We have a short episode this week due to computer problems (namely, with Jen’s). This week I talk about zombies, fantasy awards, digital piracy nonsense, and silly things political talk show hosts say about science fiction books. If you’d like to check out the episode (it’s about 16 minutes), you can do so here. Thanks!
Some things I’ve learned over the past few months: The mailman is a moron and thinks very thick books that obviously don’t fit into my mailbox should instead be folded up and crammed in there anyway. People have my address who shouldn’t and are at least kind enough to send me things I like instead of trying to kill me in my sleep (i.e. they send me books). Bookstores are my crack. With that in mind, here are the books that I’ve managed to add to my collection: And here are the descriptions, from left to right, top to bottom (taken from Amazon): 1. Pump Six and Other Stories by Paolo Bacigalupi The eleven stories in Pump Six chart the evolution of Paolo Bacigalupi’s work, including the Hugo nominated “Yellow Card Man” and the Sturgeon Award-winning story “The Calorie Man,” both set in the world of his novel The Windup Girl. This collection also demonstrates the power and reach of the science fiction short story. Social criticism, political parable, and environmental advocacy lie at the center of Bacigalupi’s work. Each of the stories herein is at once a warning and a celebration of the tragic comedy of the human experience. Paolo Bacigalupi has won the Nebula Award, the Theodore Sturgeon Award, the John W. Campbell Award, the Compton Crook Award, the Locus Award, and the Hugo Award. Between his award-winning debut novel and this landmark collection of short fiction, Paolo Bacigalupi demonstrates why he is one of the most celebrated science fiction writers of the twenty-first century. 2. The Mirrored Heavens by David J. Williams In the 22nd century, the first wonder of a brave new world is the Phoenix Space Elevator, designed to give mankind greater access to the frontier beyond Earth. Cooperatively built by the United States and the Eurasian Coalition, the Elevator is also a grand symbol of superpower alliance following a second cold war. And it’s just been destroyed. With suspicions rampant, armies and espionage teams are mobilized across the globe and beyond. Enter Claire Haskell and Jason Marlowe, U.S. counterintelligence agents and former lovers—though their memories may only be constructs implanted by their spymaster. Now their agenda is to trust no one. For as the crisis mounts, the lives of all involved will converge in one explosive finale—and a startling aftermath that will rewrite everything they’ve ever known—about their mission, their world, and themselves. 3. The 13th Reality: The Hunt For Dark Infinity by James Dashner It’s been a quiet summer for Tick, Paul, and Sofia, but the latest message from Master George changes everything. The Realities are in danger — and from something more terrible than Mistress Jane and the mutated Chi’karda of the Thirteenth Reality. People from all Realities are unexplainably going insane. Worse, some Realities are fragmenting, disintegrating into nothingness. Master George has learned that Mr. Chu from the Fourth Reality is working on a mysterious new weapon called Dark Infinity. But no one has any idea how to stop the weapon — or even if it can be stopped. To make matters worse, Tick and his friends have been kidnapped, forced to wink from Reality to Reality, solving impossible riddles in order to survive the deadly traps surrounding them. Mistress Jane and Tick find themselves in a race to reach the weapon first — but who will destroy it and who will become its master? 4. Mozan and the Return of Magic by Stephan Davied (this is from my book stalker) When the vile sorceress of Fyonhaireshizer kidnaps thirteen year old Mozan, prince of Mazolean, he has no choice but to lead four other abducted royal children on a quest to save their families and kingdom. They must battle dark spirits, gargoyles, one eyed ogres and their own internal demons before they ultimately unite in the kingdom of Mazolean. It is here they meet Anzon, The Lion King and where Mozan learns that his very existence fulfills an ancient and powerful prophecy. 5. The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson (this is the book the mailman folded up and shoved into my mailbox) Widely acclaimed for his work completing Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time saga, Brandon Sanderson now begins a grand cycle of his own, one every bit as ambitious and immersive. Roshar is a world of stone and storms. Uncanny tempests of incredible power sweep across the rocky terrain so frequently that they have shaped ecology and civilization alike. Animals hide in shells, trees pull in branches, and grass retracts into the soilless ground. Cities are built only where the topography offers shelter. It has been centuries since the fall of the ten consecrated orders known as the Knights Radiant, but their Shardblades and Shardplate remain: mystical swords and suits of armor that transform ordinary men into near-invincible warriors. Men trade kingdoms for Shardblades. Wars were fought for them, and won by them. One such war rages on a ruined landscape called the Shattered Plains. There, Kaladin, who traded his medical apprenticeship for a spear to protect his little brother, has been reduced to slavery. In a war that makes no sense, where ten armies fight separately against a single foe, he struggles to save his men and to fathom the leaders who consider them expendable. Brightlord Dalinar Kholin commands one of those other armies. Like his brother, the late king, he is fascinated by an ancient text called The Way of Kings. Troubled by over-powering visions of ancient times and the Knights Radiant, he has begun to doubt his own sanity. Across the ocean, an untried young woman named Shallan seeks to train under an eminent scholar and notorious heretic, Dalinar’s niece, Jasnah. Though she genuinely loves learning, Shallan’s motives are less than pure. As she plans a daring theft, her research for Jasnah hints at secrets of the Knights Radiant and the true cause of the war. The result of over ten years of planning, writing, and world-building, The Way of Kings is but the opening movement
I haven’t reviewed anything in far too long. This has partly been due to graduate school and partly due to my disinterest in a number of books that have appeared in my mailbox. I’m hoping this is a phase, though. In any case, I think my review of The Reapers Are the Angels by Alden Bell is the best review I’ve written yet. Maybe I’m wrong about that, but I am quite proud of that review. Yes, it’s a glowing review, but that’s because I loved the book (plain and simple). So if you’d like to check out the review and see what I thought about The Reapers Are the Angels, you can do so here.
A new poll is up, folks. This is partially in response to the Elizabeth Moon fiasco, but mostly in response to the occasional discussions among readers and authors about whether one continues to read authors who hold unfavorable political beliefs (such as Orson Scott Card or John C. Wright, et. al.). There are three answers: yes, sometimes, and no. Simple enough, right? You can find the poll on the left sidebar (scroll down a little). But if you’d like to leave a more detailed comment, feel free to do so here. The poll will run for two weeks.
The poll has been over for a while now, but I haven’t had time to take it down and replace it with a new one yet (or present the results to all of you). So, without further delay, here are the results are: 81.25% said that book bannings are “pure evil.” 18.75% said that book bannings are “rarely necessary.” Nobody said that book bannings are “sometimes necessary” or “great.” Am I surprised by the numbers? Nope. My blog is a literature-oriented one, so finding out that my readership mostly despises book bannings makes perfect sense. I would have been more surprised if some of you had said book bannings are “great.” But I do have a question: why did some of you say that book bannings are “rarely necessary?” What constitutes “rarely necessary?” Is it because you are of the opinion that pornography (in the literal sense, not the literary sense) shouldn’t be in libraries, or do you think certain books (in the actual written sense) shouldn’t be in libraries? Leave a comment if you’re one of the few who said “rarely necessary” on the poll, because I’d really like to know your opinion on the matter. Anywho. A new poll will be up later today. Thanks for voting!
[The second to last piece in the series. You can read the previous pieces at the following links: Part One; Part Two; Part Three.] 4. What are some common myths that people have about genre fiction in general? I probably should have stuck #3 and #4 together, since this post is going to seem slightly anticlimactic. Regardless, Delmater makes both a false and a correct assertion about the myths about science fiction and its connection to television and film. I’ll tackle the latter first. Look, a giant smurf! Delmater begins her 4th true point (since the 5th is actually a short, but hopeful explanation about Abyss & Apex‘s purpose and, thus, has nothing to do with this series of posts) by saying that “Hollywood tends to simplify good science fiction or fantasy stories and rely heavily on special effects.” I’ve said as much before (oh, look, an Avatar link again), but what is most striking to me about this problem is that there seems to be very little reason for doing so, except, perhaps, to cut costs everywhere possible. Not every high-brow science fiction film has flopped at the box office–quite the opposite, in fact. In the last few years we’ve seen films like Inception and District 9 come out on top, both in the “serious” department and among science fiction viewers. The same is also true of other genres, such as fantasy (hello Lord of the Rings) or horror (The Sixth Sense or The Exorcist–to name an oldie). There simply isn’t a reason to produce garbage as far as I can see. But maybe Hollywood has insight into things that I don’t, because it continues to produce a combination of both forms, with the less adequate form dominating the slots. But Delmater also makes two rather interesting points: Potential readers assume that SF and F literature is no different than its film equivalent AND That the viewing public refuses to acknowledge that good genre TV or movies are actually genre to begin with (a kind of Atwood-ian reality denial, if you will). Both are false for rather complicated reasons. In the first case, I would argue that the reason SF/F viewers don’t read the literature has more to do with the fact that they know the literature is not like the film equivalent at all, except when it is made clear that a particular show or film is an adaptation of a book. There are Star Wars novels, of course, but the vast body of SF novels are not high-adventure, popcorn monstrosities, but forays into the serious side of things, to varying degrees. The sad reality is that most people do not read because they want deep messages or beautiful prose; they read because they want to be entertained. Genre fiction largely gets a bad rap in this department (particularly in the case of SF) because it tries so hard to be “legit.” There’s nothing wrong with high-brow genre fiction, but we shouldn’t be surprised that the general reading public is not necessarily interested in such things in book form, per se (why they are interested in the film versions is a different question). Still, there is a clear disconnect between genre literature and genre film, and I would argue that another contributing factor is the same factor that has led to decreased reading numbers: film is simply the desired mode of storytelling. We don’t have to like it, but there it is. Michael Bay kills this guy with a lens flare… As for the second point, I think Delmater is trying to place genre film in the same category as SF literature a la Margaret Atwood’s comments about the genre. Very few people are unwilling to admit that something like The Dresden Files (Delmater’s example) is fantasy, or that Battlestar Galactica is science fiction. Some viewers might not know what SF or F are (or they might have odd definitions for both genres), but that is a separate issue from refusing to acknowledge that something is SF or F when obviously it is. The film world is remarkably more open than the literature world. Why? Because without genre fiction, film would not be what it is today: one of the most lucrative entertainment industries in human history. Science fiction films have changed the game numerous times in film’s short history (2001: A Space Odyssey, Star Wars, and even Avatar); it will continue to change the game as technology improves and filmmakers experiment. But if we’re to take anything away from Delmater’s answers, it is that there are a lot of questions left to be answered. The bimonthly obituary for science fiction has proven one thing to me: that most of us have no idea what is causing the decline in SF readership. Figuring out what is causing the various problems that plague genre fiction will be beneficial to the genre as a whole. It’s time to stop guessing and start getting some answers. Once and for all. And that concludes my short series on the literary vs. genre fiction line. I hope you enjoyed them!
