March 2013

SF/F Commentary

Hugo Awards Finalists (Plus Preliminary Commentary)

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I’m too lazy to offer a proper introduction, so I’m just going to dive in (give me a break; I walked over five miles today).  The only thing I will say is that most of these are preliminary, most-likely-haven’t-read-it thoughts.  For the most part, I will have nothing to say about a work except why I didn’t pick it up during hte year.  The sad truth is that most of the stuff I nominated this year (my first nominating year) didn’t make it. Here goes (Hugos): Best Novel 2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson (Orbit) Blackout by Mira Grant (Orbit) Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance by Lois McMaster Bujold (Baen) Redshirts: A Novel with Three Codas by John Scalzi (Tor) Throne of the Crescent Moon by Saladin Ahmed (DAW) Nothing I loved last year made it on the list.  The only book I’m particularly excited about is Ahmeds, but that’s based on what others have said.  I haven’t read anything on this list and probably won’t read at least two of them (nothing interests me about Scalzi’s nostalgic book and I just can’t bring myself to read Mira Grant’s novels, even though I probably should — I blame that on people frequently telling me to read something, which turns me into a rebel).  But since I’ll get copies of all these books in my Hugo voting package (right?), I’ll probably read them anyway. Overall, I’m sort of “meh” about this particular category, though.  It’s too…familiar. Best Novella After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall by Nancy Kress (Tachyon Publications) The Emperor’s Soul by Brandon Sanderson (Tachyon Publications) On a Red Station, Drifting by Aliette de Bodard (Immersion Press) San Diego 2014: The Last Stand of the California Browncoats by Mira Grant (Orbit) “The Stars Do Not Lie” by Jay Lake (Asimov’s, Oct-Nov 2012) I’m pleasantly surprised to see Nancy Kress on the list.  I quite like her work, though I must admit to having missed the work in this category.  I’m already rooting for her and Aliette de Bodard, who is another one of those really good writers currently, well, writing.  I’ll profess complete ignorance about Lake’s new story, though his recent work has greatly impressed me.  Grant and Sanderson?  The one thing going for Sanderson is that Tachyon published The Emperor’s Soul.  I feel mostly the same about the Grant as I did in the previous category. Best Novelette “The Boy Who Cast No Shadow” by Thomas Olde Heuvelt (Postscripts: Unfit For Eden, PS Publications) “Fade To White” by Catherynne M. Valente (Clarkesworld, August 2012) “The Girl-Thing Who Went Out for Sushi” by Pat Cadigan (Edge of Infinity, Solaris) “In Sea-Salt Tears” by Seanan McGuire (Self-published) “Rat-Catcher” by Seanan McGuire (A Fantasy Medley 2, Subterranean) Aside from the excessive number of nominations for Seanan McGuire on this ballot (she is also Mira Grant), I quite like this list.  I’ve not heard of Heuvelt, but Postcripts is a damned good publication.  I’ve also quite liked some of Valente’s work and I am pleasantly surprised to see Pat Cadigan making an appearance. I should note that I don’t actually have anything against Seanan McGuire.  I’ve not read most of her work.  I’ll probably change my tune in a few months.  As a rule, though, I am skeptical about any author who appears more than twice on a ballot.  There is so much good work out there that I find it a little weird that one author could suck up so many votes in one nomination cycle.  But what do I know?  I’m a curmudgeon who likes to complain… Best Short Story “Immersion” by Aliette de Bodard (Clarkesworld, June 2012) “Mantis Wives” by Kij Johnson (Clarkesworld, August 2012) “Mono no Aware” by Ken Liu (The Future is Japanese, VIZ Media LLC) Now this is interesting!  I quite like Ken Liu’s work, and I did nominate de Bodard’s “Immersion” (happy).  I’ve not read Johnson’s newest story, though I’m told by fellow literary curmudgeon Adam Callaway that it is one of her best. I am, however, disappointed that the votes were so divided among various stories that these three were the only ones to pop out of the crowd.  It’s not right… Best Related Work The Cambridge Companion to Fantasy Literature Edited by Edward James & Farah Mendlesohn (Cambridge UP) Chicks Dig Comics: A Celebration of Comic Books by the Women Who Love Them Edited by Lynne M. Thomas & Sigrid Ellis (Mad Norwegian Press) Chicks Unravel Time: Women Journey Through Every Season of Doctor Who Edited by Deborah Stanish & L.M. Myles (Mad Norwegian Press) I Have an Idea for a Book… The Bibliography of Martin H. Greenberg Compiled by Martin H. Greenberg, edited by John Helfers (The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box) Writing Excuses Season Seven by Brandon Sanderson, Dan Wells, Mary Robinette Kowal, Howard Tayler and Jordan Sanderson In order: 1) Cambridge Companion = wonderful! 2) Chicks Dig Comics (same folks who did that other one, I think) 3) Chicks Unravel Time (bored of Doctor Who appearing on everything; yeah, it’s really great, but it’s really not the greatest science fiction TV show EVER — it just happens to be the only good one on the air right now, one which I happen to like, of course) 4) I Have an Idea for a Book (never heard of it; sounds interesting) 5) Writing Excuses (yeah, it belongs here and I’m happy to see it get nominated in the proper category) What?  No VanderMeer or what not?  Pah! Of course, I would laugh my toosh off if this list were dominated by academic books.  It will never happen, but my pretentious side is plotting and cackling… Best Graphic Story Grandville Bête Noire written and illustrated by Bryan Talbot (Dark Horse Comics, Jonathan Cape) Locke & Key Volume 5: Clockworks written by Joe Hill, illustrated by Gabriel Rodriguez (IDW) Saga, Volume One written by Brian K. Vaughn, illustrated by Fiona Staples (Image Comics) Schlock Mercenary: Random Access Memorabilia by Howard Tayler, colors by Travis

SF/F Commentary

The SF/F and Related Blogs You Read

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I follow a bunch of genre-related blogs, but I always have this feeling that I’m missing something.  And so this post is about that. What are your favorite SF/F and related blogs?  I want to know.  Leave a comment with links and maybe I’ll find something new! That’s it.  Nothing more exciting than that!

Retro Nostalgia

Retro Nostalgia: Mars Attacks (1996) and Its Detached Timestamp

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Long-time viewers of science fiction film will likely recognize Tim Burton’s homage to 50s/60s SF cinema.  How could they not?  From the narrative undertones of the Cold War’s nuclear fears to its borrowing and twisting of the narrative structure of H. G. Wells’ War of the Worlds and its 1953 adaptation, which helped solidify a developing SF cinematic aesthetic (the Orson Welles radio drama certainly stuck Wells’ terrifying tale of alien invasion in the public consciousness beforehand), the film is in every way a mockery of the 50s and 60s.*  But it’s not simply the politics or the narrative that make the 1996 alien invasion comedy Mars Attacks! an amusing bedfellow of or foil to the 1950s (and 60s).  Rather, its visuals are an at times direct parody/assault on the material and social logic of the era, despite having no clear temporal placement of its own — after all, the film is neither set in the 1950s, nor the 1990s, and instead merges or maps the span of historical time over itself (a palimpsest). Part of the reason I am mashing the 50s and 60s together here is because Mars Attacks! is never fixed to a specific decade.  It is, in a sense, trapped in the limbo of transition between two cultures we like to think as distinct, but which bleed into one another.  The Beehive (B-52) hairstyle, after all, didn’t gain popular momentum until the 60s, despite existing as early as 1954.  There are times when the film veers a hard right into 60s territory (most notably through cars and the flashy fashion of Vegas that conjures images of a somewhat neutered, caricatured Hunter S. Thompson), but it frequently bounces back, merging the two periods — both understandably important to SF cinema — into one incoherent mishmash.  I’ll refer to this as the 50s Transition to save space (roughly the late 50s to the early 60s). A primary example of this assault on 50s Transition culture is the aptly named Martian Girl played by Lisa Marie (seen in the above image).  Her swaying, robotic walking style, her absurd hair style (a greatly exaggerated B-52), and her eye-catching pointed breasts are all digs on the visual culture of the 1950s Transition.  She is at once a clone of the era and a play on the sex symbol of the era:  Marilyn Monroe (minus the hair). Or, perhaps, a mix of Monroe and another female icon of the time:  Audrey Hepburn from Breakfast at Tiffany’s. The exaggeration of the Martian Girl’s features — to the point of perfect exaggeration, even — seems, in my mind, to make light of the hyper-commercialized culture that arose at the turn of the century and solidified after WW2, one which hyper-sexualized certain “ideal” forms of women, fashion, etc. (or, to put it another way, created a specific set of images for the era that were hyper-sexualized).  After all, she is, in every way, a “perfect” 50s Transition girl.  Except that she isn’t.  She’s a grotesque perfection that draws attention to the fact that she isn’t real.  Her features are too perfect.  Too exaggerated.  Blame it on the aliens for translating their own genetic monoculture onto our own. Much of the film’s fashion aesthetics draw upon the transitional era, almost to comedic effect, sometimes by exaggeration and sometimes by simply cloning things that already existed.  Some of this is deliberate.  Annette Bening, for example, modeled her performance as Barbara Land on Ann Margret from Viva Las Vegas.  The resemblance is clear.  This shouldn’t surprise us, of course, because the mish mash was intended by the writers and Burton himself, who imagined Mars Attacks! as an homage to 50s scifi flicks, with a heavy dose of mockery.  Whether they intended to critique the culture of the 50s Transition is hard to say.  I like to think this was an unintended consequence of transplanting a cultural period into a different cinematic paradigm.  Rather than stare with nostalgic eyes at a bygone era, we are compelled to think about what made the 50s Transition fascinating and thankfully dead at the same time. I could probably say more about this topic, but I won’t.  That would require tracing all the ways Mars Attacks! explores 50s SF and the 50s Transition period (as mockery, parody, or direct homage).  Maybe for another time! ————————————————- *The 1953 adaptation of War of the Worlds was nominated for three Academy Awards and has since been included in the Library of Congress catalogue.

SF/F Commentary

RIP: Chinua Achebe (1930 – 2013)

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If you haven’t already heart, Chinua Achebe passed away last Thursday (March 21st).  While not a genre writer, Achebe various works have had a profound impact on English-language literature.  He is probably best known for Things Fall Apart, which appears from time to time on American high school English curriculum.  However, he also wrote four other novels, numerous short story and poetry collections, and a number of essays.  If you’ve never read anything by him before, I recommend you do. My first introduction to his work was in a graduate-level course on African literature.  And, as per usual, the work in question was Things Fall Apart.  Since then, I’ve read short stories, poems, and other novels by Achebe.  Most of them I have enjoyed immensely. He was a great writer, to say the least.  And he will be missed immensely. You can read more about Achebe and his death here and here.

SF/F Commentary

ICFA (Are You Going?) and Disappeared Shaun (Temporary!)

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Two things: I am presenting at this year’s ICFA (International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts).  That means I will be rather busy this week with, well, paper stuff, conference stuff, and stuff stuff.  However, if you are attending ICFA and would like to get together, send me an email or leave a message or something.  Should be fun! (FYI:  I’m presenting a paper on the adaptation of Cloud Atlas.  I’m also creating a list which will include that film.  Mwahaha.) Due to #1 and to some PhD stuff I need to finish, I am putting the blog on a temporary hiatus.  And I mean temporary.  At most, I’ll post nothing new until the end of next week.  However, I strongly suspect I’ll be back at my old games on Sunday or Monday.  In any case, that means all the stuff I had planned to post this week is getting moved until later, including the Retro Nostalgia feature.  I just don’t have the time to put my heart into it right now (PhD stuff, conference stuff, and teaching stuff = super busy Shaun). Again, this is temporary.  I am not disappearing.  This blog will fill up with my nonsense before the end of the month.  Promise. And that’s that.

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