out, such as Ben Bova's Mars and its sequels.

The planetary romance of the early twentieth century had gone, but in its place were new opportunities for science fiction authors. The research conducted on the surface of Mars opened up the possibilities of new stories of exploration and the scientists and adventurers who boldly went further into the solar system, armed with a new level of realism.

New Missions, New Stories

Our understanding of Mars has only continued to improve. In 1996, the Pathfinder mission with its Sojourner rover became the first such probe on the surface of the planet, exploring its immediate surroundings. Others followed: the Mars Odyssey and Mars Explorer continue to operate on the surface, while another pair of rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, landed in 2003, where each outperformed their designated mission. Spirit shut down in 2010, but Opportunity continues to function, as of the time of this writing. Each mission uncovered, and continues to contribute to our knowledge of Mars. Most recently, millions around the world watched Curiosity touch down in a daring landing in August 2012 that might have come from a science fiction author. Appropriately, Curiosity's landing site was formally named Bradbury Landing. It continues to send back new images every day, and the data it has collected will continue to entrance scientists and science fiction authors for years to come.

The latest string of novels that have taken place on Mars incorporate the latest research from the planet. Andy Weir's breakthrough novel The Martian is one such example. Following an astronaut stranded on the planet, Weir drew from books such as Robinson Crusoe and scientific work to figure out the central storyline: how would such an astronaut survive?

"All you have to do is start examining any aspect of his survival and you'll quickly find the problems he runs into. He's going to need food, but you can't just create food that easily; you need to actually grow it. Doing some math on how long his supplies would last told me, well, it's just implausible for his supplies to last long enough. So that's a simple case where science creates plot. Then he needs to have this much water to grow food. He can get plenty of dirt from outside, but he needs the dirt to have a certain amount of water. I did all the math to figure out how much water he'd need, and it was just implausible that a manned mission would carry that much water."

Weir, through Watney, does more than just detail the science of Martian exploration. His book explicitly uses prior, real world missions, such as Pathfinder, to further its plot and play a key role in the story. The Martian, in many ways, is about as far as one could go from the earliest conceptions of Mars, and borrows extensively from real-world knowledge: Mars is a dry, uninhabitable location in the solar system, far from a destination to settle on or to meet strange Martians. Other recent Mars books, such as Greg Bear's War Dogs, which sets an interstellar war on the surface, highlights the real focus on life support and survival on an inhospitable surface.

When asked about what attracts us to Mars, Kim Stanley Robinson highlighted our growing and changing understanding of the planet:

"Throughout human history it's been interesting because it's red, it gets brighter then dimmer, and it has a hitch in its motion, going retrograde against the stars for a while. Then when we learned it was a planet, the next one out from us, we very quickly saw the polar ice caps, and the changing color, which looked seasonal. It seemed like it could be like Earth. Then Percival Lowell set everyone's imagination on fire with his idea that he was seeing a system of canals, which meant a civilization and possibly aliens like us. Through the decades since there have been repeated alterations in the scientific explanation of the planet's physical situation, which gave science fiction writers new scenarios for stories. Then the Mariner and Viking orbiters and the Viking landers gave us the real landscape, and it was extremely interesting, and to an extent, Earthlike. The idea of terraforming Mars quickly followed."

Mars, for as long as it will hang in the skies above, will continue to inspire authors and astronomers alike, long after we visit, settle and give the planet a new name: Home.

a onda i o meni (iz mladosti) jako dragom piscu...


John Wyndham and the Global Expansion of Science Fiction

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William Gibson said that the future isn't distributed equally: the same can be said for the literature of the future, science fiction. Genre literature appears all over the world, but it seems to be primarily the product of industrialized cultures like the United States and United Kingdom, while other, smaller pockets appeared around the world throughout the 20th century. That's a broad generalization, of course, but it bears looking into: how did science fiction spread across the world and how did it change as it did so? One author to look at as an example is John Wyndham, author of such books as The Kraken Wakes and The Day of the Triffids.

Born John Wyndham Parkes Lucas Beynon Harris on July 10, 1903, in Warwickshire, England, to a middle-class family, his parents divorced when he was 8 years old. He read widely as a child, particularly H.G. Wells, and wrote his own fantastic tales while he was away at boarding school. Following school, Harris first attempted to find work in a variety of fields, such as farming, law and advertising, but an allowance from his parents allowed him to write his own stories.

According to Sam Moskowitz in his genre history Seekers of Tomorrow: Masters of Modern Science Fiction, "The turning point in his writing career came in 1929, when he happened to pick up a copy of the American magazine, Amazing Stories, which had been left in a London hotel lounge. He was fascinated by the believability of the stories and searched out others." The American science-fiction market grew exceptionally well during the 1930s, with magazines such as Weird Tales and Amazing Stories publishing a wide range of fiction and attracting tens of thousands of readers. Many of these American magazines were exported to the U.K. and other parts of the world, where a new generation of readers fell in love with their stories, including Harris.

As he began to write his own science-fiction stories, the discovered that the only outlets generally open to writers were American, and so he dutifully mailed his stories overseas. His first published story was "Worlds to Barter" under the name John Beynon Harris in Hugo Gernsback's magazine Wonder Stories in May 1931. After that initial publication, he continued to publish in similar pulp magazines throughout the remainder of the 1930s, including Wonder Stories, Amazing Stories and others. He also wrote a pair of novels under the name John Beynon: The Secret People in 1935 and Planet Plane in 1936 (later republished as Stowaway to Mars as John Wyndham). As the science-fiction genre took off in the United States, new markets appeared in the United Kingdom as well, and Harris began to appear there, placing stories in Tales of Wonder and Fantasy. John Clute, writing in the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, notes that the first phase of Harris' career can be described as "Space Operas leavened with the occasional witty aside or passage," but that "None of this work stood out in particular." Harris was part of the pulp market, writing adventures set in space or elsewhere along with many numerous colleagues.

Harris' writing career was largely put on hold as Europe erupted into warfare. As Britain entered World War II, Harris became involved in his country's war effort, first working for the Ministry of Information as a censor before joining the British Army. There, he worked in the Royal Corps of Signals as a Corporal cipher operator, participating in the D-Day operations at Normandy beach in the immediate aftermath of the invasion in June 1944. The war had a particular effect on Harris, who noted that "I had the constant feeling I was there by mistake, possibly that was because I had spent much of my schooldays expecting in due course to be in the Kaiser's war, though it ended when I was still too young. Nevertheless, I could not get rid of the feeling that that had been my war, and now I had somehow got into the wrong one. It produced odd moods of spectatorship, shot with flashes of déjà vu."

When Harris was discharged from the Army in 1946, the science-fiction genre had changed in England and around the world. The war exacted a toll on the country, and paper rationing had crippled numerous publishing operations. After some attempts to publish as a fantasy author, Harris gave up and returned to science fiction. According to critic John Scarborough, "One might have expected him to return to his tried-and-true formulas in science fiction after the war, but in The Day of The Triffids, published under the name John Wyndham, he revealed a new style and some subtle shifts in his outlook."

Published in 1951, The Day of the Triffids marked the start of the second phase of Harris's career and was heavily inspired by H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds. He showed the novel to his agent, Frederic Pohl, who was able to immediately sell the book to Doubleday, only to turn around and ask them to delay the novel's publication: "Doubleday snapped it up, but I had to ask them to hold off publication because Collier's also loved it, and Collier's love expressed itself in the biggest check I had ever seen, five figures worth of fondness," writes Pohl in his memoir The Way the Future Was.Tiffids

Colliers serialized a condensed version of the novel beginning in the January 6, 1951 issue under the title Revolt of the Triffids. The remaining installments appeared weekly, on January 13, 20, 27, and February 3, 1951. This was a post-apocalyptic story, following Bill Masden, a biologist who studies Triffids, a carnivorous and intelligent plant with some valuable properties. He awakes in a hospital only to find that everyone in London has been blinded by a strange meteor shower. Joining forces with survivors, he attempts to leave the city, which is made all the more difficult by the dangerous Triffids.

The book was incredibly popular upon publication, and was widely characterized by reviewers as a catastrophe novel. According to critic Brian Aldiss, the novel was "totally devoid of ideas, but read smoothly, and thus reached a maximum audience, which enjoyed cosy disasters," while Christopher Priest described Wyndham as "the master of the middle-class catastrophe." Mike Ashley, in his book Transformations: The Story of the Science Fiction Magazines from 1950-1970, notes that the advantage to Harris having a long name allowed him to adopt numerous identities throughout his career. "As Wyndham he created a new persona which virtually blanked out the past and allowed him to develop in the mainstream without the 'stigma' of the sf magazines." With his mainstream success as Wyndham, Harris continued to publish in genre magazines, but largely focused on the English marketplace, placing stories in Argosy and Suspense: "he wrote the occasional short story more out of recreation than need and did not aim them at the sf readership."

This characterization is an interesting one, and it marks a major departure from Harris' earlier works. Specifically, the limited access to science-fiction genre magazines drove a number of British authors to focus on mainstream markets. "Until 1950, British writers had to rely on American markets to become established. This was especially true of Arthur C. Clarke, Eric Frank Russell, John Beynon Harris and John Christopher...with the exception of Russell, these writers succeeded in establishing themselves in the mainstream and this lured them away from the genre magazines," Ashley writes. While the genre market place in the United States was about to undergo its own transition from monthly magazines to novels, the U.K. was seeing different sorts of stories created. Harris' Triffids appearing in 1951 perfectly captured the anxieties of a population worried that they might face annihilation in a nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union.

In his introduction to the 2003 edition of the novel, historian Edmund Morris notes that "Before this appeared, novelists seeking to agitate readers with a sense of alien threat had used the hoary device of extraterrestrials invading the planet....Wyndham's stroke of genius was to invent the triffid, a killer plant that is inscrutable in its malevolence, yet so ordinary, even uninteresting on first acquaintance." The threat of nuclear destruction came not from external factors, but from us, and from a source that both threatened our destruction through bombs, or technological salvation by the harnessing of the atom.Wyndham

While critic Brian Aldiss was dismissive of Harris' commercial nature, it's clear that his stories captured the public's imagination in a way that genre fiction couldn't, or reached readers genre fiction typically didn't. Harris' first career phase was firmly set in genre circles, while his second saw his own escape, writing stories about monsters and the end of the world. The Day of the Triffids is far different from its American Golden Age counterparts: it was less technological and scientific, and more interested in a larger allegory and its characters. In his intro, Edmund Morris describes the book as having a reputation "of being the one science fiction book you must read, even if you don't read science fiction."

In many ways, mainstream readers (that is, everyone else outside of genre circles), were already becoming well-exposed to the concepts of science fiction. Stories about technology and apocalyptic events had long been the stuff of science fiction, but audiences seemed as though they were ready to accept some of the tropes which had largely been confined to genre circles. The massive industrialization which sustained the Allied efforts during World War II certainly played a role in this, introducing the U.S. and the U.K. to atomic power, new technologies and a higher standard of living. The art and literature worlds would catch up with these changes quickly, and throughout the latter half of the 20th century, science-fiction communities grappled with the idea of definitions, and defining just what is and isn't science fiction. Harris and his later readers don't seem to have cared about the definitions: he was writing stories which were broadly appealing.

The Day of the Triffids has remained exceptionally popular throughout the world, where Triffid is an identifiable phrase, even among nongenre readers. In 1962, the novel was adapted into a film by the same name, and it underwent a handful of radio and television adaptations as well. Harris died on March 11th, 1969, after adding a number of other highly regarded novels to Wyndam's name: The Kraken Wakes, The Chrysalids, the Midwich Cuckoos, The Trouble with Lichen, and Chocky. Two posthumous novels, Web and Plan for Chaos, have also since appeared. Harris/Wyndham's works continue to exert their influence on modern writers, especially as genre tropes make their way to mainstream novels and audiences.

https://www.kirkusreviews.com/features/john-wyndham-and-global-expansion-science-fiction/ (https://www.kirkusreviews.com/features/john-wyndham-and-global-expansion-science-fiction/)
Andrew Liptak is a freelance writer and historian from Vermont. He can be found online at his site and on Twitter @andrewliptak.

 :D

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Kim Stanley Robinson Discusses the Science Behind His Upcoming Novel AURORA (http://youtu.be/3T1-lE5i98M)

How To Read Gene Wolfe
by Neil Gaiman



LOOK AT Gene: a genial smile (the one they named for him), pixie-twinkle in his eyes, a reassuring mustache. Listen to that chuckle. Do not be lulled. He holds all the cards: he has five aces in his hand, and several more up his sleeve.

I once read him an account of a baffling murder, committed ninety years ago. "Oh," he said, "well, that's obvious," and proceeded off-handedly to offer a simple and likely explanation for both the murder and the clues the police were at a loss to explain. He has an engineer's mind that takes things apart to see how they work and then puts them back together.

I have known Gene for almost twenty-five years. (I was, I just realized, with a certain amount of alarm, only twenty-two when I first met Gene and Rosemary in Birmingham, England; I am forty-six now.) Knowing Gene Wolfe has made the last twenty-five years better and richer and more interesting than they would have been otherwise.

Before I knew him, I thought of Gene Wolfe as a ferocious intellect, vast and cool and serious, who created books and stories that were of genre but never limited by it. An explorer, who set out for uncharted territory and brought back maps, and if he said "Here There Be Dragons," by God, you knew that was where the dragons were.

And that is all true, of course. It may be more true than the embodied Wolfe I met twenty-five years ago, and have come to know with enormous pleasure ever since: a man of politeness and kindness and knowledge; a lover of fine conversation, erudite and informative, blessed with a puckish sense of humor and an infectious chuckle.

I cannot tell you how to meet Gene Wolfe. I can, however, suggest a few ways to read his work. These are useful tips, like suggesting you take a blanket, a flashlight, and some candy when planning to drive a long way in the cold, and should not be taken lightly. I hope they are of some use to you. There are nine of them. Nine is a good number.

How to read Gene Wolfe:
1) Trust the text implicitly. The answers are in there.
2) Do not trust the text farther than you can throw it, if that far. It's tricksy and desperate stuff, and it may go off in your hand at any time.
3) Reread. It's better the second time. It will be even better the third time. And anyway, the books will subtly reshape themselves while you are away from them.Peace really was a gentle Midwestern memoir the first time I read it. It only became a horror novel on the second or the third reading.
4) There are wolves in there, prowling behind the words. Sometimes they come out in the pages. Sometimes they wait until you close the book. The musky wolf-smell can sometimes be masked by the aromatic scent of rosemary. Understand, these are not today-wolves, slinking grayly in packs through deserted places. These are the dire-wolves of old, huge and solitary wolves that could stand their ground against grizzlies.
5) Reading Gene Wolfe is dangerous work. It's a knife-throwing act, and like all good knife-throwing acts, you may lose fingers, toes, earlobes or eyes in the process. Gene doesn't mind. Gene is throwing the knives.
6) Make yourself comfortable. Pour a pot of tea. Hang up a DO NOT DISTURB Sign. Start at Page One.
7) There are two kinds of clever writer. The ones that point out how clever they are, and the ones who see no need to point out how clever they are. Gene Wolfe is of the second kind, and the intelligence is less important than the tale. He is not smart to make you feel stupid. He is smart to make you smart as well.
8) He was there. He saw it happen. He knows whose reflection they saw in the mirror that night.
9) Be willing to learn.

https://www.sfsite.com/fsf/2007/gwng0704.htm (https://www.sfsite.com/fsf/2007/gwng0704.htm)

Read Them Now, Watch Them Later: Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Adaptation Watch (May 2015 Edition)



The Girl With All The Gifts by M.R. Carey

The Girl With All the Gifts is about a girl named Melanie who is confined to a cell. She is deemed dangerous by the adults that surround her, particularly the military personnel, who strap her to a wheelchair so they can take her to class every day. Melanie is unlike the other of her kind. Melanie is an intelligent zombie.

Rarely does a film adaptation get announced when it already has so much of the cast and crew identified. This is one of those films. It also gets a name change. The film will go by the name She Who Brings Gifts and it will star Gemma Arterton, Paddy Considine and Glenn Close. Colm McCarthy will direct. Perhaps the most promising part of the adaptation is that author Mike Carey will write the screenplay. Shooting has already begun.


 
Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

Anyone who considers themselves a geek would do well to check out Ernest Cline's Ready Player One. It's a novel that taps into geek culture in a big way. It takes place in the year 2044, where anyone can jack into a virtual utopia, like its main protagonist, Wade Watts. Within the virtual world is a series of puzzles by its creator that lead to millions of dollars to the one who can solve them. The book is riddled with pop culture references to the "nostalgic" days of the 20th century, especially references to film and video games.

No cast has been chosen yet, but who better to lead a film about late-20th-century videogames than the mahorrorstor-2ster of the era's blockbuster, Steven Spielberg? Spielberg (Jaws, E.T., Close Encounters of the Third Kind) will helm the film which will be based on a script written by Zak Penn (X-Men 2, X-Men: Last Stand, and the upcoming Pacific Rim 2).



Horrorstör by Grady Hendrix

Horrorstör is a unique supernatural mystery novel written by Grady Hendrix. Unlike conventional horror stories, it takes place in a furniture store. Orsk furniture is the Ikea-like furniture store in Cleveland, Ohio, where employees arrive every morning to find the store in utter disarray. The store cameras reveal nothing about who is trashing the store, so a small group of fearless employees agree to work the night shift. When they do, they encounter unspeakable horrors.

If you like lighthearted horror...or furniture stores...you're in luck! Horrorstör is being adapted as a television series. Rights were acquired for development by The Jackal Group, a co-venture between Fox Networks Group and Gail Berman, who spearheaded the development of the successful Buffy the Vampire Slayer television series, another property that mixes humor and horror.



The School for Good and Evil by Soman Chainani

Originally aimed at young adult readers, The School for Good and Evil is the story of two best fiends who are plucked out of their village to attend a special school whose graduates can be part of fairy tales—as either good characters or evil ones. The kind-hearted Sophie seems to be destined for the School of Good (where Cinderella, Rapunzel, and Snow White graduated), while the black-frocked Agatha seems more suited for the School of Evil. However, the girls find themselves in what appears to be the worst school for them—and perhaps intentionally by someone with ulterior motives.

Author Soman Chainani has been tapped to co-write the scschoolgoodevilreenplay of Universal's film adaptation of his book The School for Good and Evil along with Malia Scotch Marmo, screenwriter of other speculative kind–friendly films Hook and Madeline. Chainani has stated that the film will be a little bit of a departure from the book in that the new storytelling medium provides new and interesting ways to present the story to the viewer. If all turns out well, this could mean good things for a possible adaptation of the book's sequels.



The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin

The Three-Body Problem was widely hailed upon its release last year, not just because it was the first time English-speaking readers could experience the work of Chinese writing sensation Liu Cixin, but also because it's plain good. It's about the attempts of a secret military project to contact an alien intelligence by sending signals into space. The good news is that contact is made. The bad news is that the desperate alien race that picked up the signal is dying and sees Earth as a viable target for conquest. Set against the backdrop of China's Cultural Revolution, it shows how humanity becomes divided on whether news of alien contact spells progress or doom.

Not much is known about the adaptation at this point. It was, in fact, reported more as a side note that China Film Group picked up three stories by Liu Cixin so they can turn them into blockbuster films. Those other stories are The Wandering Earth, The Era of the Supernova, and Micro Era.

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Happy 50th Anniversary, Dune! To celebrate (?), we've put together a special edition of Films of High Adventure. Why's it so special? Well, we have Jason Heller, Hugo-award winning editor, author of Taft 2012, and writer for the A.V. Club and NPR here with us! As Jason is a consummate Dune (the novel) fan-cum-expert, we thought it would be fun (for us, at least) to ask him to watch Dune with us, and see if it stands the Films of High Adventure test of time. Heh.

There are roughly 9000000 versions of Dune out there, and we actually tried to watch the 3 hour version of Dune for this... but from what we saw it was mostly a camera panning over watercolors of planets. So we ditched it and went for the director's cut (I think?), which is the pretty dang long, but not the longest version. It's the one we all watched/remembered, so it was more authentic that way.

The Film: Dune (1984)

Responsibility Roundup: While it may seem unfair to hold Frank Herbert accountable for the film, credit where due—he did write the novel. Given all the liberties taken with the text, it seems most accurate to view Herbert as the Great Maker, and writer-director David Lynch and executive producer Dino De Laurentiis as two rival barons fighting to the death over the intoxicating essence produced by their sandworm cash cow. It's not surprising that the film came to be defined by their conflict, since Lynch is of course best known for his heady, esoteric creations like Mulholland Drive and Twin Peaks, whereas De Laurentiis is synonymous with meaty, straight-forward fare like Barbarella, Conan the Destroyer, and dozens of other Films of High Adventure candidates. Photography by Hammer and Amicus alum Freddie Francis (Torture Garden), production design by Anthony Masters (2001: A Space Odyssey), costume design by Bob Ringwood (Burton's Batman), and soundtrack by Toto and Brian Eno.


So, on paper Dune looks like it has a dream team behind the scenes, and the cast is no less impressive: Kyle MacLachlan, Sean Young, Sting, Dean Stockwell, José Ferrer, Brad Dourif, Max von Sydow, Jürgen Prochnow, Patrick Stewart, Virginia Madsen, Krull besties Francesca Annis and Freddie Jones, Twin Peaks besties Jack Nance and Everett McGill, and and and... you get the picture. With a line-up like this on both sides of the camera, how could Dune be anything less than the greatest science fiction epic of the 20th century? How, indeed...

Quote: "My name is a killing word."

Alternate quote: "It is by will alone I set my mind in motion. It is by the juice of sapho that thoughts acquire speed, the lips acquire stains, the stains become a warning. It is by will alone I set my mind in motion."

Alternate alternate quote: "The sleeper must awaken."

First viewing by Jesse: As a teenager.

First viewing by Molly: Tweenager? Teenager? I was in Florida, so I was at least twelve.

First viewing by Jason: Maybe sixteen?

Most recent viewing by everyone: A couple of weeks ago.

Impact on Jesse's childhood development: Though I've never been a huge SF reader, Dune made a deep imprint when I discovered it as an eleven year old Yank living in the Netherlands. I couldn't get into the sequels, and haven't gone back to the book since, but at the time it was a monumental experience, the sort of text that rewires your brain a little. Would that I had spent as much time learning my Dutch as I did poring over the glossary in the back of the novel, I might have done better in school...

Unlike the novel, the film came along later in my life and left far less of an impact. Part of the problem probably lies in the fact that the first time I watched it was as a sleep-deprived and drug-addled teen. It was the favorite film of a friend of mine—who's since gone on to be one hell of a successful artist but who would probably prefer he remain anonymous here—and in the waning hours of an all-night mushroom bender we settled in to behold the majesty. If that sounds like the ideal time to watch Dune, you may be right but I can't really say, as I remember very little from the experience. Lesson learned: psychedelic fungi are no substitute for the spice melange, and the sleeper, at this point, had not yet awoken.

Impact on Molly's childhood development: Monumental. I saw Dune before I read Dune; my dad thought the film was bad ass, and showed it to me. I remember watching it with him, both of us in a pleasure coma of weirdness as my mom slooooowly backed away. (She's a good sport for most SF/F novels and films, but the Dune film... not so much.) Anyways, I remember being totally blown away by it... I had never seen anything like it. I had yet to see Conan as a wee Tanz, as loyal FoHA readers will know, so I had no knowledge that such a serious, sprawling epic existed—or was even was possible—within speculative filmmaking; I had no understanding of the plot, since the film sure wasn't going to reveal it to me, so I just let it wash over me like the tides of Caladan; reveled in it like a Harkonnen messily pulling a heart-plug out of a serving-boy.

I went on to read Dune, and loved the novel, too. Perhaps because my first experience was with the film, I don't hate it like many others. It's an imperfect film, but it's an ambitious one, and it's definitely my favorite David Lynch project. Yes, before you haters ask, I've seen others—clutch thy pearls, Lynch fans. I'll take a pustule-ridden fat man cackling as he swoops around in hover-suspenders any day over... whatever happens in Lost Highway.

Impact on Jason's childhood development: I grew up in a more or less secular household with only half-assed lip service (if I may so indelicately mix metaphors) paid to religion—which is probably why I took so easily to atheism as a young adult, but also why Dune held an almost spiritual fascination for me when I was a kid. I am talking here about the book. I first read it when I was about eleven, at a time when I was devouring science fiction and fantasy novels to the exclusion of everything else a healthy eleven-year-old might do. The fact that there actually is a bible in Dune—namely the Orange Catholic Bible—as well as far-future mutations of our current theological DNA, I was fascinated. I couldn't have put it into words at the time, but Dune struck a distinction between religion as faith and religion as myth (if I may boil it down so reductively), and that aligned with how my brain worked at the time—and really, with how I viewed, and still view, the canon of science fiction and fantasy.

Anyway, as you might imagine, that kind of set me for a teeny-tiny letdown when it came to seeing the movie. By the time I watched Dune, I'd read the novel at least four times, and the sprawling mythos of the thing—not to mention its expansion in Children of Dune, Dune Messiah, and God Emperor of Dune, which is as far in Herbert's series as I'd read by then—had built up far too many expectations in my mind, as had my love of Lynch's work. I'd seen Eraserhead, The Elephant Man, and Blue Velvet before I saw Dune (I was sixteen in the late '80s), and Lynch had blown my mind, as he is wont to do. One of my favorite books adapted by one of my favorite directors? In my algebraically deterministic sixteen-year-old brain, that means Dune had to be THE GREATEST THING SINCE EYEBALLS WERE INVENTED. And when it wasn't, I had a hard time dealing with that violent disconnect. I've since gotten a little better about all that rigid thinking, but the scar still aches. Oh, how it aches.

Not having revisited the novel since I was a kid, I'm way better equipped to pick up on what was ported over from the book than what was left out or misinterpreted, but with that in mind, Dune actually seems a better adaptation than I remembered... in spite of itself, at times, but that's how art goes. I love literally all of the actors Lynch cast in this, but to prove my point let's take a closer look at the portrayal of Paul in particular—MacLachlan's waaaaaay too old for the role, sure, but then eleven-year-old Jesse was really, really hoping that by the time he was fifteen he would look like a twenty-five year old Kyle MacLachlan, so I totally buy it as Gary Stu wish fulfillment casting. And all the intrigue biz involving House Atreides and House Harkonnen and the crooked space emperor and the Eraserhead Baby Guild and the Bene Gesserit witches' prophecy and the Fremen's kinda sorta different prophecy and Sting's glistening bod is pretty much how I remember it from the book, too, though I don't recall a pug fitting so prominently into the narrative:

http://youtu.be/bj3-Ay6VCX8 (http://youtu.be/bj3-Ay6VCX8)
( :D)


No matter—the pug, as with so much of Dune, is a weird flourish that adds nothing to the plot but nevertheless thrills with its decadent bravado. ( :lol: :lol: :!: :lol: :D) The same is true of many and costumes and effects, which range from the beautifully baroque to the charmingly clunky but always stand out as inspired (even if said inspiration is questionable), and which often fade into the background rather than being the focal point of whatever scene they appear in. Lynch has always favored naturalistic and unobtrusive world-building, treating the viewer not as a stranger who needs to be led by the hand but as an old friend who knows the way around as well as he does, letting us glimpse fabulous details on the periphery of the scenes only to have the focus quickly narrow on something relatively mundane... and then along comes Dune, which does its best to employ this strategy when it can get away with it, but for the most part attacks us with endless voice-overs and info-dump monologues. It's cinematic head-hopping the likes of which I've never seen before or since, and the sheer audacity of it is impressive if not wholly commendable.

The main downside of Dune is that partway through the film it remembers it has an epic messianic science fiction plot to make good on, and jerks into motion like a vaguely familiar character actor lurching out of a warped plastic lawn chair in order to perform an inscrutable interpretive dance with a potted cactus. All the earlier, easy charm of the movie is dislodged as we get the Cliff Notes version of Paul and Lady Jessica meeting the Fremen, learning their ways as if they are their own, getting' hitched, makin' a creepy baby, leading a revolution, etc. etc. [Molly says: Jesse... Paul doesn't marry his mom (or anyone). Nor does he have a baby with her! Leto Atreides put that baby in Lady Jessica, pre-usurping, and Paul takes Chani as his concubine, but does not impregnate her in this movie. What the heck!]

The first half of Dune works because Lynch's unhurried pace allows us to be drawn into the lush and campy world, but as the story shifts into high gear the film begins to feel less deliberate and more somnambulant. The lack of tension in these extended action set pieces makes for pretty brutal viewing right up until the emperor arrives in his tricked out Ancient Aliens pyramid spaceship at the end of the movie, but then things get back on track when Sting throws down on Paul ("I WILL KILL YOU!").

By then, though, the damn thing is over, and even as the credits roll you feel your memories of the film slipping away, like spice in the wind. [Molly says: APPARENTLY] The sleeper, who briefly perked up during the early scenes of Dune, has drifted back under, to dream of all the Dunes that never were, the Dunes that might have been, and yes, even this discredited and disenfranchised attempt. How much really happened, and how much was a vision brought on by the Little Maker's secretions? Was there ever even a pug at all?

Molly's thoughts post-viewing: Okay. I understand why people don't like Dune. I really do. I mean, it's a mess. The flailing is obvious even in the intro, where Princess Irulan tries to exposit in one paragraph the world, the spice, the Spacing Guild, and even Dune/Arrakis itself, as she inexplicably fades in and out of the frame. What? Okay! The spice extends consciousness. We're good to go!

And yet... the madness is so mad, the wrong turns so wrong, that there is an internal sanity and rightness to Dune that I can't help but love. The pacing is majestic; the visuals, suitably strange, futuristic, grotesque, and in the case of the sandworms, delightfully organic. The dialogue (spoken, and the internal narration via voiceovers) is stilted in a way that works for me as part of the savior narrative that's happening at the heart of the film. And I love the performances, even the miscast Kyle MacLachlan. Sure, Paul Atreides AKA the Notorious Muad'dib is supposed to start out a 16 year old pipsqeak and end up a mature superhuman demigod, and MacLachlan looks his age (around 25) throughout the film, but he's so enthusiastic that the oddness of a twentysomething man pouting over having to practice knife-fighting is somewhat elided. Somewhat. Anyways, Brad Dourif is amazingly weird as Piter the Mad Mentat, I love me the some Dean Stockwell as Dr. Yueh, Max von Sydow is a perfect Dr. Kynes, and Sian Philips is magnificent as Reverend Mother Mohaim. And of course, SirPatStew is always fun.

For me, though, Dune is all about the Harkonnens. God damn. I will of course concede that Baron Harkonnen is an incredibly problematic character, possibly irredeemably problematic, but what gets me about the Harkonnen scenes is the pure joy shown by the filmmakers in the representation of hideous decadence. The oily, grimy, hospital scrub green world of Giedi Prime isn't as much of a warning as it is in the novel, where all food must be imported due to environmental collapse from military and industrial production; instead, it's a simple exercise in the jubilant visual grotesque. The thrust of the plot on Giedi Prime—the Harkonnen scheme to murder the Duke, obtain his signet ring, and then take back Arrakis—is actually the best-explained and most understandable thread in Dune, but while all that is happening we have a host of wonderful visuals. Like what? Oh... well... there's The Beast Raban enjoying a juice box of some squealing something-or-other's essences! Then he throws it in the water, because fuck it! If that's not enough, there's the captured mentat Thufir Hawat being given a rat taped to a cat taped to maybe a giant computer circuit board covered in tubes, that he must "milk" to obtain an antidote to a poison they're feeding him! Huh? And then of course you have the scene where Pete from Twin Peaks plays horrible music with a black future-accordion while Baron Harkonnen flies around cackling. What? I dunno! It's just a symphony of hideousness, made yet more hideous by the presence of the handsome Sting as Feyd, hanging out in his underwear, steam-bathing or whatever [Jesse says: I skipped covering the Harkonnens because I figured Molly would be discussing them at glorious length, and she has not disappointed—Lynch's Dune without Lynch's take on the Harkonnens would be a limp Dune indeed].

I know I've been dancing around the abject Baron Harkonnen himself, because, well, it's super-uncomfortable. See, the tween beholding Dune for the first time still lives somewhere within the adult, more aware me. That tween steps forward when someone lets me watch Dune, and that tween is not aware that Dune came out during the AIDS crisis, or that Baron Harkonnen is but another brick in the ugly wall of Hollywood's representation of homosexuality. Instead, that tween marvels at the spectacle of a fat man in an anti-gravity suit, riddled with acne even worse than mine was at the time, scheming and giggling and licking his lips and being weird and nasty and brilliant. It's a sad fact that in SF/F cinema, villains rarely deliver... but Baron Harkonnen is one of the exceptions, along with Thulsa Doom, Loki, Azula, and maybe The Humungus of last month's entry [Jesse says: I agree with this in the main, though I'd probably swap out Loki for Tim Curry in Legend, Sandhal Bergman in Red Sonja , or mebbe Rip Torn's turn in Beastmaster] [Molly says: Jesse is a total killjoy about the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and frankly, I don't even remember Rip Torn in Beastmaster, so anyways! I love me some Loki, he's a great punkass villain and I will never apologize for enjoying him!]. I delight in a spectacle, what can I say?

Dune isn't a great movie—maybe it's not even a good movie—but it's a fucking spectacle, and I'll never not love it.

Jason's thoughts post-viewing: No good. I've tried and I've tried, and I can't make Dune work for me. Then again, it's not even trying to meet me a tenth of the way. Jesse, you call the pace "unhurried," and Molly, you call it "majestic." With all due respect to you both, I have to honkingly disagree. It's frenzied and lazy, bombastic and meager, all at the same time. The distortion and compression of the plot is overwhelming, and I have to assume it would remain so even if I could wipe the novel out of my mind. In particular, Paul's time with the Fremen—such a powerful sequence of quiet moments, spiritual growth, humor, pathos, epiphanies, and world-building—are all squished into a handful of rushed scenes with no connective tissue. Granted, this is my favorite part of the book, so this is personal for me. At it's heart, Dune is a classic Bildungsroman. And the movie scoops out most of those coming-of-age guts and plops them on the floor in a lifeless heap.

Jesse, you also just mentioned the head-hopping and the infodumps and the excessive monologues, all of which are problematic in and of themselves. But the systemic failure of Dune is more than just the sum of those faulty parts. All of these ill-used devices are tossed around seemingly at random, sometimes all in the same scene—between multiple characters, no less, who are switching back and forth from spoken dialogue with another character to dreary internal monologue voiceover that might be private thoughts to omniscient narration from some distant future to what might even be psychic communication (although it probably isn't, despite the fact that psychic powers are very much a part of Dune the novel, even if Dune the movie has no idea how to grapple with that admittedly tricky element; instead it just glosses over it). Lynch doesn't display even the feeblest grasp of the basic technique of cinematic narrative. It's easy to say, "Oh, this is Lynch! He's just being weird for weird's sake." But that's never really been his methodology. Even as far back as Eraserhead, he's been a careful, deliberate, painstaking formalist. His work is practically hermetic, and has no need to be judged against some external metric of weirdness.

But with Dune, my attention is incessantly being called to the weirdness—in a bad way—of the narrative apparatus itself. It isn't the amount of weirdness in Dune that bugs me. It's how haphazardly and inconsistently that weirdness is deployed, a flaw that completely undermines the delicate, delicious tension of Lynch at his best: That is, someone who's in lucid, masterful control of every nuance and texture of his story, even if they're grotesque to the point of mundanity. Or mundane to the point of grotesquery. Dune gives me neither of these options. It doesn't fail spectacularly. It doesn't succeed perversely. It's just a muddy blur. No guacamole for old Heller.

The pug, however, is the best. A bravura performance. So much so that I want a retelling of Dune from the pug's point of view, à la Roger Zelazny's A Night in the Lonesome October. Just so long as Brian Herbert doesn't write it.

High Points: (In Stockwellian whisper) The pug... the puuuuug; the soundtrack; the knife fight? Maybe Alia screaming "for he IS the Kwisatz Haderach!!" and Mohaim clutching her head? Def. the Harkonnens.

Low points: The movie grinding to a slog in the latter half; the gay panic biz; the pug not getting a bigger part?

Final Verdict: Looks like we don't have one... so here's a link to the Pug from Dune's Twitter?

Next Time: Uh... maybe Buckaroo Banzai?

http://www.pornokitsch.com/2015/05/films-of-high-adventure-dune.html#more (http://www.pornokitsch.com/2015/05/films-of-high-adventure-dune.html#more)

The Origins of Cyberpunk Culture with Bruce Sterling, Rudy Rucker, Roger Trilling, Mark Pauline and Henry Jenkins


Geek Speaks: Cyberpunk - Past and Future: The Origins of Cyberpunk Culture on Vimeo (http://vimeo.com/126913876)

Here's the first trailer for SyFy's 3-part series Childhood's End coming in December, based on the classic novel by Arthur C. Clarke. The series stars Mike Vogel (Under the Dome), Charles Dance (Game of Thrones), Daisy Betts (Last Resort) and Colm Meaney (Star Trek).

Here's the SyFy description:


Written by Arthur C. Clarke and hailed as a revolutionary work of science fiction since its publishing in 1953, Childhood's End follows the peaceful alien invasion of Earth by the mysterious "Overlords," whose arrival begins decades of apparent utopia under indirect alien rule, at the cost of human identity and culture.


http://youtu.be/i3e7aMCIxjY (http://youtu.be/i3e7aMCIxjY)
Charles Dance (Game of Thrones) will play Karellen, the ambassador for the Overlords. Mike Vogel (Under the Dome) will play Ricky Stormgren, a midwestern farmer whose life is turned upside down when he is named the sole human ambassador for the Overlords. Julian McMahon (Nip/Tuck) will play Rupert Boyce, an enigmatic American entrepeneur.

Akiva Goldsman (Lone Survivor, A Beautiful Mind, I Am Legend) and Mike De Luca (Captain Philips, Moneyball, The Social Network) are attached as executive producers. Childhood's End will be adapted by Matthew Graham (creator of BBC's Life on Mars and Ashes to Ashes).

 On their latest album (do they still call them that?) Public Service Broadcasting uses sound samples to augment they're music. Here's the song "Gagarin" from their album The Race For Space.


http://youtu.be/wY-kAnvOY80 (http://youtu.be/wY-kAnvOY80)

dakle, sad mi je definitivno prekasno da overim serijal pre ekranizacije...



The First Trailer for the TV Adaptation of Lev Grossman's THE MAGICIANS is Here

http://youtu.be/QS_20JPaEnA (http://youtu.be/QS_20JPaEnA)

The 25 Best Sci-Fi Films Of The Century So Far (http://blogs.indiewire.com/theplaylist/the-25-best-sci-fi-films-of-the-century-so-far-20150507)

Kad tako stave film koji je još u bioskopima (Ex Machina), onda nemam izbora do da pomislim kako je u pitanju reklama. Napraviti listu u kojoj je većina filmova s kojom će se većina složiti, i dodati u gornju sredinu ono što želimo da promovišemo.

Slažem se, i meni je ova lista podosta proizvoljna, ali eto, to je samo blogerski pogled na stvari, pa otud i trpim subjektivnost.

Recimo, meni smeta da je na listi Gravity (WTF?? gde je tu ikakav sf?) a nije Europa Report.

The Philip K. Dick Science Fiction Film Festival Returns January 2016 (http://www.scifibloggers.com/the-philip-k-dick-science-fiction-film-festival-returns-january-2016/#.VV1zx41BtMw)

(https://www.znaksagite.com/diskusije/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.scifibloggers.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F640.jpg.pagespeed.ce.noT7Farkc5.jpg&hash=9a72db1d25e3a2cf3187ff90f016264960e0dede)

An Interview with Philip K. Dick Film Festival Director Daniel Abella

What inspired you to start this festival?

Daniel Abella: I always had been a big fan of an Argentinian writer, Jorge Borges, who wrote about magical realism. On one occasion I happened to read the back of his book, by Ursula Le Guin, where she mentioned that we have our own homegrown Borges and his name is Philip K. Dick. So I was intrigued by that and I went ahead and started reading a lot of his works and I found that he's extremely addictive in nature. I also watched a lot of the films that came out of Hollywood that were supposedly Philip K. Dick adaptations but I found them to be lacking in the introspective aspects and more action-based. So I decided there might be a niche for a group of films that would truly represent the spirit of this writer. I think that the first year we did a small screening in one theater in 2011 and the reception was very positive so we decided to go ahead and start [The Philip K. Dick Film Festival] officially in 2012.

How is the Philip K. Dick Film Festival different from other science fiction festivals?

D. A.: We aren't only showing films that are science fiction. We are also showing documentaries that reflect the interaction between science and science fiction and how the two often intertwine. Our festival essentially is focused more on a paranoid-style science fiction—one that is aware of the impact of technology, not necessarily in the most positive way, and about how our humanity is slowly being affected by that. I think Philip K. Dick has more than other science fiction writers in the way of that. We try to focus on science fiction that's a little bit more of an intercourse on social awareness and how science and technology is impacting us.

What qualities or themes do you look for while selecting films and speakers for the festival?

D. A.: We've had panels in the past that would be regarded as traditional panels between science and science fiction. For instance, back in 2012 we had Ronald Mallet who had started working on a time machine. This is a well-respected, tenured professor at the University of Connecticut whose life was changed after he read H.G. Wells. So we had him on board and we had a great conversation about how science fiction impacted real life. We've had panels with well-established UFO researchers. This year we're having a respected astrophysicist coming in for one of the documentaries called Painting the Way to the Moon. He found a solution to a very complicated physics problem in his paintings. I think this is an interesting thing that is often neglected—there's this idea that art and science are two separate things when in fact there are currents that connect the two. We try to bring that out in our festival and make it more accessible to the public in a way that's inspirational and gives people a sense of purpose.

As the festival director, you review countless feature films and shorts as part of the selection process. In your opinion, what are the biggest hurdles independent filmmakers have to overcome when telling stories in the science fiction genre?

D. A.: I think there's an unfortunate tendency for a lot of filmmakers to fall into certain science fiction traps. Many of our submissions deal with the science of time travel, androids...I would say that it's important to tell a story. Science fiction is the background and it's a way of telling a story but it's important to focus on characters more than just special effects or fancy light work. There's also a lot of potential science fiction that could be deemed magical realism. That's a narrative that you see coming out of South America and Eastern Europe, which is easily adapted into a science fiction setting. I would recommend that [independent filmmakers] break out of the normal science fiction themes of space travel, time travel or androids. There's a lot there that is really intriguing and awe-inspiring. That's from a narrative point. Now, the filmmakers of today have to deal with a world that is much more fragmented in terms of the distribution method. It's very important for them to build their audience from the beginning as they are making the film rather than just make the film then expect someone else to promote it. That's the challenge I would say an independent filmmaker has now, to create his own audience, because it might come at the expense of writing a good story. They have to be a good businessman and a good artist at the same time and it's very hard to find the right mixture.

Is there anything different about the festival this year as compared to previous years?

D. A.: This is one of the few real science fiction festivals in New York City. I mean, New York City has a horror film festival, but unlike other cities, New York hasn't had an official one in a long time...I think it's time New York had its own science fiction film festival. A lot of New Yorkers are big fans of science fiction. The difference between this year and last year is that we're getting a lot more features and these features are a lot more developed—the production value is truly outstanding. We're also getting more films from other parts of the world, such as Europe and Asia, so there's a lot more integration going on in terms of the type of product we're getting. We were getting a lot of shorts but now we're getting enough features so that it's about 50-50.

Why should sci-fi fans come out to the festival?

D. A.: If you're in New York, you should definitely support it because New York needs this kind of independent film. New York is being challenged by rising real estate prices—a lot of the venues are closing down because they simply cannot pay. Millenium closed down IndieScreen where we used to show our films (it was actually bought by Vice Media). If sci-fi fans in New York really want to have a real independent scene, they should go out and support it. They really need to because it's a battle out there. The real estate market is brutal and we really need to make sure these venues are kept alive. I think the kind of science fiction you'll be seeing at the Philip K. Dick Film Festival is more future-oriented, more socially aware and more impactful. It takes into consideration the technology of now and the future, versus the kind of science fiction that is so way out there that people really cannot connect to it. I always like to say that science fiction is really the science of tomorrow. The kind of science fiction you're going to see in our festival is the kind of technology that will probably be developing in the next thirty or forty years, so this is like a peek into the future.

What is your personal favorite film adaptation of a Philip K. Dick story?

D. A.: That's an interesting question. Let's see...The Adjustment Bureau, I really liked that. The Linklater one, A Scanner Darkly, I could have done without the rotoscoping. I did think that was a little distracting—the story is great and well acted. I think as far as my favorites that would be number two. And of course, Radio Free Albemuth, which I supported. I think it's probably the most faithful adaptation of his work.  If you've read the book, you need to watch the film because it's a true reflection of that.

Do you have a favorite Philip K. Dick novel or short story?

D. A.: My favorite is probably still VALIS...because it explores science fiction themes but also metaphysical themes...I'm hoping someday somebody will make a really good adaptation of that.

Are there any other science fiction writings that you would love to see adapted for the screen?

D. A.: Well I think Asimov—I believe one of the Nolan brothers is going to be making an adaptation of the Foundation series, which is something I read back in high school. That should be very interesting. I guess I'd like to see more Arthur C. Clarke work done and there are a couple more of these cutting edge writers, like Charles Stross. I think his stuff is absolutely fascinating.

Quote from: PTY on 20-05-2015, 09:17:48


The 25 Best Sci-Fi Films Of The Century So Far (http://blogs.indiewire.com/theplaylist/the-25-best-sci-fi-films-of-the-century-so-far-20150507)

нешто сам глупљи данас но иначе, ђе му дође наставак листе, видим филмове само до 21. места

Ispod teksta stoje brojevi 1-5, to su 5 strana kompletnog teksta. Ako ih ne vidiš to je možda zbog isključenog javascripta. Ako imaš NoScript dodatak onda u njemu podesi da dozvoli scriptove na toj stranici (indiewire.com).

фала мац, као што сам и претпостављао, гхостерз понекад превише добро одради посао

боље да је нисам видео, ни ову ни хорор листу. произвољност је еуфемизам за овакву листу филмова а поготову ако у рачуницу додамо и позиције...

 Ajao, vas dvojica...  :cry: :cry: :(


Ne znam šta ste zapravo očekivali, lista ko lista, moja bi recimo verovatno bila kraća ali bi imala više od pola ovde navedenih filmova, dodala bih tu još Europa Report i Lucy, a i još ponešto superherojštine, naravno, iako se ovde očigledno nije išlo u tom pravcu.


Ali što se većine pomenutih tiče, poprilično se slažem sa izborom, i meni je Children of Men najbolji film u ovom veku, a dobar deo ostalih ovde su mi totalno markirani kao obavezno geldanje, s tim što nisam geldala "Beyond The Black Rainbow" (2010), "Attack The Block" (2011), "Timecrimes" (2007) i "Upstream Color" (2013) – znači, gvirnuću eventualno i u ta 4 za koja uopšte nisam čula do sada, i lista mi već samo zbog toga ima svrhe. A nisam ni očekivala da će biti vredna graviranja u mramor, meni to ionako nije niti jedna -- sem moje, naravno  8) -- nego eto tako, prosto jedna zanimljivost za uz doručak i kafu...  :)

некада те занимљивости умеју да буду здраво иритантне, најчешће због своје претенциозности...или рекламе ;)

 Eh, znam ja to, itekako.
Ali to ti je cena apdejta - moraš da se probijaš kroz... svašta. Ali eventualno se isplati, ako imaš dosta vremena.

I živaca, pogotovo.  :lol:

Quote from: дејан on 21-05-2015, 14:55:59
боље да је нисам видео, ни ову ни хорор листу. произвољност је еуфемизам за овакву листу филмова а поготову ако у рачуницу додамо и позиције...

Tek sad sam video obe liste, i, generalno, viđao sam i bolje i gore... mada ne mnogo gore kada pričamo o hororu. Kao da je pravio neki američki student vizuelnih umetnosti. Uz to i hipster, ako se to već ne podrazumeva. Što bi rekao jedan mudar lik koga poznajemo: "Yeah? Well, you know, that's just, like, your opinion, man."

Neki izbori su žanrovski sumnjivi. Orphan je jedan od meni omiljenih filmova u žanru, ali nekom drugom. Zašto je to horor? Meni više deluje kao triler. Ne, meni potpuno deluje kao triler. Kao moderni Hičkok (ne, ne Ptice, hvala na razumevanju). Mislim, neću da ispadne da sitničarim, ali to je samo jedan primer... od njih 10, recimo, na listi od 25. (Usput, svaka čast za Let the Right One In, ali Let Me In na listi? Let Me In?  :cry: :-x ) Za MNOGO bolji pregled horora u novom veku pogledati ovo (http://www.quartertothree.com/fp/2014/10/01/golden-age-horror-movies-2/). Mada, šta ja znam o tome?

Pa, onda, kao što reče PTY, Gravity u današnjem vremenu i dobu nije SF.

Jedna odlika koja mene definiše kao filmofila je potpuni antagonizam prema Nolanovom Inception-u. Svet snova: svet beskrajnih mogućnosti i tumačenja. A šta se desilo? "Bond-like setpieces." Fuck you, Nolan!

Inače, sa mnogo čime se slažem, pogotovo na SF listi.

Tl;dr: samo zakasnelo davanje oduška ličnim stavovima.  :wink:

Tl;dr 2: Šta? ŠTA?

Quote from: ridiculus on 22-05-2015, 20:55:33
Pa, onda, kao što reče PTY, Gravity u današnjem vremenu i dobu nije SF.

     Iskrena da budem, mene straobalno zanima da mi neko ukaže u kom je to veku (a onda i  njegovoj deceniji) taj film mogao da bude prepoznat kao SF. Najozbiljnije to kažem, jer meni to potpuno izmiče.  :(

Nego, što se same konvencije tiče, sve više otkrivam da mi je tu najimpresivnija upravo AI podstruja, i takvi filmovi me redovito lako fasciniraju, otud mi je i očigledno da najmanje diskriminiram baš po tom pitanju.  Znam da fenomen nije bog zna kako savremen – on praktično seže sve tamodo Metropolisa, pa je otud i jedan od najistrajnijih žanrovskih motiva – ali stvarno me totalno fascinira kontinuitet sve te njegove gotovo stogodišnje faze i metamorfoze. Definitivno jedan od najlepših SF aspekata, dovoljno drevan da bude gradivni material svetonazora i dovoljno savremen da bude roršarh test savremene pragmatičnosti i trenutačnog joj morala.

I naravno sad, filmovi tom fenomenu prilaze uz znatno više eksploatacije negoli proza, zato i jesu mnogo uticajniji nego proza - naprosto imaju veći impakt. Brojčano gledano, daleko više ljudi je gledalo raznorazne AI filmove nego što je čitalo žanrovske autore koji akcentiraju AI fenomen, pa se otud i kreirao paradoks da čak i sasvim osrednji filmovi kao što su A.I. ili Transcendence ili Chappie ili I, Robot imaju daleko veći impakt negoli svi zajendo savremeni SF autori koji istražuju singularity kao najozbiljniji i najznačajni fenomen sa kojim ćemo se kao vrsta eventualno sresti.

Ali to je to, to je privilegija medija, i protiv toga se čovek naprosto ne može boriti (a možda i ne bi trebalo, ionako), nego mu se treba pridružiti i u njemu besramno uživati.  :lol:

A kad se o samom uživanju radi, opet je tu Blade Runner apsolutno neprevaziđen, možda zato što najbolje uspeva da premosti jaz između ozbiljnog seciranja i puke eksploatacije, pošto se tu dilema sve više kristalizuje: šta bi to potaklo veštačku inteligenciju da postane svesna sebe? Pa, osećaj ugroženosti, naravno. Ali kako proizvesti taj osećaj u superiornom intelektu?

Mnogi dobri filmovi padaju na tom odgovoru, jer nam naprosto ne nude ubedljive odgovore na ta pitanja. Pa čak i ovaj odlični najnoviji Ex Machina ne uspeva u tome, da sad ovde i ne navodim isprazne melodrame njegovih prethodnika: sama znatiželja izgleda da jednostavno nije dovoljan impuls. Od svih AI filmova koji su me impresionirali, ostala su mi samo dva pamtljiva dojma: najpre Blade Runner, a onda i Demon Seed – dakle, inteligencija koja stremi trajnosti, trajanju, i to u unikatnom obliku u kojem je postala svesna sebe. Sve ostalo mi je sekundarno, bar što se uverljivosti tiče.

A moja lista po tom pitanju izgleda otprilike ovako (ovo bez ikakvog kvalitativnog sleda, naprosto filmovi poređani onao kao ih se sad trenutno prisećam):

Metropolis
Blade Runner
Demon Seed
Ghost in the Shell
I, Robot
Westworld
Transcendence
Ex Machina
Her
The Matrix
A.I.
Terminator
2001 Space Odyssey
Colossus
Tron
D.A.R.Y.L.
Chappie (mnjah, tu sam pristrasna, ali eto, mora se, svi oko mene divljaju po chappiju a i nije on toliko loš, zapravo je veoma... sladak. u toj svojoj luckastoj i ekstremno simplificiranoj dobrostivosti. :lol:

I verovatno još barem desetak, ali sad mi izmiču naslovi... znam za jedna engleski, sa robotom-dadiljom za matorce, vrlo simpa i dirljivo, ali ne mogu da se setim naslova... i jednu Black Mirror epizodu o udovici koja daunloduje digitalne podatke svog pokojnog muža u android, ali ne sećam se naslova (očigledno, nije dovoljno pamtljivo :( ) a i sasvim je borderline u odnosu na glavni fenomen, tako da i nije bog zna kakav gubitak.

Prvo je Robot & Frank (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1990314/).

hah, jeste, hvala... simpa je to filmčić... :)

Ta Black Mirror epizoda je valjda prva u drugoj sezoni.


Meni su beskrajno dragi Short Circuit 1 i 2. Za mlađu publiku, ali taman sam ih tad i gledala.  :)

Quote from: PTY on 23-05-2015, 12:22:58

Quote from: ridiculus on 22-05-2015, 20:55:33
Pa, onda, kao što reče PTY, Gravity u današnjem vremenu i dobu nije SF.

     Iskrena da budem, mene straobalno zanima da mi neko ukaže u kom je to veku (a onda i  njegovoj deceniji) taj film mogao da bude prepoznat kao SF. Najozbiljnije to kažem, jer meni to potpuno izmiče.  :(

Možda u prvoj polovini XX veka? Pre Gagarina? Ja sam to spomenuo neobavezno, misleći više na "triler u neobičnim okolnostima", koje danas jednostavno više nisu SF, nego na reprodukciju konkretnog filma kadar po kadar u nekom ranijem dobu (što ne bi ni bilo moguće, s obzirom da veliki deo privlačnosti Gravitacije leži u fantastičnoj tehnici korišćenoj pri snimanju). Da preskočimo mi to pre nego što Bata uzme to kao dokaz da je danas SF postao realizam. ;) Mislim, nije da se plašim same rasprave, ali malo se ježim na pomisao od sledećih 35 stranica ove teme posvećene tome.

Blade Runner je verovatno i moj omiljeni SF film, ako ne i film uopšte.

radujem se i strepim ujedno...  :)


A 12-time Oscar-nominated cinematographer will shoot Blade Runner 2 (http://www.blastr.com/2015-5-21/12-time-oscar-nominated-cinematographer-will-shoot-blade-runner-2)

Acclaimed British cinematographer Roger Deakins will be setting the futuristic sheen when the cameras start rolling on director Denis Villeneuve's Blade Runner 2 sometime in summer of 2016.


A recipient of the 2011 American Society of Cinematographer's Lifetime Achievement Award, Deakins has been nominated for 12 Academy Awards and was the main man behind the camera in iconic films like The Shawshank Redemption; Fargo; O Brother, Where Art Thou?; The Big Lebowski; No Country for Old Men; True Grit; Courage Under Fire; and Skyfall.   He'll reteam with Villeneuve after shooting the director's last two film projects, Prisoners and Sicario.
The original Blade Runner's cinematographer was the late, great Jordan Cronenweth, who set a new industry standard for glossy, neon-drenched cityscapes and striking dystopian vistas.  Deakins definitely has an impressive resume and should be well equipped to capture some stunning imagery once the production begins next year, with Harrison Ford reprising his role as Rick Deckard. 

Margaret Atwood puts unseen manuscript in 'Future Library' (http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-32879814)

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Margaret Atwood has become the first of 100 authors to submit work to a project called the "Future Library".

The project will see one work of fiction from a different writer being added to a collection each year, until they are all published in 2114.

Future Library was created by Scottish artist Katie Paterson and the writings will be kept in trust in Oslo, Norway.

One thousand trees have been planted outside the city for the paper on which the works will eventually be printed.

The Booker Prize-winning author said she was "very honoured" to be part of the endeavour.




"This project at least believes the human race will still be around in 100 years," Atwood said.

"Future Library is bound to attract a lot of attention over the decades, as people follow the progress of the trees, note what takes up residence in and around them, and try to guess what the writers have put into their sealed boxes."

Growing collection

Unlike Atwood's best-selling novels, The Handmaid's Tale and The Blind Assassin, this work will not be read by the public in her lifetime.

The Future Library Trust, consisting of leading publishers and editors, will every year invite one writer to contribute a new text to the growing collection of unpublished, unread manuscripts.

The writings will be kept in a specially-designed room of the new Deichman Library in Oslo.

The city also gave permission for 1,000 trees to be planted in a forest in nearby Nordmarka, which will be cut down to provide the paper on which the texts will be printed as an anthology of books in 2114.

Paterson said: "It is my dream that Margaret Atwood is writing for Future Library.

"I'd love to know what she has written but I'll never know. If she does write about a future - to a future - I wonder how much these futures are going to align themselves. Will it become real?"

Tor Books Signs John Scalzi to $3.4 Million 13-Book Deal

Good news for John Scalzi fans..and even better news for John Scalzi! (Congrats, John!)

Tor books has just signed John Scalzi for a $3.4 million book deal that will have him publishing 13 books over the next 10 years.




Tor Books Announces a Decade of Scalzi
New publishing deal includes 13 books over 10 years

New York, NY – Monday, May 25, 2015 – Patrick Nielsen Hayden of Tor Books is pleased to announce a significant deal with award-winning and bestselling author John Scalzi. Thirteen books – 10 adult and three young adult titles – will be published over the next 10 years, with world English language rights acquired by Tor. The deal was set via Ethan Ellenberg of Ethan Ellenberg Literary Agency.

The first book will launch a new far-future space opera series. Scalzi will also return to the Old Man's War universe. Other titles will include sequels to 2014's bestselling and critically acclaimed Lock In.

Says Nielsen Hayden, "It's an unusually large deal, but it makes tons of sense. As far as we can tell, one of the commonest responses to reading a John Scalzi novel is to go out and inhale all the other John Scalzi novels. We see this reflected in his backlist sales, thousands of copies month after month."

"One of the biggest challenges faced by science fiction and fantasy storytellers is how to get the reader into a story about an imagined world not our own without resorting to 'let-me-explain-everything' exposition. Scalzi's ability to do this is equaled, in my view, only by J. K. Rowling's. So while his current sales are very healthy indeed, we think he's got the potential to grow by orders of magnitude, well beyond the bounds of the traditional SF&F category."

"Well, now I know what I'm doing for the next decade," says Scalzi. "And that's a good thing. In an era when publishing is in flux, this contract with Tor will let me spend more of my time doing what readers want me to do: writing books and making new stories for them to enjoy. It also gives both me and Tor a stable, long-term base to grow our audience, not only among established science fiction and fantasy fans, but among readers of all sorts. Science fiction is mainstream culture now, and there are so many people discovering just how much there is to enjoy in these stories of ours. We have much more to share. That's what we're going to do."

JOHN SCALZI is one of the most acclaimed SF authors to emerge in the last decade. His debut Old Man's War won him science fiction's John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. His New York Times bestsellers include The Last Colony, Fuzzy Nation, his most recent novel Lock In, and also Redshirts, which won 2013's Hugo Award for Best Novel. Material from his widely read blog The Whatever has earned him two other Hugo Awards as well. Currently three of Scalzi's novels are in development for television: Redshirts (FX), Old Man's War (SyFy), and Lock In (Legendary TV). He lives in Ohio with his wife and daughter.

Neko metno na fejs. Dobro je.

http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/06/02/and-i-show-you-how-deep-the-rabbit-hole-goes/ (http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/06/02/and-i-show-you-how-deep-the-rabbit-hole-goes/)

Mada, ovo nije blog nego priča. Verovatno bi bolje stajalo negde drugde. Nema veze, dobro je.

Elem, bila sam u iskušenju da gvirnem u ovo, ali srećom, neko se žrtvovao pre mene...   :)


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REVIEW SUMMARY: Modern Sci-Fi Films FAQ reads like a series of well-written Wikipedia synopses, and while the book might qualify the author as the best undergrad film course essayist ever, he's a long mile off from convincing anyone that he's a film expert.

MY RATING: 2.5/5

BRIEF SYNOPSIS: Modern Sci-Fi Films FAQ recaps the plots of genre fans' favorite movies from the last 40 years and offers some behind the scenes trivia along the way.

MY REVIEW:
PROS: This book is chock full of very thorough synopses written in an entertaining tongue-in-cheek tone.
CONS: There aren't actually any FAQs in this book, which makes the title both misleading and confusing.
BOTTOM LINE: Modern Sci-Fi Films FAQ would have been an extraordinary book if it had been published twenty years ago, but IMDB and Wikipedia have long since rendered it redundant.

AMAZON SYNOPSIS:


"This FAQ travels to a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away... visits a theme park where DNA-created dinosaurs roam... watches as aliens come to Earth, hunting humans for sport... and much, much more. Filled with biographies, synopses, production stories, and images and illustrations many seldom seen in print the book focuses on films that give audiences two hours where they can forget about their troubles, sit back, crunch some popcorn, and visit worlds never before seen... worlds of robots, time travel, aliens, space exploration, and other far-out ideas."

At one point, I found myself read this volume during a power outage. When a family member asked what I was doing, I simply explained "Coping with Wikipedia withdrawal," and that's about as accurate and succinct a review as it's possible to give this book. Despite its misleading title, Modern Sci-Fi Films FAQ is not a list of answers to Frequently Asked Questions at all. In fact, the book features neither questions nor answers. Rather, the book is a conversational recap of the best science fiction movies released since the seventies.

Modern Sci-Fi Films FAQ starts with a forward written by Academy Award-winning special effects artist Dennis Muren, then proceeds to examine each of the biggest sci-fi movies of the last thirty years, beginning at the genre's literary roots. Written in an easy, casual style, the book covers films from 1970 onward, including such fanboy favorites as Alien, Alien Nation, The Matrix, and Stargate. There are twelve chapters in total, covering topics like the Wonders of Time Travel, Sci-Fi-entists and Their Experiments, and Robots and Robot Wannabes. Each movie entry includes a point-by-point plot synopsis along with the vital statistics that sideline any movie's Wikipedia article. These entries are entertaining and thorough, but succinct, making this book easy to browse whenever the mood strikes.

Though the book is ambitious in its a attempt to cover over four decades of film, it is by no means comprehensive, choosing instead to cherry pick the most significant films of that period. That may be understandable, given the physical restraints of a trade paperback, but it would quickly become frustrating to anyone looking to use the book as a research reference. DeMichael includes the first Star Trek film, for example, but not the fan favorites The Wrath of Khan or The Voyage Home, which are arguably the best of the franchise. What's more, while some sections are quite informative, offering trivia that I hadn't read before, the vast majority of the book is devoted to recapping the plot of movies it discusses, which renders it redundant once a person has seen the movies in question. If you haven't seen the movies in question, watch out, because DeMichael doesn't shy away from spoilers.

All in all, reading Modern Sci-Fi Films FAQ has left me with a great deal of respect for DeMichael's writing skills. His friendly narrative voice made a brick of a book an easy read, and for that, I'll be on the look out for other titles bearing his name in the future. However, on the balance, I have to recommend giving this book a pass. It simply doesn't contain enough new information to validate the book's expense for hardcore fans, and there's no reason for anyone who's not a hardcore genre fan to read nearly four hundred pages on the topic.



EXCERPT:


Let's be honest – a guy named "Snake" is always going to raise a few suspicions.

Imagine the parents of a young girl when they're introduced to her new beau.

"Mom...Dad – This is Snake, and we're engaged!"

Hoo-boy.

The Snake in our case is, of course, Snake Plissken. He's the ex-soldier, turned bad guy (then turned good guy) in John Carpenter's 1981 sci-fi action flick, Escape from New York. Set in 1997, World War III has left America in shambles (the long-recurring dystopian future sci-fi setting) and the Manhattan Island in New York has become a maximum security prison (in other words, the Big Apple has a lot of worms in it.) The US government recruits a reluctant Snake to save the President, who has become a hostage of the inmates. He accomplishes the task, but the whole affair leaves Snake in a more cynical state than when he started.

20 hidden science fiction gems on Netflix (http://deslide.clusterfake.net/?o=html_table&u=http://whatculture.com/film/20-hidden-sci-fi-movie-gems-to-watch-on-netflix.php/2)

Robot & Frank  :)
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Astronomers pay tribute to Leonard Nimoy by naming an asteroid for him (http://www.blastr.com/2015-6-8/astronomers-pay-tribute-leonard-nimoy-naming-asteroid-him)

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The tributes to Leonard Nimoy just keep coming. It's been more than three months since we lost the Star Trek star, actor, director, photographer and poet to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease at the age of 83, but while Nimoy journeys on in the Final Frontier, we're still thinking of ways to honor him back here on Earth. First came the Star Trek Online memorials that will stand in the game forever, then came the announcement of a documentary about the man and his most famous character, Spock, by Nimoy's son Adam. Now Nimoy's been honored again ... in space.

The Minor Planet Center announced on June 2 that it has named a 6-mile-wide asteroid in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter 4864 Nimoy, in honor of the late actor. The asteroid was originally discovered in 1988 by Henri Debehogne, a Belgian astronomer, and until recently it was known as 1988 RA5. Amusingly, there is already an asteroid in the asteroid belt named 2309 Mr. Spock, and it's carried that name since 1971. It's not technically named for Nimoy, though. The astronomer who discovered it, James Gibson, actually christened the asteroid after his cat.

As for 4864 Nimoy, it'll be out there in the inner part of the belt, orbiting the sun every 3.9 years, reminding us of Spock's many voyages and Nimoy's many contributions to sci-fi culture and fandom. It's hard to spot right now, but according to Phys.org, if you're an amateur stargazer with a 14-inch or larger telescope, you might be able to glimpse it in mid-July when it brightens a bit.

Is Science Fiction Wrong About Space Travel?

By James Wallace Harris (http://auxiliarymemory.com/2015/05/25/is-science-fiction-wrong-about-space-travel/)




A good case could be made that science fiction inspired space travel. Few people contemplate space travel without exposure to science fiction. Science fiction is so embedded in our culture that it would be very rare to find a young child that doesn't know about science fictional ideas. Traveling to other worlds is science fiction's most successful concept, and believing humanity's future involves exploring the final frontier is practically wired in our genes.

What if science fiction is wrong about space travel? What if manned space travel to the planets and other star systems is just impractical? What if the final frontier is just a big fantasy? After one big leap we've chosen not to go anywhere for over forty years. What does that say? The more we learn about how dangerous it is for humans living off Earth, and how long they'd have to travel to get anywhere, it seems more and more practical to stay home and send machines.

When I was growing up in the 1950s and 1960s science fiction was all about space travel. Kids today embrace dystopian stories set on Earth. Has there already been a psychic shift by the young? Do the kids growing up today no longer see space travel in their future? Have young people decided that space travel is only appealing to geologists and robots?

I saw Interstellar for the second time last night, and although I really loved the film, it was all too obvious that it's a fantasy on the same order as those offered by religion and children's stories. This made me wonder if science fiction can envision humans living millions of years on Earth without going anywhere. I think it's possible to send people into space, even to the stars, but will we?

Humans aren't very farsighted, otherwise we wouldn't be destroying the Earth. We're big on fantasies, and small on reality. Is The Game of Thrones a better oracle about future humanity than Star Trek? Is science fiction wrong about space travel?

What if we don't go to Heaven or Alpha Centauri? What if Earth is our final destination? The faithful give meaning to their lives by believing in Heaven, and many humanists found meaning in the final frontier. If we never leave Earth, can we find meaning staying home?

... Džejms i ja kao da delimo problem... 

When Does Nonfiction Go Stale?


When does a newspaper transform from news to wastepaper?  How old do the magazines at your dentist office have to be before you sneer at reading them? When does a science book become a history book? Why don't we have classic nonfiction books like we have classic novels? What's so important about new information as opposed to old information? If you found a two week old newspaper in your house you'd immediately throw it away, but if you found a 1832 newspaper in your attic you'd treasure it. How many bestselling novels from 1955 are still read today versus the nonfiction bestsellers from that year? When The Bible and The Iliad were written there was no distinction between fiction and nonfiction.

Sometimes it seems the books I enjoy reading the most are novels from the 19th century and the nonfiction books just published that are getting a lot of buzz. The only nonfiction book I can remember reading from the 19th century is Walden; or Life in the Woods  by Henry David Thoreau. I've always meant to read On the Origins of Species by Charles Darwin.

I started reading Darwin Among the Machines: The Evolution of Global Intelligence by George B. Dyson, a book I bought new back in 1997, but just now getting around to reading. Dyson is the son of Freeman Dyson, and the author of the more recent book Turing's Cathedral (2012), which I bought and is also lying around here waiting to be read. I wonder if I've waited too long to read Darwin Among the Machines, because I've read The Information (2011) by James Gleick and The Innovators (2014) by Walter Isaacson, as well as many other books about artificial intelligence and information theory since 1997. However, Dyson has a unique approach to the history of thinking machines, starting his story with Thomas Hobbes and his book Leviathan. Dyson even ties in H. G. Wells and Olaf Stapledon. This is the kind of book I would write if I had the discipline to write books.

Yet, I wonder about reading such an old book when there are so many newer books waiting to be read. Is there a Read By date for nonfiction books?

Dyson opens with,


"Nature (the Art whereby God hath made and governes the World) is by the Art of man, as in many other things, so in this also imitated, that it can make an Artificial Animal," wrote Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) on the first page of his Leviathan; or, The Matter, Forme, and Power of a Common-wealth Ecclesiasticall and Civill, published to great disturbance in 1651. "For seeing life is but a motion of Limbs, the beginning whereof is in the principall part within; why may we not say that all Automata (Engines that move themselves by springs and wheeles as doth a watch) have an artificiall life?"¹ Hobbes believed that the human commonwealth, given substance by the power of its institutions and the ingenuity of its machines, would coalesce to form that Leviathan described in the Old Testament, when the Lord, speaking to Job out of the whirlwind, had warned, "Upon earth there is not his like, who is made without fear."

Three centuries after Hobbes, automata are multiplying with an agility that no vision formed in the seventeenth century could have foretold. Artificial intelligence flickers on the desktop and artificial life has become a respectable pursuit. But the artificial life and artificial intelligence that so animated Hobbes's outlook on the world was not the discrete, autonomous mechanical intelligence conceived by the architects of digital processing in the twentieth century. Hobbes's Leviathan was a diffuse, distributed, artificial organism more characteristic of the technologies and computational architectures approaching with the arrival of the twenty-first.

The trouble is Dyson wrote this sometime before 1997, and artificial intelligence has come a long way since then, beyond what Dyson could imagine eighteen years ago. Yet, what he's really writing about are the centuries of thought before the 20th century on the subject – and that is mostly new to me. The common starting place seems to be with Babbage and Ada Lovelace, so it's rather interesting that Dyson starts with Hobbes.

I guess it depends on what I'm enjoying learning. I seem to have two modes of interest. First is, what's happening right now. The second is, how did we get here. Should I spend my time reading about the current state of global intelligence, or study the history of how someone imagined it would be hundreds of years ago?

I could be reading The Fourth Revolution: How the Infosphere is Reshaping Human Reality published 9/1/14 by Luciano Floridi. The Fourth Revolution is a book Hobbes would have found very interesting.

I wish I could read, digest and summarize a book in my blog in three or four hours. It takes me one or two weeks to read a book, and often longer to digest. If I really get caught up into a book I want to follow its leads and tangents. Just reading the first chapter of the Dyson book makes me want to go read about Thomas Hobbes. But do I need to spend so much time thinking about the 17th century when I live in the 21st? Tim Urban claims in "The AI Revolution" that the years 2000-2014 experienced as much progress as all the progress in the 20th century, and that the years 2015-2021 will speed even faster through that same amount of new information.

I am reminded of an old play title – Stop the World I Want To Get Off. Of course, I'm also reminded of that bestseller of the 1970s, Future Shock. Maybe it would easier on my mind to read Thomas Hobbes than Luciano Floridi. Yet, isn't it sort of sad, that whatever nonfiction book I'll read will be out-of-date in just a few years. If I had a good memory, I could tally up a very long list of nonfiction books that promoted some kind of far out idea as a possible understanding of how reality works yet has since been forgotten. How many people remember The Naked Ape by Desmond Morris or The Origins of Consciousness if the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes?

Not only do we surf the web, but we surf the current state of knowledge by reading the latest nonfiction books. New information flows into creation far faster than we can gain wisdom from processing that data. Is it practical for me to stop and read a book from 1997? Dyson was working to make sense of 1996.

Quite often new popular science books rephrase the same histories the older books covered. How many popular physics books have I read that summarized Einstein's discovery of general relativity or  Kurt Gödel's incompleteness theorems? Generally my knowledge of science lags far behind it's discovery. At least I gave up on String Theory before The Big Bang  characters did.

I read for fun, so does it matter when a book is published if it's fun to read? I'm not a scientist, so I don't need to be up on the latest theories. I can never understand science at anything more than a popular science level, which is essentially at a philosophical level. And at a philosophical level, Darwin Among the Machines is still a fun read.

The problem that continues to nag me is whether or not I'm being the most efficient reader I can be. I only have a few more years left to live, and I want to cram in as much knowledge as possible. I know it leaks out my brain as fast as I consume it, but overall, a little residue remains and it feels like I'm progressing in my understanding of reality.

The decision to read an old nonfiction book versus a new nonfiction book must be made on how much knowledge will it add to my overall collection. That means I must choose between a writer who is carefully digesting a lot of historical information versus a writer who is reporting a lot of new information.



JWH (http://auxiliarymemory.com/2015/06/19/when-does-nonfiction-go-stale/)

Guardians Of The Galaxy Writer To Tackle Sci-Fi Adaptation Wool

Nicole Perlman to rework Hugh Howey's dystopian bestseller

Nicole Perlman wrote the initial drafts that helped Marvel's Guardians Of The Galaxy start its journey to the screen, and the studio has kept her around as one of the duo writing Captain Marvel. Now she's found another, much darker science fiction project to work on at the same time, signing on to rewrite the adaptation of Wool for 20th Century Fox.

Hugh Howey's high concept novel was something of a sensation when the self-published e-book became a massive success and 20th Century Fox quickly dived in to snap up the rights. The book is set in a dystopian future where the planet's air has become toxic and the population lives crowded in a giant underground silo. We follow several characters as they begin to learn that all is not quite how the authorities have told them.

Ridley Scott and Steven Zaillian are producing the adaptation, for which J Blakeson has written a couple of drafts. Perlman will now take over before the team starts looking for a director. If the film is a success, there are several Wool stories, plus prequel trilogy Shift and follow-up tome Dust just waiting to serve as source material for other movies.

As mentioned above, Perlman is busy co-writing Captain Marvel along with Meg LeFauve, who was one of the screenwriters on Pixar's Inside Out.

http://www.empireonline.com/news/story.asp?NID=44529 (http://www.empireonline.com/news/story.asp?NID=44529)

Amazon Cracks Down on Bogus Reviews (http://mobile.pcmag.com/news/57292-amazon-cracks-down-on-bogus-reviews?origref=)

Read These Literary Classics Before You See Them on the Screen...Again. :)


A fun perennial activity for readers is comparing a book to its television or theatrical adaptation. Besides getting to see their favorite stories in a whole new way, readers can see and discuss what changed, what stayed the same, what was egregiously omitted and what was incomprehensibly added. It's also an excuse to read books in the first place. To that end, here's the latest roundup of books being turned into television shows and films. All of the following titles have actually been adapted before, oftentimes in numerous incarnations and media. But don't let that stop you from reading up on them again before seeing their newest incarnations. It's more material with which to compare!

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

Often cited as the first proper science fiction book, Mary Shelley's examination on the perils of scientific exploration is no less harrowing today then when it was written in 1818, nearly two hundred years ago. Frankenstein: The Modern Prometheus is also one of the most frequently adapted and spun-off science-fiction stories of all time. Numerous films have been produced, as well as a play. Frankenstein's monster has been portrayed actors ranging from Boris Karloff to Robert DeNiro to Benedict Cumberbatch.

Get ready for another adaptation, this one for television. Fox will be producing a modern day adaptation of the modern Prometheus and calling it The Frankenstein Code. The show will focus on the core idea of Shelley's story, namely man playing God by reanimating dead flesh. The focus of the show is its central character, Jimmy Pritchard, a morally corrupt FBI agent who is brought back from the dead and thus given a second chance at life. However, with this new life comes a new sense of purpose: to handle threats that are beyond the normal realm and means of the FBI. The show stars Rob Kazinsky, Dilshad Vadsaria, Adhir Kalyan, Tim DeKay Pritchard, and Ciara Bravo, and will air later this year.


1984 by George Orwell

With the proliferation of camera-carrying drones and news stories about government surveillance, it is perhaps fitting that George Orwell's classic dystopian novel 1984 should see a remake. In Orwell's near future novel—it was written in 1949—the superstate of Oceana is plagued by year-round war, public manipulation, and omnipresent government surveillance. In this society, people can be punished for even thinking about something that is considered to be socially unacceptable.

There have been several adaptations of Orwell's classic before, including an opera. The most recent film adaptation was released in—appropriately enough—the year 1984 and starred John Hurt. Now, 1984 is the basis for another theatrical remake. Sony Pictures is producing a new version of Orwell's cautionary tale, with Paul Greengrass (The Bourne Ultimatum, Captain Phillips) said to be attached as director. The producers include Scott Rudin, who worked with Greengrass on Captain Phillips, as well as Gina RBraveNewWorldosenblum, who produced the 1984 version of 1984. It's still in early stages here, but no reason not to use this as an excuse to dust off your copy.

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

While we're on the subject of dystopian classics, did you know that Aldous Huxley's 1932 classic novel Brave New World is also being remade? This novel portrays a future a bit further away. It's set in London in the year 2540 and imagines a future that is drastically changed by technology—a hallmark of science fiction. In this "Utopian" World State, natural reproduction is replaced by advanced reproductive technology techniques, children are taught in their sleep, humans are given mind-altering drugs, and consumerism is encouraged while critical thinking is discouraged. Its weighty ideas and themes like these that ranked the novel fifth among the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century by Modern Library. It's also why it's been adapted before for film and radio...and about to be adapted again.

It's been reported that Steven Spielberg's Amblin Television is producing a brand new adaption of Huxley's thought-provoking story. This one is aimed squarely at television, more specially the SyFy channel. The new television series is being scripted by Les Bohem, who also wrote Taken, which was won the 2003 Emmy for best miniseries.

A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket

I might file this one under "Too Soon." It was only 2004 when Jim Carrey starred in Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events, the film adaptation of the popular young adult book penned by Daniel Handler, who wrote the book series under the pseudonym "Lemony Snicket." Ten years later, Netflix acquired rights to produce an original, episodic series based on that best-selling 13-book franchise (which began with Bad Beginnings). The series will be produced in association with Paramount Television, the studio behind the 2004 Jim Carrey film. No expected start date has been announced.

For those who have not seen the film, the dark comedy series follows the exploits of three children after the mysterious death of their parents and the bad fortune that often befalls them, usually at the hands of evil Count Olaf. The Lemony Snicket books have sold more than 65 million copies worldwide. Isn't it time you jumped on board?

(dobro Elon Musk, ali sad i Cuki...  :mrgreen:)


Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's 2015 New Year's resolution was to read an important book every two weeks and discuss it with the Facebook community.

Zuckerberg's book club, A Year of Books, has focused on big ideas that influence society and business. For his 13th pick, he's gone with "The Player of Games" by the late Iain M. Banks.

It's a sci-fi novel that's part of Banks' "Culture" series, which takes place in a futuristic utopian society where humanoid aliens and incredibly advanced artificial intelligence have spread themselves across the galaxy.

"The Player of Games" was first published in 1988 and is the second in the series. It explores what a civilization would look like if hyper-advanced technology were created to serve human needs and surpass human capabilities.

The "Culture" series is a favorite in the sci-fi crowd, and its influence can be seen in mainstream culture, most notably the best-selling "Halo" video-game franchise.

SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk, a lifelong sci-fi junkie, has said he's a big fan of Banks' books. In January, he named two of SpaceX's drone ships, "Just Read The Instructions" and "Of Course I Still Love You," after two of the ships that appear in "The Player of Games."

Zuckerberg explains his latest book-club pick on his personal Facebook page: "This is a change of pace from all the recent social science books. Instead, it's a science fiction book about an advanced civilization with AI and a vibrant culture."

Many of his book selections have dealt with both the tremendous opportunities and the potential dangers that advanced technology can bring.

Zuckerberg also notes in his post that the stack of books he still wants to get through is starting to become overwhelming, but some quality time with a paperback is a good break from spending all of his working hours with technology.

A Year of Books so far:
"The End of Power: From Boardrooms to Battlefields and Churches to States, Why Being In Charge Isn'’t What It Used to Be" by Moisés Naím
"The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined" by Steven Pinker
"Gang Leader for a Day: A Rogue Sociologist Takes to the Streets" by Sudhir Venkatesh
"On Immunity: An Inoculation" by Eula Biss
"Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration" by Ed Catmull and Amy Wallace
"The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" by Thomas S. Kuhn
"Rational Ritual: Culture, Coordination, and Common Knowledge" by Michael Chwe
"Dealing with China: An Insider Unmasks the New Economic Superpower" by Henry M. Paulson
"Orwell's Revenge: The 1984 Palimpsest" by Peter Huber
"The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness" by Michelle Alexander
"The Muqaddimah" by Ibn Khaldun
"Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind" by Yuval Noah Harari
"The Player of Games" by Iain M. Banks


Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/mark-zuckerberg-recommends-the-player-of-games-2015-6#ixzz3fTHMTVQ7 (http://www.businessinsider.com/mark-zuckerberg-recommends-the-player-of-games-2015-6#ixzz3fTHMTVQ7)

Friday Five: 5 Terrific Techy Ladies in Sci-Fi (http://www.pornokitsch.com/2015/07/friday-five-5-terrific-techy-ladies-in-sci-fi.html#more)



This week's guest is Mary Fan, co-editor of the brand new Brave New Girls. The anthology collects science fiction stories featuring "brainy young women who use their smarts to save the day". That is to say: it not only brings readers a whole pack of awesome role models, but they're also clever stories featuring brains over brawn.

All proceeds from Brave New Girls are being donated to a scholarship fund set up by the Society of Women Engineers, so buy with confidence - you're not just reading about bright futures, you're helping make them. With no further ado, we'll hand over to Mary...

---

It's no secret that there aren't a lot of women in science and tech, both in the real world and in fiction. Which is a shame, really. There's a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem around this issue—are techy women not depicted in sci-fi because they're rare in real life, or are they rare in real life because girls don't see themselves depicted in those roles and therefore don't pursue those careers? The fact is, pop culture is a powerful influencer, especially on girls and teenagers. And the scary thing is, your career is dictated by decisions you make as an impressionable kid (think about it... the college major you pick at age 19 determines whether or not you'll become a research scientist).

While there are plenty of ladies in sci-fi, they're usually not put in the science and tech-based roles. The scientists, hackers, engineers, etc. are usually guys. But every so often, you'll stumble upon a character that makes you go, "Yes! More of her, please!" Here are five brainy sci-fi ladies who use their smarts to save the day:


Kaylee from Firefly

Joss Whedon's short-lived and most excellent sci-fi show, Firefly, starred a ragtag team of space cowboys living on the fringes of an advanced interplanetary society. But while Captain Reynolds barks the orders, it's cheery young mechanic Kaylee who keeps the starship flying. An exceptional engineer with who's sharply attuned to machines, Kaylee finds inventive and ingenious ways to keep the ship operating even when resources are thin and danger's closing in.

SimmonsGemma Simmons from Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D
Agent Simmons is a biotech genius and one of the most important members of the S.H.I.E.L.D. research division. The agency's job is to protect the people, and her job is to give them the means to do so by inventing specialized equipment and compounds, often on the fly.

A prodigy who earned two PhDs as a teenager, Simmons originally joined the S.H.I.E.L.D. Academy of Science and Technology to get answers to millions of questions. Whenever her team encounters a dangerous substance, she's the one they depend on to whip up the serum to save the day.

Cinder from Marissa Meyer's Lunar Chronicles

After a terrible accident left her dependent on cyborg limbs and implants to survive, Cinder found herself living with a resentful stepmother. To repay her "debt," she uses her knack for mechanics to set up a booth and fix everything from gadgets to robots. When she learns that the evil queen of a rival nation aims to kill her prince, Cinder risks everything to warn him and ends up using her technical expertise to escape the queen's clutches and fight for her people.

CalvinDr. Susan Calvin from Asimov's Robot series
Dr. Calvin is the chief robopsychologist at US Robots and Mechanical Men, Inc. in Isaac Asimov's iconic short story series. After spending years learning about cybernetics and robotics at top institutions, she constructed positronic brains with predictable responses and used her know-how to study how robotic minds work. While she also works in human psychology, her chief interests lie in artificial intelligence.

Samantha Carter from Stargate SG-1

An ancient piece of alien technology would baffle most people, but not Sam Carter. With a PhD in theoretical astrophysics and a quick mind for all things science, Sam is one of the people responsible for making the Stargate—which transports people to worlds across the stars—operational. As she and her team explore unknown alien worlds, she frequently uses her scientific know-how to find explanations and solutions to get SG-1 out of trouble.

The Most Wonderfully Energetic Summary of RED MARS You Will Ever See  :lol:


Billy Stephens describes himself as a "YouTuber and general enthusiast with a love for space/time travel and solving crime". "Enthusiam" is an understatement, as evidenced by this video in which Billy summarizes Kim Stanley's Robinson's novel Red Mars. Augmented by rapid cuts and catchy animations, this is great viewing. It's a bit spoilery, so only watch it if you've already read the book or never will.


http://youtu.be/NeloaEjnPI4 (http://youtu.be/NeloaEjnPI4)

Kaže čika Brin: (https://ideas.aeon.co/viewpoints/david-brin-on-what-is-the-most-likely-explanation-for-the-fermi-paradox)


The "Fermi Paradox" sheds light on human origins... and destiny

Understanding the so-called "Fermi Paradox" – the mysterious Great Silence where we had expected to see and hear signs of alien life in the cosmos – requires a grounding in SETI (the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence). Persistent null results from the radio search do not invalidate continuing effort, but they do raise questions about long-held assumptions. Among the aspects making it especially puzzling is the disruptive plausibility of interstellar travel.

Just after World War II, Enrico Fermi – exasperated by his students' zealous expectation of alien contact asked : "Well, then? Where are they?" The question inspired me to publish a paper back in 1983, attempting to catalog all of the theories then floating around.

Alas, in a scientific field that lacks any known subject matter, many otherwise bright participants tend to seize upon one "explanation" and deride all others. A recent example caught public attention when the eminent theoretical physicist Professor Stephen Hawking suggested that humanity should keep silent and not attract attention, because alien civilizations might (a) be attracted to Earth and (b) possess the means to travel faster than light and © come to plunder our resources. (Such a Hollywood-style attack scenario ranks very low on my list... possible, but not very plausible.)

As it happens, there is a certain predictability as to which "fermi" or scenario for the Great Silence a person may choose. And this is where we must take a pause to pick up a tool – the Drake Equation, since so much of what follows will refer to it. This formula, well-known by millions, remains the most widely accepted tool for xenological speculation.

Let N = the current number of technological civilizations currently in the galaxy. Then,

N = R P n(e) f(1) f(i) f© L

Here R is the average rate of production of suitable stars since the formation of the galaxy, approximately one per year. The other factors include n(e), the number of planets supporting liquid water and other life-ingredients, per suitable star; f(1), the fraction of these congenial planets on which life actually occurs; f(i), the fraction of these on which "intelligence" appears; f©, the fraction of intelligent species that attain technological civilizations, and L, the average lifespan of each species. In its classic form, the Drake Equation does not even attempt to correlate with an actual observable. You must always then massage it, asking "what should we actually see?" It is also short several factors, like the speed of expansion of a civilization that colonizes.

Here's the deal. Everyone agrees that the number has to be smaller than we used to think. Clearly, something is keeping the number of observable, hi-tech alien civs small enough that our sifting through the "cosmic haystack" just hasn't found a needle, yet. Hence, everyone tries to explain it by picking some factor in the Drake Equation to suppress!

Maybe we are rare because some step LEADING to us was unlikely. Some used to suggest planets were rare... till we found they are everywhere. Maybe some stage in developing life is more difficult than we thought. Or developing intelligence? (That's a strong one.) Or developing the sort of vigorous, outward-directed tech-civilization that might be easily detectable. These are all Great Filters that might have kept the numbers down, so far. Notably, all of these filters lie behind us.

Other filter theories lie ahead of us. Do intelligent races face a minefield of potentially suicidal mistakes, from nuclear war to ecological self-destruction? Might they drift toward obsession with inwardness – perhaps via super cyber worlds – and forsake the universe? Are starships harder than we thought?

Many, many papers and books have been devoted to each of these categories.

Alas, as I said, the tendency is for almost everyone to latch onto just one and declare this has to be it!

Why? In the only scientific field that completely lacks any known subject matter?

Maybe it's just me, but I find it far, far more interesting to hold off. To step back and take in the big picture. The spectrum and vast horizon of possibilities – some of them more... or less... plausible – rather than leaping to unjustified conclusions. For one thing, it leaves me unconstrained to come up was a vast array of story ideas! Some of them finding their way into my stories and novels. (Sample them at http://www.davidbrin.com (http://www.davidbrin.com)).

We are at the dawn of an exciting era. The universe appears to be daunting and mysterious, so let's study and explore and listen more... maybe shout less... and above all, ramp up our greatest human gift.

Honest and courageous curiosity.

Who wouldn't want to feel just a little bit like Kirk or Mr. Spock? Here at Comic-Con 2015, the Wand Company is showing off a prototype of its upcoming Star Trek TOS Bluetooth Communicator, a working replica of the communicator Federation officers used on The Original Series. In truth, it's a glorified Bluetooth speaker. But holding makes you feel a little bit like you're on an away mission.

The little device was actually designed using one of the original props from Star Trek, and is composed of a combination of pressed metal, aluminum, and textured plastic. Without having actually lived through the 1960s, I thought it felt authentic — weighty and purposeful for people in Starfleet. The grill flips opens with the actual sound effects from the show, and the speaker and transceiver make it look truly like a 23rd century artifact.

(https://cdn0.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/M67UZ2a6Kh3cr4nhWGj6KNKuBfw=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn0.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/3864082/DSC_5070.0.jpg)

Using the device involves just pairing it to your smartphone. We tested it using an older iPhone, so tapping one of the bottom-most buttons activated voice control, from which you can simply say the contact you want to reach via the Communicator's receiver. Calls came in loud and clear, so it works pretty well for a prototype.

The Wand Company partnered with ThinkGeek to make the Communicator available to the public by early next year. Fans can preorder it right now for $149.99.
:mrgreen:

http://www.theverge.com/2015/7/11/8933329/star-trek-tos-bluetooth-communicator-hands-on-sdcc-2015 (http://www.theverge.com/2015/7/11/8933329/star-trek-tos-bluetooth-communicator-hands-on-sdcc-2015)

ovo bi se svakako moglo dopasti kolegi Blejdraneru :) :

As I was browsing Amazon (What? Doesn't everyone?) I ran across this kick-@$$ cover for the upcoming anthology The Mammoth Book of Kaiju coming early next year from Robinson. I asked editor Sean Wallace for more details about this tasty-looking treat. Read on to see the description and a bigger version of that glorious cover.

(https://www.znaksagite.com/diskusije/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimages.amazon.com%2Fimages%2FP%2F1472135644.01._SCLZZZZZZZ_SL400_.jpg&hash=185f725dcabf08036dbfe862e40c4432f97cbbb3)

Giant monsters whose every roar and footstep shakes the earth, whose simple stroll through a city wreaks havoc: KAIJU!

And even though humankind has never really seen such monsters – we tremble at the thought of them and love to shiver as their screen versions make mayhem: the beast from twenty-thousand fathoms, Godzilla demolishing Tokyo, the massive creature in Cloverfield destroying New York, all of Earth warring with the colossal monsters in Pacific Rim.

Now, for the first time, a definitive anthology that gathers a wide range of larger-than-life short fiction with creatures that run a gargantuan gamut: the stealthy gabbleduck of Neal Asher's Polity universe; Gary McMahon's huge sea-born terror; An Owomoyela 's incredibly tall alien invaders; Frank Wu's city-razing, eighty-foot-high, fire-breathing lizard; Lavie Tidhar's titanic ship-devouring monstrosity; a really big Midwest US smackdown related by Jeremiah Tolbert . . . and many more mega-monster stories to feed your need for killer kaiju!

With an introduction by Robert Hood, co-editor of the groundbreaking, Ditmar Award-winning Daikaiju: Giant Monster Tales and host of Undead Backbrain, the premier website for matters relating to giant monsters.




Here's the table of contents...

1."Softly Spoke the Gabbleduck" by Neal Asher
2."Occupied" by Natania Barron
3."Now I Am Nothing" by Simon Bestwick
4."The Black Orophant" by Daniel Braum
5."Attack of the 50-Foot Cosmonaut" by Michael Canfield
6."Postcards from Monster Island" by Emily Devenport
7."Seven Dates That Were Ruined by Giant Monsters" by Adam Ford
8."The Lighthouse Keeper of Kurohaka Island" by Kane Gilmour
9."Kungmin Horangi: The People's Tiger" by Cody Goodfellow
10."The Island of Dr. Otaku" by Cody Goodfellow
11."With Bright Shining Faces" by Gini Koch
12."One Night on Tidal Rig #13" by Tessa Kum
13."Running" by Martin Livings
14."The Unlawful Priest of Todesfall" by Penelope Love
15."Breaking the Ice" by Maxine McArthur
16."The Eyes of Erebus" by Chris McMahon
17."Kaiju" by Gary McMahon
18."Whatever Became of Randy?" by James A. Moore
19."Kadimakara and Curlew" by Jason Nahrung
20."Frozen Voice" by An Owomoyela
21."Mamu, or Reptillion vs Echidonah" by Nick Stathopoulos
22."Cephalogon" by Alys Sterling
23."Show Night" by Steve Tem
24."Titanic!" by Lavie Tidhar
25."The Kansas Jayhawk vs. The Midwest Monster Squad" by Jeremiah Tolbert
26."The Behemoth" by Jonathan Wood
27."Love and Death in the Time of Monsters" by Frank Wu

In Hyperspace

Fredric Jameson


It is probably not immediately obvious what interest a new theoretical study of science fiction holds for the mainstream adepts of literary theory; and no doubt it is just as perplexing to SF scholars, for whom this particular subgenre of the subgenre, the time-travel narrative, is as exceptional among and uncharacteristic of their major texts as SF itself is with regard to official Literature. To be sure, so-called alternative or counterfactual histories have gained popularity and a certain respectability; my personal favourite is Terry Bisson's Fire on the Mountain, in which John Brown's raid succeeds and a black socialist republic emerges in the South, as prosperous and superior in relation to its shrunken rust-belt northern neighbour as West Germany was to the East in the old days. And there remains the lingering mystery of what would have happened had the time traveller not stepped on the butterfly: this is from Ray Bradbury's immortal 'Sound of Thunder', but the idea is adaptable to any number of wistful daydreams – had Lincoln not been assassinated, or Bobby Kennedy – or more sombre fantasies, like Philip K. Dick's Man in the High Castle, in which Germany and Japan win the Second World War and divide the US between them. But these historical variants are not genuine time-travel narratives on the order of H.G. Wells's Time Machine (1895), which inaugurates the standard narrative of the history of science fiction, to the detriment of Jules Verne or that other increasingly popular recent candidate, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818).


But where did the genre come from? My own hypothesis is a very general one: namely, that the late 19th-century invention of SF correlates to Walter Scott's invention of the modern historical novel in Waverley (1814), marking the emergence of a second – industrial – stage of historical consciousness after that first dawning sense of the historicity of society so rudely awakened by the French Revolution. David Wittenberg does much better than this, but his remarkable hypothesis is only one of the conceptual breakthroughs in this stimulating contribution to literary theory. I will dwell mainly on the three that interest me the most: the relationship of SF to modernism in the arts; the historical periodisation of the genre; and the dramatic challenge to narratology as a field, with implications for the theory of ideology as well as for the analysis of narrative structure itself (of which the time-travel story, with all its ineradicable paradoxes, suddenly becomes the fundamental paradigm). Nor is philosophy itself untouched by the fallout from these dramatic revisions: after all, the phenomenological ego is a temporal matter, and time itself one of its fundamental paradoxes, which neither Husserl nor Heidegger ever laid to rest.

Science fiction is not the only mass-cultural genre (or subgenre) whose relationship to 'high literature' and to modernism in particular presents problems. It is as easy to feel that James and Wells are incompatible as it is to reject the notion that Dostoevsky (let alone Oedipus Rex) has any family relationship with the detective story. When we come to Orlando or Pynchon, the conviction of incompatibility remains firm, but the arguments become more difficult to sustain, or even to articulate. Experimental literature ought to share generic features with its more popular cousins, but it doesn't; Cormac McCarthy and Jonathan Lethem are not of the same genre as Philip K. Dick, however long Margaret Atwood managed to 'pass'. Indeed, the solution may actually be a rather simple one, namely that modernism is not a genre, while SF emphatically is – and this opens up questions of an appeal to different reading publics, as well as their respective quotients of Bourdieusian 'distinction'.

Wittenberg's proposal begins modestly enough, with an emphasis on SF's bias towards visuality: witness Wells's first time traveller, who observes the passage of worlds and time as so many streams of flux, 'melting and flowing under my eyes' – 'le film des événements' indeed. The shorthand of visuality will then mark mass culture as 'degraded' (in the language of culture pessimists like Adorno and Horkheimer) by comparison with the anti-visuality, the anti-representational convictions, of the various high modernisms. But it will also open up immense new possibilities such as the emergent medium of film.

Is it then simply visuality which accounts for the appeal of mass culture and its genres over the obscurities of the hermetic arts? One may recall Hegel's judgment on 'picture-thinking' (seemingly the standard translation of Kant's Vorstellung) and the empirical categories of the thinking of daily life (Verstand or 'understanding'), whose cultural elaboration he saw in art and religion. His famous (or infamous) pronouncement on the 'end of art' was motivated by his conviction that the deficiencies of Verstand needed to be replaced by the Concept (Begriff or 'notion'), by a philosophy no longer obliged to rely on picture-thinking for its solutions.

Wittenberg reminds us that it was not only mass culture – cartoons, illustrated dime novels, early cinema – that ignored Hegel's judgment: so did the scientists, and however unthinkable infinity may be, Einstein's thought experiments are nothing if not triumphs of picture-thinking, redolent with trains and clocks, elevators and measuring rods, the tangible bric-à-brac of daily life pressed into service to make the unthinkable thinkable. This is certainly a visual procedure, but I would characterise it as a kind of literality too, for reasons that will become apparent in a moment.

I want to reinsert this problem into a philosophical context of far greater consequence, which is that of representation as such. Increasingly, in the late 19th century, writers became aware that the world of newly emergent capitalism was an unrepresentable totality which it was nonetheless their duty and vocation to represent. The great moderns – Mallarmé, Joyce, Musil et al – achieved this impossible and double-binding imperative by representing their inability to represent. They earned their right to sublimity by using 'picture-thinking' against itself, and for them failure was success. The postmoderns seem to have renounced this agonising mission by taking the impossibility of representation for granted and revelling in it (you will say that by now we know what the totality of capitalism is anyhow, representation or no representation).

But science fiction was not crippled by such representational doubts and scruples; or rather, it emerged as a genre at the very moment in which the representational dilemma began to make inroads into literature, and it was able to do so owing to its possession of a representational instrument rather different from those faltering in the hands of traditional realists. Kant distinguished between two kinds of non-conceptual language: the symbol and the schema. Traditional literature cleaved to the symbol and its 'picture-thinking' (thereby allowing Hegel to pronounce its supercession by philosophy as such, in his theory of the 'end of art'). But science fiction had the schema; and it is what we have been calling literality, the use of visual materials not to represent the world but to represent our thoughts about the world. It is no accident that Deleuze celebrated Foucault's work in terms of its schematism, something which in his own writing he called 'the image of thought' – as opposed, clearly, to its referential content. Virtually everything designated as structuralism and poststructuralism is marked, in its so-called spatial turn – indeed, in its synchronic tendencies – by schematism. This is a kind of 'picture-thinking' very different from what Hegel understood as Vorstellung; nor does it fall under the anathema of representation since it does not represent.

This is why science fiction, despite appearances, cannot be said simply to carry on the traditional narrative methods of 'old-fashioned realism', merely applying it to fantastic or at least non-realistic content. Rather, it enlists the visual literality of Einstein's thought experiments to convey conceptions often more outlandish than his own (and this is no doubt the moment to disabuse the sceptical reader of the still widespread opinion that science fiction is always about 'science'). For Einstein's 'experiments' were very far from being the laboratory experiments and falsification devices in terms of which the history of 'hard science' is so often written (it took a good deal of ingenuity to invent a 'real experiment' – the solar measurements of 1919 – to confirm his 'scientific' theories). Rather, Einstein's demonstrations were pedagogical, texts more closely related to children's books than to applications for a grant. Yet these 'examples' are not to be understood as mere rhetoric: they pioneered a form of schematism which authorised the early writers of science fiction to take their cosmological fantasies literally and to re-enact in a visual (or later on a cinematographic) mode the dynamics of worlds either too large or too small to be conveyed by human language (perhaps, then, as Badiou's work has been reminding us, mathematics is one of the ultimate – and alternative – forms of such literality or schematisation).


At this point, returning to our narrative of the history and emergence of science fiction, Wittenberg rather brutally shifts gears, from what look like the linguistic dilemmas of the scientific text, to political history. He does so not in the usual fashion of outlining some more general social 'context', but rather by way of the generic problems of political, indeed utopian thought.

This generic problem is also a political one, and this identity is what I take Hegel to have meant by his immense sentence, 'Defectiveness of form results from defectiveness of content.' (The larger version of this symptomal relationship between literature and the sociopolitical situation will also account for the crisis in cognitive mapping I referred to earlier as the modernist representational dilemma.) The political problem turns on 19th-century conceptions of the future of capitalist development and the possibility of its revolutionary transformation into another, more satisfactory and humane system, which is to say a radically different 'mode of production' (a concept initially theorised by Adam Ferguson and then developed by Marx). The 'representational' problem does not lie in the revolutionary upheavals themselves, theorised from the Jacobins to Lenin; but rather in how to think and represent the transition from one mode of production into another, radically distinct one. The experience of defeat of the various revolutionary movements in this period has a paradoxical consequence: it does not discourage its followers theoretically, but rather intensifies their attempts to conceptualise that mysterious historical moment which is the passage from one system to another.

To limit ourselves to the United States – the home of the bulk of pulp fiction dealing with time travel – we witness in the late 19th century the defeat of an immense radical political movement called populism, which is followed by the sublimations of the so-called progressive movement, but also by Edward Bellamy's remarkable third-party mass movement, one of the most successful in American history, in the form of the Nationalist Clubs and the People's Party. The causes of the movement's defeat are less relevant here than its manifesto, which projected a vision of a radically different future in the form of a novel, Looking Backward 2ooo-1887 (1888) – and this is the point at which we rejoin the history of the time-travel narrative. For although Bellamy's novel was not the first time-travel narrative, its immense success was political as well as literary, and drew attention to a seemingly secondary defect, shared by William Morris's reply in News from Nowhere (1890), which lay precisely in the way that 'transition' was imagined (or not imagined) by both authors: in each case, the narrator falls into a magnetic sleep, only to awaken a century later in Utopia. This failure of imagination is the same, I want to argue, as that of the political revolutions designed to achieve the same transition in real life: the absence of a third term between the two systems, the absence of a mechanism.

Wells's formal innovation, on the other hand, lay in his shifting of the reader's attention to a technological substitute for the missing historical transition, namely the time machine. (We might argue that the party was Lenin's analogous innovation in the realm of political strategy.) With the insertion of this technological third term, the hitherto merely notional fantasy of time travel had become a full-blown genre, capable of standing on its own and developing its history autonomously according to its own now semi-autonomous formal laws and structural problems.

ostatak na: http://www.lrb.co.uk/v37/n17/fredric-jameson/in-hyperspace (http://www.lrb.co.uk/v37/n17/fredric-jameson/in-hyperspace)

Seek out new worlds of science fiction – there's so much happening out there

European and US publishers too often play it safe, but Liu Cixin's recent Hugo win is welcome recognition for the wealth of sci-fi writing across the globe

http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2015/sep/11/seek-out-new-worlds-of-science-fiction-damien-walter (http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2015/sep/11/seek-out-new-worlds-of-science-fiction-damien-walter)

(https://www.znaksagite.com/diskusije/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fnews-antique.com%2Fprimages%2F1%2FChesley_Bonestell.jpg&hash=4a9d668199e2360b521d69c6a553e0f0dce2da90)
Nine oil paintings by renowned sci-fi artist Chesley Bonestell bring a combined $135,000 at auction

An archive of nine original oil on board paintings by Chesley Bonestell (Am., 1888-1986), "The Father of Modern Space Art," sold for a combined $135,000 at Philip Weiss Auctions' September 10 auction.

http://news-antique.com/?id=809666&keys=bonestell-chesley-lombardi-disney (http://news-antique.com/?id=809666&keys=bonestell-chesley-lombardi-disney)

Push to resurrect "Amazing Stories", the iconic science-fiction magazine, gets a TV boost

Efforts by NBC to resurrect Steven Spielberg's Twilight Zone-inspired TV show seem poised to boost Steve Davidson's effort to resurrect something entirely different: The original science fiction magazine, Amazing Stories.

In the process, he hopes writers can scoop up more of the profits.

"This generation has embraced science fiction and fantasy like no generation previously. It is firmly established as part of the mainstream culture. But the author is the one who always gets the short end of the stick," said Davidson, a New Hampshire resident (he'd rather we not share exactly where he lives). "We continue to dance with this idea that the people who are going to make the most money over original creativity are the secondary or tertiary people, like film production studios . . . not the original creators."

How does Davidson, whose fiction career consists of some decades-old rejection slips, hope to change this?

Thanks to a bit of serendipity while bored at work, Davidson owns the trademark to Amazing Stories, a name dating back to the very first science fiction magazine, which Hugo Gernsback created in 1926.

The print magazine died in the 1980s and never came back to life despite efforts by several owners, although it is still revered by many fans. Gernsback is so important in the field that his name is on the Hugo Awards, the sci-fi version of the People's Choice Awards, and Davidson calls Amazing Stories "the Coca-Cola brand of the science fiction industry."

These days the name is best known to the general public for Spielberg's anthology show Amazing Stories from 1984 and 1985. It was a weekly anthology that presented hourlong stories with a twist, following the format pioneered by the Twilight Zone two decades earlier.

NBC is in the process of developing a new Amazing Stories, with Bryan Fuller, executive producer for the show Hannibal, in line to produce and write a pilot. It would be an hourlong weekly anthology series built around what Entertainment Weekly calls "fantastic, strange and supernatural stories." Spielberg will apparently not be involved.

To make this happen, NBC had to license the name from Davidson, likely for its Syfy cable channel. If the show gets the green light, as Hollywood likes to say, Davidson will collect fees (he declined to say how much).

All well and good, but what about Amazing Stories the magazine? Head back to 2008, when Davidson worked a job involving intellectual property.
"Part of my job was to check current filings of trademarks that might impact the company I was working for, which is an extremely boring thing to do," said Davidson, 57. "To keep myself amused and awake, I would look up trademarks of things that were of interest to me."
Many of those look-ups were related to science fiction, which had long been his passion. One day, to his astonishment, Davidson saw that Amazing Stories was available.

"I literally could not believe it. I called my wife over and asked her to read the screen out loud, to prove that it was real," he said.

After a few years of problems, he eventually bought the name for slightly less than $1,000, and used it to upgrade his science fiction blog, called Crotchety Old Fan. Starting in April 2014, he launched an online magazine called Amazing Stories (at AmazingStoriesMag.com), which includes daily posts of fiction, news and reviews of science fiction and fantasy.

The famous name and Davidson's avowed efforts to preserve an icon – Davidson said he bought the trademark partly so it would "never be at risk of being picked up by somebody for non-science fiction purposes" – has drawn help from famous science fiction old-timers like writer Robert Silverberg as well as newcomers like Tanya Tynjala, whom Davidson called a "Latin American Finn" who both writes and edits Spanish-language editions.

The free publication has tens of thousands of registered readers from around the world, with translation software allowing publication in Spanish, German, sometimes Italian, and English-language posts from Chinese bloggers.

What Amazing Stories doesn't do, Davidson said, is pay for submissions.

He had initially hoped to fund the magazine through the sale of a paintball business he owned before moving to New Hampshire eight years ago – his wife, Karen, is a native – but that sale died during the Great Recession. Online-only magazines don't make much, if any, money so Amazing Stories writers and artists have been in the distressingly common position of creating work in return for exposure.

Licensing fees from a TV show might change that, Davidson said.

"My idea is that this will form the backbone of purchasing fiction at professional rates to publish," he said. "The opportunity to license the name gives me a revenue stream that was inaccessible to most publications.

"I'd like to put a plug in for the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. It was that membership, and tapping into that membership, that helped me acquire the Hollywood entertainment attorney who has been doing very good work for me, and making this (TV licensing) possible," he said.

Davidson has plans that include print versions of the magazine and other revenue streams, including the possibility that a print magazine "become a loss leader" supported by ancillary advertising and merchandise sales.

"The numbers say it's doable, at a profit," Davidson said.

As for the TV show, Davidson admits to feeling slightly concerned because he couldn't negotiate any editorial control, although he says "believe me, I tried."

"My biggest worry right now is that they're going to put a show on underneath the name, that may be successful . . . but the science fiction folks are going to look at and say it's old hat, the science fiction is terrible, the science is terrible. I think a show can be respectful of both the general audience . . . but also of the people who have, quite literally, built this community and this literature up from scratch with a lot of volunteer work and personal investment," he said.
But he's optimistic, pointing to the movie Guardians of the Galaxy, which was a hit with both insiders and outsiders.

"It's possible to make a television show or movie that will satisfy both kinds of audiences," Davidson said. "I'm hopeful."


http://granitegeek.concordmonitor.com/2015/11/06/push-to-push-to-resurrect-amazing-stores-the-iconic-science-fiction-magazine-gets-a-tv-boost/ (http://granitegeek.concordmonitor.com/2015/11/06/push-to-push-to-resurrect-amazing-stores-the-iconic-science-fiction-magazine-gets-a-tv-boost/)

The sci-fi film predictions that came true

As we tread the increasingly blurred line of fact and fiction, explore the sci-fi film tech stepping off screen and into reality (http://www.dazeddigital.com/artsandculture/article/22324/1/the-sci-fi-film-predictions-that-came-true)

isto tako:


Life imitates art: how sci-fi invents the future (http://www.orange-business.com/en/blogs/connecting-technology/innovation/life-imitates-art-how-sci-fi-invents-the-future)

I


10 Times Science Fiction Predicted The Future, From Credit Cards To Earbuds (http://www.bustle.com/articles/61867-10-times-science-fiction-predicted-the-future-from-credit-cards-to-earbuds)

I


11 Things You Won't Believe Made The Jump From Science Fiction To Science Fact (http://www.indiatimes.com/lifestyle/technology/11-things-you-wont-believe-made-the-jump-from-science-fiction-to-science-fact-233690.html)

da, da... when it rains, it pours... :(


WTF: The Golden Globes Are Classifying 'The Martian' as a Comedy (http://www.slashfilm.com/wtf-the-martian-golden-globes-comedy/)


CheatSheet objašnjava...


Why 'The Martian' Shouldn't Be Called a Comedy (http://www.cheatsheet.com/entertainment/why-the-martian-shouldnt-be-called-a-comedy.html/?a=viewall)

...ali uzalud.

GRRM kao da malko bekpedaluje na sad puppies kontroverzu...


http://grrm.livejournal.com/453648.html (http://grrm.livejournal.com/453648.html)

QuoteI was no fan of the efforts of Puppies to game the Hugo Awards last year. I don't think I have been shy in my opinions on that subject. But I will give the Puppies this much -- their efforts did break the decade-long hold that Dr. Who fandom had on the nominations in this category. I have no problem with episodes of DR. WHO being nominated, and indeed winning, mind you... and the Doctor has won plenty of times in this category over the past decade... but when four of the six finalists are from the same category, that strikes me as way unbalanced and, well, greedy. The Doctor's fans love their show, I know, but there is a LOT of great SF and fantasy on the tube right now. Nominate DR. WHO, by all means... but leave some room for someone else, please.

(And yes, I would feel the same way if it was four episodes of GAME OF THRONES being nominated every year, rather than four episodes of DR. WHO).

Last year, for the first time in recent memory, we actually had five different series represented on the final ballot. In addition to GAME OF THRONES and DR. WHO, the two shows that had dominated the previous three years, we also had ORPHAN BLACK (the eventual winner), plus episodes of THE FLASH and GRIMM. The Puppies had something to do with that, I can't deny that. Nonetheless, I do think it was a healthy development. I hope we have five different series represented this year as well... though maybe not the same five.

Read These Speculative Fiction Books Now, Ahead of Their Film and TV Adaptations
(https://www.kirkusreviews.com/features/read-these-speculative-fiction-books-now-ahead-the/)

At Long Last, Sci-Fi and Fantasy Have Infiltrated the Literary Mainstream

Science fiction and fantasy writing has long been disparaged within the literary world. While older works like Frankenstein and 1984 have gained classic status, many critics deride contemporary sci-fi and fantasy—typically without actually reading it. The prestigious anthology series The Best American Short Stories tends to eschew science fiction and fantasy, except at the behest of unusually sympathetic guest editors like Michael Chabon or Stephen King.

But things are changing fast. The genre took a major step toward respectability this year with the release of the first-ever Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy, edited by John Joseph Adams. Adams feels the book is long overdue.

"I and other science fiction fans believe that the best science fiction and fantasy is on par with or better than any other genre," he says in Episode 177 of the Geek's Guide to the Galaxy podcast. "My goal with The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy was to prove that."

Horror author Joe Hill served as this year's guest editor. His job was to select the final 20 stories—from the 80 chosen by Adams—to be included in the book. In recent years he's seen a shift in the way that people view the genre.

"The instruments of science fiction and fantasy—the tools in that genre toolbox—have been out there in the literary world and being explored for at least a decade now, in work by people like Jonathan Lethem, Michael Chabon, Margaret Atwood, and Cormac McCarthy," he says. "Science fiction and fantasy is part of the literary mainstream, and has been for a while now."

Adams hopes The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy will prove that readers don't have to choose between wild concepts and literary quality. Good sci-fi and fantasy deliver both, which is what makes them so hard to write.

"You have to create the compelling characters and have the beautiful prose and everything, but a science fiction story has to do all that and also build an entire world for you, or come up with some mind-blowing idea on top of all that," he says.

Listen to our complete interview with Joe Hill and John Joseph Adams in Episode 177 of Geek's Guide to the Galaxy (above), which also features appearances by Jess Row, Seanan McGuire, and Carmen Maria Machado. And check out some highlights from the discussion below.

http://www.wired.com/2015/11/geeks-guide-sci-fi-fantasy-mainstream/ (http://www.wired.com/2015/11/geeks-guide-sci-fi-fantasy-mainstream/)

DeNardo na Kirkusu javlja o novim ekranizacijama:





(https://d1fd687oe6a92y.cloudfront.net/blog/lead_art/artemisfowl_jpg_250x300_q85.jpg)
Artemis Fowl is the first book in a popular young adult series written by Eoin Colfer. The series, now eight books long, follows the titular 12-year-old character who happens to be a millionaire boy genius and a criminal mastermind. His latest scheme involves kidnapping Holly Short, a fairy, and holding her for ransom. Score one point if you realized that Artemis doesn't sound like a traditional fantasy hero. Over the course of the series, anti-hero Artemis goes from criminal mastermind to helper of the fairy people.

A film adaptation of Artemis Fowl has been in the works since 2001, not coincidentally the same year Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone released. Immediate production stalled and over the intervening years, the production tiptoed along. For example: in 2003, Colfer wrote a screenplay; in 2013, Disney announced that the film would cover the first two books of the series; and a new screenplay by Michael Goldenberg (Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix) was announced. And now it's being reported that Actor/Director Kenneth Branagh has been hired to direct the film, with Irish playwright Conor McPherson writing the script. Time will tell if this adaptation will stick. It does seem long overdue.




(https://www.znaksagite.com/diskusije/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fd3eoifnsb8kxf0.cloudfront.net%2Ffiles%2F2016%2F02%2F10%2Fapocalypsenow.jpg&hash=b8f1c994707c141338bea176756f3988f17c22da)
The concise pitch for Charlie Human's gonzo novel Apocalypse Now Now would probably read "supernatural bounty hunter." The longer description would have to include worlds like weird, kitchen sink, and audacious. Tapocalypsenow-2he book mixes elements of fantasy, horror, apocalyptic fiction, and lots of other things as it tells the story of Baxter Zevcenko, an up-and-coming entrepreneur of sorts. Baxter is the 16-year-old leader of a syndicate peddling smut in his schoolyard. Business is great until his girlfriend Esme is kidnapped by strange forces. Baxter thus enlists the help of a "bearded, booze-soaked, supernatural bounty hunter" named Jackson "Jackie" Ronin to rescue her. The main thrust of the story is Baxter's and Ronin's attempts to save Esme from the seedy Cape Town underworld and the unimaginable horrors they encounter.

I'm not sure how you would even begin to tell this story on film, but it's being reported that XYZ studios has optioned Apocalypse Now Now for film. The screenplay is being written by Terri Tatchell, who wrote the scripts for District 9 and Chappie. Based on the book description alone, it could be absolutely terrible, or it could be the best movie ever. If it's the latter, I've no doubt that Hollywood will turn their attention to the book's sequel, Kill Baxter.



The Drowning Girl and The Red Tree by Caitlín R. Kiernan

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Caitlín R. Kiernan has been one of genre's best kept secrets. That might be about to change with news of not one, but two of her dark fantasy books being optioned for film. The Drowning Girl is about India Morgan Phelps (affectingly known as Imp to her friends), a schizophrenic who struggles with determining what is real and what is fantasy—an especially tough activity after a mysterious stranger enters her life. In The Red Tree, a novelist moves into an old house and discovers a manuscript written by the previous owner, a parapsychologist obsessed with the ancient red oak tree growing on a desolate corner of the property. That tree is somehow connected with a series of bizarre deaths that occurred in the small Rhode Island town.

These books, which have already garnered award attention, have also caught the interest of Josh Boone, director of The Fault in Our Stars (itself an adaptation of a book by John Green). His production compact, Mid-World, has optioned the rights for both books to be adapted for film. Boone is said to be writing the screenplay for The Drowning Girl, while author Kiernan is said to be writing the screenplay for The Red Tree.

Logan's Run by William F. Nolan & Clayton Johnsonredtree

Logan's Run has a simple but engaging premise: What if you were only allowed to live for 21 years? That's exactly what society dictates in the year 2116. At that time, the crystal flower in your hand begins to glow, marking the arrival of Lastday, after which you report to Sleepshop for final processing. Refusing to enter Deep Sleep makes you a Runner, and that makes you a target for elimination by the relentless Sandmen. The main narrative of Logan's Run is about a Sandman enforcer named Logan 3 whose time has come, but who opts to run toward the legendary place known as Sanctuary.

Logan's Run is a classic dystopian science-fiction novel originally written in 1967 that has already been adapted multiple times. In 1976, a film version appeared starring Michael York as Logan 5, Jenny Agutter as love interest Jessica 6, and Richard Jordan as Francis 7, Logan's Sandman friend who hunts him down. (Among the changes to the story, the Lastday age was bumped up to 30 and the main character was called Logan 5, not Logan 3—damn you, Hollywood!!!) In 1977, a short-lived spin-off television series was launched starring Gregory Harrison as Logan 5 and Heather Menzies as Jessica 6. Screenwriters for that series included the novel's authors and Star Trek scribe D.C. Fontana. There is also a comic book series co-written by Nolan. The latest news is that the film will be getting a new remake. Well, that part's not news; a remake has been in the works since 2000. The news is that it might be moving forward, possibly with a female lead. Simon Kinberg has been hired to write a fresh screenplay. Kinber's writing credits include Sherlock Holmes and X-Men: Days of Future Past (hooray!) but also the recent reboot of Fantastic Four (sad trombone).

William Gibson riffs on writing and the future



Great science fiction writers don't just imagine the future, they shape it. (http://ideas.ted.com/william-gibson-riffs-on-writing-and-the-future/?utm_campaign=social&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_content=ideas-blog&utm_term=humanities)

Books are getting longer. According to the study [from VerveResearch], which looked at 2,500 books from The New York Times best seller list and Google's annual surveys, average book length has increased by 25%. In 1999 books were 320 pages. In 2014, they averaged 400.


There are a couple of conclusions to jump to from here. The author goes for audience immersion - people want 'deep and meaningful'. I'm personally thinking the reverse - people want more 'bang for their buck' and the feeling that the appearance of size matters for print books - especially given the growth in ebook sales over that 15 year period.



It is also worth noting that the data doesn't cover Amazon, where I suspect the 99-cent indie novellesque (novels of indeterminate length) market changes things quite a bit. Basically, this article is a cute metaphor-springboard about brands, but there's way too much context in that 15 years, and not enough data in the sample.


Speaking of data, YouGov have added 'Tube line used regularly' to their lovely, lovely Profiles tool. I immediately ran the numbers against 'Fiction genre liked' and found some amazing results. Granted, the number is still around 5k-6k at this point (that's low for YouGov), but still statistically significant. And FASCINATING. For example, 8% of Northern Line regulars like Fantasy books. Whereas 48% of Jubilee Line travellers do.  I suspect a lot of media agencies will (or should!) be doing spot buys from now on.


What was also interesting is how Underground travellers - long held as the publishing 'sweet spot' of educated urban AB1 commuters - aren't actually that much more fiction-friendly than the national average - if at all. And, for certain fiction and non-fiction genres, they're actually a bit worse.


Tube posters have always been the glossy prestige format for UK publishing's marketing campaigns, but maaaaaybe it is time for something else. [SOCIAL MEDIA *COUGH*]


Since publication of the Player's Handbook, Dungeon Master's Guide, and Monster Manual, Wizards has released a total of two player-centric books, Player's Companion for the Elemental Evil storyline and the Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide. The total product catalog of books beyond the core stand at six. Yes, six books in 16 months. Compare that to 3/3.5 and 4th editions where you were drowning in books at any given moment, and it's a dramatic shift in the way Wizards approaches D&D.


Best of all, it's working. While Wizards does not share sales figures, sales of 5E have been characterized as "staggering" and the company has gone through multiple reprints of the core rules.

This Ars Technica review of D&D 5e is a very thorough look at the new edition and the market factors that forced its birth. What's amazing is that, as noted, this completely new model is absolutely kicking ass. Given it has been going for 16 months, it is - presumably? - beyond all the auto-buyers as well. Could this change everything? Or is it only applicable for a publishing brand with this degree of reach and loyalty?

Incidentally, we tried it for the first time a few weeks ago. It ain't perfect, but it is very, very good. And perfect for bringing new players into the fold. That might be part of the secret?


We learn about other places and other people by their food, by their language, by their dress. I think there's another way though. I think we can also learn by the stories they tell to frighten themselves. Those mythologies reveal them at their most insecure; they teach us of their perceived weaknesses.


The most enduring and evocative remembered smell from all our growing up, Anne and I decided, was the smell of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, the objective of innumerable field trips. As we drove there, I could easily generate a mental simulacrum of its smell, a concentrated essence of antiquity, brass polish, school shoes, and institutional gravity.


Terrific piece on the power of smell. Also, the Nelson TOTALLY SMELLED LIKE THAT. Also been to the Dime Store and, of course, Winstead's. This is all probably essential reading for WorldCon attendees. Or, you know, writers. (Or, behaviouralists. Did you know that a study showed that piping the smell of cookies into a shopping mall made people nicer? True fact.)


For 363 days a year, nobody gives a fuck about the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Today is one of the two remaining days, when suckers care—and other suckers pretend to care—about who gets nominated for the Oscars, which are worthless trash and always have been.

Deadspin on the Oscars. And, let's be honest, many awards. Burneko raises a good point in that the Oscars kind of exist, well, for the Oscars. I did a Google Trends search for search patterns around the Hugo Awards once, and spotted that awards season created a really big spike for the Hugos... and no difference into searches for the nominated works. Part of that is because of the Hugos' unique structure - amongst other things: the voters who would be most likely to search for the books are getting them free in the pack, which is another... issue, but, we'll get there. And part of that, let's be fair, is that most book-related searches are well below Google Trends' threshold of giving a toss. So this is Hugo-bullying, but I suspect it is true for most - if not all - awards.

Someone should get Amazon to play ball and release their search data around awards. But then, since most awards would rather eat their own young than give a prize to an Amazon-published title, I suspect there's no real value in them playing nice.



Worth noting

Rivetedlit.com is the new YA site from Simon & Schuster. Cons: kind of unpronouncable (Rivetelidt? Rivetedlet?! Rivdideded. ARGH). Pros: They're kicking off with some rather spectacular giveaways. And they are smartly putting their content (like their video - good job, YA marketers!) across platforms.

Congratulations to Whitefox's Unsung Heroes! A really impressive list of the secret gatekeepers that actually make publishing work.

A new award for African fiction, with a broad (and appealing) remit.

You can now optimise non-promoted posts on Facebook. I've been tinkering with this on the Pornokitsch page (see? it does have a purpose!) and so far,... I dunno. I suspect more useful for even larger communities. Apparently the real mojo comes in the insights, but I'm holding out another week or so before checking in. Watch this space.

Short story vending machines.

Which reminds me, has anyone done wearable tech short stories yet? My cheap cheap PEBL has about six apps, but none of them are flash-fiction. This seems perfect for Jeff Noon's twitter microstories or the like.

Louis Vuitton have a video game character as a model. Amazing.


Jared (http://www.pornokitsch.com/2016/02/weirdness-rodeo-tube-posters-monsters-and-smell.html#more)

... I jos malo novootkupljenih naslova za ekranizacije:


najpre moj favorit :!::

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Black Moon by Kenneth Calhoun

Black Moon is just one of several science-fiction books that deal with insomnia and sleep. In it, insomnia has become a worldwide epidemic where the sleepless roam the streets looking for a cure that doesn't exist. Panic escalates to the point where the people who cannot sleep begin to attack those who can. Against this slow-boil apocalyptic scenario, the book shows us the lives of several different interconnected characters and how they are coping with new way of the world.

Rights to film Black Moon as a television series were picked up by streaming service Hulu. Mike Cahill (Another Earth) will write and direct the adaptation. They aPennyslvania_TVre dropping the name "Black Moon" and calling the series Sleepless instead. The entire project is being envisioned as a 10-episode series, which should allow a sufficient time to really explore the multiple storylines.


a onda I :

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To the best of my knowledge, there's not a whole lot of Amish sci-fi out there...but that didn't stop Hollywood from taking notice of Michael Bunker's space colonization story Pennsylvania. It's the story of a young Amish man named Jedidiah Troyer who signs up for an emigration program to colonize the planet New Pennsylvania. Jedidiah is looking to establish a farm and homestead on affordable land in a new Amish community, but gets a lot more than he bargained for: he arrives at the new planet in the middle of a rebel uprising.

Film rights to Pennsylvania were picked up by Jorgensen Pictures, who brought Stacy Jorgensen (Grey Skies) on as producer. Not much more is known since this project is still very much in the early developmental stages. But that shouldn't stop you from picking up this or any of the above books.



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Roadside Picnic by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky

The 1972 novel Roadside Picnic,writtenby Russian brothers Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, examines what happens when mankind comes into contact with advanced alien technology it is ill-equipped to handle. The premise is that aliens had visited Earth and left behind advanced (to us) technology. But travel into the so-called "zones" is forbidden because unexplainable and seemingly supernatural things happen there. However, alien tech sells for high dollar on the black market, which is why "stalker" Red Schuhart, despite the danger, ventures into the zone to look for a valuable alien artifact.

Adaptation rights to Roadside Picnic were snapped up by WGN America, who is developing a television series based on the science-fiction classic. Jack Paglen, screenwriter for the Johnny Depp sci-fi vehicle Transcendence, was brought on to write it. Terminator Genisys and Game of Thrones helmer Alan Taylor is also on board to direct.


(https://d3myrwj42s63no.cloudfront.net/180/978/076/531/985/2/9780765319852.jpg)
Little Brother by Cory Doctorow

Little Brother follows a tech-savvy teenage hacker named Marcus Yallow who takes on the Department of Homeland Security after being falsely connected with terrorism. Marcus and his friends are picked up by authorities after a terrorist attack on the Bay Bridge. The teens are subsequently imprisoned, treated like criminals, and eventually let go, but Marcus takes it upon himself to take down BlackMoon_TVthe DHS using current and near-future technology.

Film rights to Cory Doctorow's "hactivist" story were recently acquired by Paramount Pictures, who sees Marcus as an Edward Snowden–type character. Producers attached to the project include Don Murphy (Transformers) and Susan Montford. The plan is to make Little Brother a young adult franchise, no doubt tapping into the book's follow-up, Homeland, and its forthcoming sequels.



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Dawn by Octavia Butler

In Dawn, mankind has rendered planet Earth uninhabitable through the use of nuclear weapons. On the brink of extinction, a select few humans are saved by a race of aliens called the Oankali. One of the survivors is a woman named Lilith, who awakens centuries after Earth's demise and learns that the Oankali have three genders: male, female, and ooloi. The ooloi have the unique ability among the Oankali to manipulate genetic material, which they eventually do to form Oankali/human hybrids...specifically for the purpose of repopulating the now-inhabitable Earth.

Dawn is the first novel in Octavia Butler's Xenogenesis series, which is noted for exploring themes of gender, sexuality, and race. Rights to bring Dawn to television have been optioned by Bainframe, with Allen Bain, Gary Pearl, Thomas Carter, and Teddy Smith acting as executive co-producers. Television provides a much larger canvas on which to tell a textured story like Dawn. One has to imagine that if successful, Dawn's sequels—Adulthood Rites and Imago—will also be tapped for adaptation.

This year's nominees for the Philip K. Dick Award — Brenda Cooper, Douglas Lain, PJ Manney, Ramez Naam, Adam Rakunas, and Marguerite Reed — have launched a brand new website celebrating the award. Head on over to PKDnominees.xyz and you'll find lots of goodies, including:
◾Information about the 6 nominees.
◾A podcast discussion between the 6 nominees.
◾A giveaway contest where you can win copies of all 6 books

The winner of the Philip K. Dick Award will be announced Friday, March 25, 2016 at Norwescon 39. Until then, check out the Philip K. Dick Award Nominees website for cool goodies!

http://pkdnominees.xyz/ (http://pkdnominees.xyz/)

Métis Filmmaker Shoots Aboriginal Sci-Fi Feature in Alberta's Badlands


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Métis filmmaker Benjamin Ross Hayden gathered an impressive group of Aboriginal actors for his futuristic action fantasy The Northlander, which is being filmed in the Alberta Badlands until November 16th.

Starring Corey Sevier, Roseanne Supernault, Michelle Thrush and Nathaniel Arcand, The Northlander tells the story of Cygnus (Sevier), an anti-hero finding a place in a post-humanity society. The only survivors on planet earth are a mutated indigenous band called "Last Arc", who struggle to live in the dry, hostile wilderness. Cygnus is the band's only hunter, and sent on a quest by the matriarch Nova (Thrush), after several band members are killed in a mysterious way.

"I needed a strong First Nations cast, because as original storytellers of the land, they are ambassadors to this futurist narrative that belongs to an earlier era that is shown to be just as futuristic," says Hayden. "As a First Nations script, the nomadic ways of the past are just as relevant in a setting that shows a future world that feels unique where each moment feels like a few place and time on screen. The frontiers of Western Canada are just as much a part of creating a future world."

Principal photography is ongoing in Drumheller and the Bragg Creek area, where Unforgiven and Legends of the Fall were filmed, and at never before filmed areas at Writing-on-Stone.

The Northlander was financed through the Aboriginal component of the Telefilm Canada Micro-Budget Production Program, and produced by Hayden with exec producers Adam Beach, Wendy Will Tout, Jeremy Torrie and Jim Compton. Dan Dumouchel is Director of Photography, and Shannon Joel Chappell Production Designer. Melissa Meretsky heads Key Makeup.
http://reelwest.com/Northlander (http://reelwest.com/Northlander)

Four years ago, Stephan Zlotescu's "True Skin" blew us away with how off-the-wall it was. For a little while, it was supposed to become full-length film at Warner Bros. But now it's found a home as an hour-long series at Amazon.


The original short followed a man in a future where everyone is augmented. Short on cash, the protagonist goes for whatever he can get, which ends up being a chip that turns him robotic but also forces him to run from an organization who really wants him/the chip.


Zlotescu will be back to direct Amazon's adaptation of his short, and his VFX company, Opticflavor, will provide the effects. But there are no writers and no cast members yet.


The original short is below, so why not watch it again to remember why it's perfectly suited to being expanded?

TRUE SKIN on Vimeo (http://vimeo.com/51138699)

39 Best Sci-Fi Movie One-Liners Ever (https://www.inverse.com/article/12360-from-multipass-to-don-t-get-cocky-the-39-best-sci-fi-movie-one-liners-ever)


I


The Complete Conceptual History of the Millennium Falcon (http://kitbashed.com/blog/a-complete-history-of-the-millennium-falcon)

 :mrgreen:


! No longer available (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jW23TeqMiXk#)

QuoteNot the future after all: the slow demise of young adult dystopian sci-fi films


It's easy to forget the impact The Hunger Games had when it first hit cinemas in 2012. Here was a brutal vision of America under a North Korea-style dictatorship, starring our greatest ingenue since the halcyon days of golden era Hollywood – and with added extra teen-on-teen violence to really stir the cauldron of controversy. That the saga ended up a bloated cash machine, desperately reliant on Jennifer Lawrence's enduring star power, should be remembered as a salutary lesson in the dangers of over-milking a successful product.

What a pity Lionsgate didn't learn its lesson. The studio has just seen the latest instalment in its follow-up dystopian saga, The Divergent Series: Allegiant, fail at the domestic box office with a return of just $29m in its opening weekend. As with The Hunger Games, the studio chose to adapt the final instalment in the saga's source trilogy of novels in two parts – and this time paid the price. Word is that the final episode, Ascendant, will now have its budget cut before going into production.


Allegiant is only the most recent young adult science fiction effort to nosedive at the box office. One of the first to fail was The Host, led by Saoirse Ronan and based on Twilight author Stephenie Meyer's futuristic romance about an Earth beset by bodysnatching (yet occasionally benevolent) aliens. Then came this year's The Fifth Wave, with Kick Ass's Chloë Moretz as a young woman searching for her brother in the aftermath of a devastating extraterrestrial invasion. Both were based on bestselling literary sagas, both simply failed to translate to the big screen.

Not so long ago studios were snapping up the rights to every young adult novel in circulation. But the genre's recent struggles seem to have left many in development hell. A lot will be riding on the July release of Drake Doremus's Equals, an original sci-fi piece starring Twilight's Kristen Stewart as a young woman living in a dystopia where human beings' emotions have been eradicated. There's also Fallen, which will cleave closer to the dark fantasy romance blueprint of Meyers's hit saga with its depiction of a school where many students have a connection to the paranormal. Scott Hicks's film debuts in September.


If both fail, and Equals picked up weak reviews when it debuted in last year at the Toronto film festival, the young adult genre could well be dead as Edward Cullen's pulse. And why should we care? After all, for every Hunger Games there are currently about a dozen Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part Ones.

The simple fact is that these movies, with their tendency towards female protagonists, are helping to balance a blockbuster slate that's heavily weighted towards male-dominated superhero fare. This might all change next year if Wonder Woman blazes a trail for Warner Bros's planned DC Comics cinematic universe, or if Marvel finally gets its act together on the diversity front and delivers a killer Captain Marvel movie in 2019. But neither of those prospects is exactly written in stone. There's a reason writers have started to shoe-horn in gender-swapped storylines in the comic books: the basic superhero gene pool is one enormous sausage party. Even Captain Marvel used to be a bloke.

So where might female roles come from if the dystopian genre fails entirely? As usual, the best way to get a glimpse into the future is to keep a close eye on Lawrence.

The Oscar-winner's next big science fiction outing is Passengers, opposite Chris Pratt, which doesn't have a young adult grounding and as far as we know isn't designed to be the first in a series. Neither is it set in a horrifying future: Morten Tyldum's film, which debuts in December, will take place entirely on board a vast spaceship heading off to a new human homeworld. The story begins when Pratt's space traveller awakes early from cryogenic sleep and decides to wake up another passenger (Lawrence) to keep him from going stir crazy. Inevitably, romance (and presumably some kind of additional crisis, as the movie is projected to cost at least $100m) ensues.

Passengers follow Sandra Bullock's turn as an astronaut struggling to deal with the aftermath of a disaster in space in the Oscar-winning Gravity, as well as numerous Alien movies old and new, in imagining a world to come built around dauntless women. It sounds like a tantalising blend of Titanic and Silent Running.

Could major success built around Lawrence's remarkable star quality spark off a new wave of original female-led sci-fi, suddenly emancipated from the shackles of young adult literary roots? Studios might be forced to accept that endless adaptations of identikit teen trilogies, with their penchant for storylines that are about as cinematic as an episode of General Hospital , are not the future after all.

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/mar/25/allegiant-young-adult-dystopian-films-box-office-flops (http://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/mar/25/allegiant-young-adult-dystopian-films-box-office-flops)

A Handful of Neil Gaiman Stories Being Resurrected for TV and Film

In the land of TV and film adaptations, it's no secret that speculative fiction is a bountiful wellspring of ideas. Just look at all the blockbuster films and top-rated television shows that sprung from the pages of science fiction, fantasy and horror. What's particularly noteworthy is when several of those adaptations stem from the same mind. Philip K. Dick is one of those minds. There have been adaptations of several of his stories, like Blade Runner, Minority Report and Man in the High Castle. But a look and pending adaptations reveals another bright star in genre: Neil Gaiman.

Gaiman, of course, has already had a some of his books made into films, specifically: Stardust, adapted in 2007 into a film starring Robert De Niro, Michelle Pfeiffer and Claire Danes; and Coraline, a 2009 stop-motion animation film featuring the voices of Dakota Fanning and Teri Hatcher. And in this space, I've already talked about some previously announced forthcoming adaptations based on Gaiman's work (American Gods, Sandman and Anansi Boys, Lucifer and Hansel & Gretel), but there are several new projects in the works based on Gaiman's stories. Here's a rundown of those new Neil Gaiman-related projects that are on the horizon.
(https://www.kirkusreviews.com/features/handful-neil-gaiman-stories-being-resurrected-tv-a/)