I have me another review of a graphic novel up over at Theresa’s blog. Been too long since I reviewed something, and I have a long list of books I’ve finished that I need to review. In any case, you can click the link above for my review. Thanks and enjoy!
No, there will not be any more clever rhymes, but there will be some good links. Special thanks goes to Charles Tan, Matt Staggs, and SF Signal for pointing me to a few of these. Here goes: The Daily Scott Brown calls for some more realism in vampire fiction, particularly in relation to vampire strength. io9 digs through literature, movies, and television to see how science fiction imagines the future of the U.S. government. Some interesting selections here. Fandomania gives us ten fantasy summer reading recommendations. Some good books and some iffy ones, but a good list overall. The Dream Cafe wants suggestions for dark fantasy books. Head on over and leave a few comments! Andrew Wheeler tells us that science fiction does, in fact, involve characters, contrary to what some literary critics believe. Eat it. Alma Alexander talks about reviewing as a writer, and whether it’s okay to do so. Yes, it is, just so my opinion gets out there. The Atlantic has one hell of an article on geo-engineering the Earth. Fascinating stuff. Here’s a list of YA fantasy novels by people of color. A damn good list, and still growing, it seems. There’s also an addendum to this list. Scott Edelman reminds us how to take criticism by telling us a very personal story. Scientists have apparently discovered that a single ant colony as colonized the world. It’s wild and awesome! Here is a rather long-winded, multi-author discussion of whether to self publish or not. Interesting opinions there. Oh, and Gawker gives us the nitty gritty of that whole Alice Hoffman scandal. You know, the one where Hoffman got pissed at a critic, then provided her fans with the critic’s phone number and email and told them to harass said critic? Yeah. Sheila Finch discusses fantastic voyages, in space and otherwise. Interesting stuff! The Mumpsimus talks about mimetic fiction and SF. Interesting post. B&N has an interesting article on the death of science fiction and its continued existence. Read it, because I can’t break it into a single sentence without sounding confusing. How about some cross genre fiction? Here’s a massive list of them! And, because I feel like being helpful, here’s a page of medieval demographics made simple. Should be useful to you fantasy writers out there. And that’s it!
One of the more anticipated of movies this year, Transformers 2 is a sequel that knows it’s a sequel. What it lacks in narrative cohesiveness it makes up for in what I’m going to call OCCAD, or obsessive compulsive computer animating disorder. Transformers 2 occurs some two years or so after the first movie ended. The Autobots now work with mankind to hunt down and destroy the remaining Decepticons, while Samuel Witwicky, our hero from the first movie, prepares to head off for college–apparently on the taxpayer’s bill. But the Decepticons are not finished with ruling the Earth. They’ve been here before, so many thousands of years ago, back before any of these enormous living machines could transform. These machines need Energon, a special form of energy that allows them to live and exist, and to do that they have to harvest suns. The rules, it seems, are to harvest only those suns orbited by lifeless planets. But when they find Earth, some of them don’t agree and a civil war breaks out. And now, thousands of years later, the Fallen–the bad guys who were defeated so long ago–are attempting to return. It’s up to Sam, Mikaela, and a few familiar friends to put a stop to it.That’s the short description. The problem with Transformers 2 is that it suffers horribly from sequelitis. The first half hour of the movie is essentially wasted space, explaining to us where everyone has gone, what they’re up to, why they’re where they are, etc., when, in reality, all that matters to the story is setting up Sam and the basic conflict. Great, wonderful, the Autobots, led by Optimus Prime, are off hunting their evil brethren, but we don’t really care, particularly because it’s wasted space when what matters isn’t so much that they’re doing what seems like a good idea, but that the Fallen have/has returned and Sam is caught in the middle of it. Why didn’t Bay start right in the middle of Sam’s move to college? Oh, but there’s a good reason. See, apparently they didn’t destroy all the Decepticons way back when. Oh yeah. They’re still around. No idea how the Autobots magically missed them all those years ago, nor why said Decepticons didn’t get into the fight, nor where all these new Autobots came from. We’re supposed to assume that they just magically took up Optimus Prime’s offer and flew over at sublight speed through space to Earth (which, let’s face it, makes about as much sense as trying to fly an apple through a ten-foot thick steel wall). But we get no explanation for that whatsoever, even though thirty minutes of the film are wasted explaining everything else. Unfortunately, the science in this film is abyssmal. I get it. The movie is ridiculous in and of itself, what with robots that transform, etc., but Bay could have at least tried to play things a little closer to home. A matter of days, maybe weeks occur in this one movie, yet somehow we’re supposed to accept that Decepticons can move at obviously slower-than-light speed from a planet not in our solar system to Earth in less than twenty-four hours? Bullcrap. Leave the ridiculous concept to its ridiculousness and leave everything else to reality, please. And then we have to deal with some of the more overwhelming parts of Transformers 2: the characters. There are far too many of them. The X-men franchise was at least smart enough to realize that it couldn’t possibly shove every single Marvel superhero into the mix; some had to be left as little more than side notes. But Transformers 2 is flooded with new and old characters. There are too many Decepticons and Autobots to keep straight in your head and I still have no clue who most of them are. It’s almost as if Bay wanted to keep the CG boys as busy as humanly possible, so any and all Transformers that might have appeared decades ago have now been sprung up from the depths and chucked into the fray. It’s confusing and overwhelming. And here’s where we get into the biggest criticism of the film: the computer graphics. Michael Bay has been accused of using CG as an ends to the mean, rather than as a tool, and that fact is made crystal clear here. There are so many battle scenes (with their accompanying transforming) that practically every inch of Transformers 2 is dripping with CG. And half the time these battles are extraneous. The first half hour is essentially an enormous turd of explosions and giant robots, and the rest of the movie is an on-and-off display of fights, destruction, and general mayhem, as if the movie’s concept wasn’t entertaining enough and Bay had to inject every minute of the film with something flashy and fiery. The film would have been just as entertaining with half the battle scenes. Truly. The only good thing to say about the CG is that it is quite good and cleverly crafted so it becomes difficult to see the lines between real and fake beyond one’s suspension of belief. The only thing that saves Transformers 2, though, happens to be one if its flaws: the characters. While I have already remarked that there are too many of them, those that have stuck into my head were definitely worth remembering. Not only are we gifted with familiar faces (Sam, Optimus, Bumblebee, the parents, and a few surprises), we are also introduced to a couple of other characters that drive the comedic quality of this film upwards. If not for the comedy, this film would be a waste of space. Chuckling in the theater has a way of making you forget, at that moment, all the problems with what is happening before you. Overall, I would say that Transformers 2 is a tremendously flawed piece, but it will likely entertain most audiences. If you’re thinking of taking your kids to this one, you might reconsider, if
No need for introductions. Special thanks goes to Charles Tan, Matt Staggs, and SF Signal for pointing me to a few of these. Here goes: Help Orbit Books create the ugliest SF/F book cover ever. Seriously. This could be fun. Jonathan Strahan chimes in on the electronic vs. print submissions argument. You can see Scalzi’s thoughts here, and oldcharliebrown has a few things to say too. Oh, and Cheryl Morgan rants here, remarking on problems with standard manuscript format. The Galaxy Express tells us how to take a negative review. Good stuff. Jonathan Cowie makes an argument for the greatness of science fiction as a response to the question: Is it possible to be negative about SF? Quite long, but interesting. Rants & Ramblings talks about . I agree with Rachelle on this one: write what you’re good at. The Elegant Variation wants us to discuss whether we’re writing more now than we were in previous generations. Yes, we are, but your thoughts are welcome too! io9 discusses Michael A. Stackpole and how online publishing will and currently is changing the methods of breaking into to the business. Read the article, because it’s impossible to break this damned thing down into a single sentence without making it sound weird. Good stuff. And here’s a list from io9 of fifteen science fiction movie sequels that don’t suck. Good list. Beyond Identity makes a fine argument for why scientific accuracy, and other things, are not the end-all-be-all for categorizing books as science fiction. I sort of agree. There are certain limits to what makes something science fiction, in my opinion, but the arguments made at Beyond Identity are interesting ones. My Five Best lists five best fantasy series. Mostly typical stuff, but I mention it because there’s one in there I’ve never heard of by a fellow named Joel Rosenberg. Unsearchable Riches asks “Why Fantasy?” It turns into a rant about why fantasy in almost any vein is perfectly safe for Christians, but don’t let that turn you off–it’s interesting. Smashing Magazine lists fifty resources to help you with your writing. Elizabeth Bear, one of my favorite authors, has a few good bits of writing advice. And last on this list is a WTF moment provided by Nnedi Okorafor. Apparently Penguin (the publisher) is offering up a new fiction prize for African writers, but it directly excludes science fiction and fantasy. Nnedi calls them out, as should we all. This is retarded. A lot of great African writers are not eligible. And that’s it! Hope you found them useful!
The blogosphere is ripe with rants about electronic submissions and the credibility of short fiction publications that don’t use them. Scalzi has talked about it and so has Jonathan Strahan. With such big names (in the SF/F world, at least) speaking on this issue, it seems rather pointless for me to remark here. But, this is my blog, so I am going to do just that. I stopped submitting my fiction to the big three and any other publication that refuses (or refused, for a time) to take electronic submissions about a year and a half ago. I think that was around the time when Tobias S. Buckell remarked in an audio interview that he refuses to submit by mail now for various reasons (some of which have been spoken to by Scalzi and Strahan). I’m not sure if Buckell still feels that way, or if I’m taking it out of context, but it truly made me reconsider my priorities in getting published. The result of that reconsideration, obviously, was my complete seizure of mail submissions, with exception to the Writers of the Future Contest–an exception I won’t bother explaining. Print submissions make little sense in the 21st century. Some of the valid reasons why are: Electronic submissions are easier to track. As mentioned elsewhere, it’s difficult to lose an electronic submission if you’re not a moron. Move them to a magic email folder than everyone can access and you’re set. Electronic submissions are easier to submit, which means more writers who do write good stories will likely submit to you. Yeah, some crappy writers will submit too, but so what? It should be pretty damn obvious from the first paragraph that a story isn’t worth reading. Electronic submissions are easier to reject and deal with. Editors only have to click reply, past in a form rejection, and be done with it. No postage, no mail men, no nothing. There’s almost no difference between reading a print submission and an electronic submission. Obviously a printed manuscript is easier to read, but, to be fair, if a story is good enough to get published, that fact will make itself clear just as readily in an electronic submission. There are plenty of magazines (online and otherwise) that not only accept electronic submissions, but also pay at or above the rates of those publications that don’t take electronic submissions. Even the freaking New Yorker takes e-subs. Get with the program. If a magazine that has been around for over 80 years can figure it out, well, there’s really no excuse, right? Writers make next to nothing as it is, especially in the short fiction world (and especially in the SF/F world). Print submissions cost a pretty penny for postage. The cost might seem nominal in the short run, but imagine the cost when you have twenty or thirty stories out there. There’s never a valid reason for a writer to have to pay to submit something. You pay the writer, not take money away from them. I’m sure there are plenty of other reasons. Personally, I refuse to pay to submit anything (WOTF being the exception, obviously), and I won’t submit print submissions to any of the big three again. The same is true of any magazine. Unless I know that I’m going to be paid for a print story, I’m not submitting it. Maybe that sounds stupid to some of you, but I simply don’t see the sense in it. And, like Scalzi, I question the credibility of any magazine that refuses to accept e-subs. Seriously, the excuses are just that: excuses. I get it. I understand the reasons for not taking e-subs, but they’re really ridiculous. We live in the 21st century, not 1925. It’s about time the publishing world caught on.
I watch my subscriber number fairly closely–an obsessive habit, for sure. So when I notice my subscriber numbers jumping up by quite a bit, I have to wonder who all these new people are. That’s where this post comes in. I know there are about sixty new readers out there, plus a whole bunch of others who have never commented here before. Now’s the time to come out of the woodworks! If you’re a fairly new subscriber, or someone that’s been around for a while, let me know in the comments who you are, where you discovered my blog (if you remember), what you like, or don’t like, etc. Just let me know you’re alive and tell me something about yourself. Don’t be shy. I don’t bite!
