Link of the Week: Announcing Speculative Fiction 2014: Meet the Contributors!
As you may have heard, I am co-editing Speculative Fiction 2014 with my friend Renay. This morning, our publisher, The Book Smugglers, announced the list of contributors, which is so wickedly awesome that you just have to click this link and check it out. So there you go!
The Worldcon 2017 Site Selection Process: A Simple Step-by-Step Guide
Recently, one of my friends confided in me that she found the process for voting for the Worldcon site complicated to the point of being off-putting. So I decided to make a simplified template to follow for this year’s site selection process. For a far more detailed version, I strongly suggest you read Crystal Huff’s excellent post on the subject. I will update this page with when additional information (links, dates, etc.) becomes available. 1) Buy a Membership to Sasquan 2015 In order to vote for the 2017 Worldcon site, you must have a supporting or full membership to the 2015’s Worldcon. 2) Wait for the Site Selection Ballot to Be Announced The Sasquan 2015 Site Selection Ballot is currently available here. Follow the instructions on the document to vote, especially if you plan to mail in your ballot or submit it via email. Candidates are also listed on that document. 3) Pay Your Site Selection Ballot Fee The fee to vote is $40 and can be paid online via Sasquan’s Site Selection page (the payment system is NOW open!). You may also pay the fee at Sasquan or via Check or Money Order (in US funds) with your paper ballot (see address below). This fee automatically transfers into a supporting membership for the winning bid. The winning bidder may also extend additional deals for full memberships after the selection process is over. 4) Download the Print Ballot OR Go to the Site Selection Booth During Sasquan 2015 Worldcon does not currently allow electronic voting, so all ballots must be submitted at the 2015 convention OR by mail or email. The print ballot is available here (as noted above). 5) Submit Your Ballot If you are not attending Sasquan 2015, then you must print, fill in, and mail your ballot to the address provided by the deadline OR email your ballot to ballot2017siteselection@sasquan.org (for those who pay their fee online). To mail your ballot, send it to the follow address: Worldcon 2017 Site Selection c/o Joni Brill Dashoff PO Box 425 Huntingdon Valley, PA 19006-0425 U.S.A. All mailed and emailed ballots must reach the site selection crew no later than August 10th, 2015 at 24:00 PDT. Send it well in advance if you are concerned about delays. That’s it. Pretty easy, right?
On the Raging Child of Science Fiction Neo-Snobbery
On a foundational level, the most visible element of SF awards discussions concern subjective assertions about literary quality. I have participated in some of these discussions over the years, podcasting about nominees I disliked for whatever reason and otherwise raging against what I perceived as the absence of taste within certain award-giving communities (mostly the Hugos). The further away from those first instances I become, however, the more I realize how foolish these discussions really are. Why rage against a difference in literary tastes? I can no more tell someone what they should like than they can me. At best, I can make a case for what I consider to be “good,” but even then, the most effective arguments are those that explain why a text is interesting, not why it is qualitatively better, since the latter is, for the most part, impossible. What we consider “of quality” could make for a very confusing, intersecting Venn diagram.
Retro Nostalgia: Equilibrium (2002) and the Paradox of Emotion
If you blinked back in 2002, you might have missed this lesser known Christian Bale vehicle featuring stylish gun kata and deliberate and sometimes excessive homages to George Orwell’s 1984 (particularly the 1984 adaptation starring John Hurt). Indeed, one could describe Kurt Wimmer’s Equilibrium as Orwell on drugs. Here, Orwellian propaganda is apparent in the frequent appearance of Father (Sean Pertwee) “teaching” the masses about the dangers of “feeling” and the need to relinquish that human quality for a stable society. The gesture is reinforced from the start by a veritable lecture, rife with images of human violence, in which Father reminds us that the people of this future have barely survived World War Three, and that humanity cannot survive another such war. We must not feel if the world is to survive, it seems; and so we must voluntarily purge emotion by taking injections of Prozium. On one level, this is hardly an irrational prospect, it would seem. Once we realize how this system operates, however, it’s clear that we’re no longer dealing with a voluntary system where we all sacrifice for the preservation of the whole: this future is maintained by a brutal police force which kills “sense-offenders” and burns anything from humanity’s past — ironically, they are called Clerics. It is the Orwellian and Bradburian “gamble” and fascistic “justice” married together. That nobody notices the contradiction suggests that Prozium is more than a mere mood inhibitor — something the film doesn’t quite explore. As such, the overarching narrative is a deliberate façade: not only is the prospect of removing emotion via injection simply absurd, but it is also definitively false. As to be expected, those who control the system are not immune to emotional outburst. Dupont (Angus Macfadyen), the voice of Father, doesn’t bother hiding his emotions, frequently raising his voice and emoting in obvious fashion. That he turns out to be Father in the end — and a hypocrite who does not take Prozium himself — reinforces the emotive nature of Father, who at no point appears to be a totally non-feeling being; it likewise reinforces the underlying contradictions of the world. As Derrida might say: the true rogue State is the one which defines the rogue by rules that it does not follow itself. Other characters offer similar reinforcement, such as Cleric Brandt (Taye Diggs) who smirks, smiles, and nearly laughs on a number of occasions. Indeed, it’s a wonder he was not burned to ashes much sooner in the film given how often he emotes. Though these elements may be flaws on the part of the director, I think they also reveal a more sinister form of dystopian control at the heart of Equilibrium. As becomes apparent by the conclusion of the film, humanity cannot help but feel because it is necessarily a desiring “machine.” For John Preston (Christian Bale) to choose to cease his doses of Prozium, he must desire the activity. To father children, he must desire it. For this society to function, it must function on some level by the desire of those within it. Prozium is just the smoke screen through which an ideology of absurdist non-emotion can be reinforced. What makes the future of Equilibrium so troubling is not that humanity has been forced to give up part of what makes us “human,” but that humanity has been tricked into believing that this is possible and desirable, whether by force or by coercion. Additionally, the film’s apparent contradictions add to the sinister nature of the world as a whole. If Father is a “sense-offender” like everyone else, then what is on the surface a binary of non-feelers vs. sense-offenders proves to be a more complicated triangle in which the non-feelers (mythic though they technically are) are mere pawns in a brutal game of violent oppression. Equilibrium is a film about control of the human self, yes, but it is more accurately a film about controlling knowledge and expression. Ultimately, emotion is just the avenue through which the powers-that-be justify the right to control what is otherwise uncontrollable, and to do so in such a way that emotion is necessarily implicated in everyday action. This society isn’t a non-feeling society; it is a contemptuous society which purports to have given up its emotions while actively desiring the suppression of what many would argue is naturally human. Though a flawed film, Equilibrium should make us pause and consider how emotion can be mobilized as a mechanism of control. And it should make us wonder if that action is any less disconcerting or immoral than a purely open-faced fascistic enterprise. —————————- This post was selected by voters on my Patreon page. To get your own voice heard, become a patron! $1 gets you voting rights.
Space Opera and Epic Fantasy: Two Trees Sharing a Root System (and Then Becoming Two Big Nasty Trees That Eat Other Trees, or Something)
Last month, Paul Weimer suggested I write about the connections between epic fantasy and space opera. Initially, I didn’t know how to approach the topic. Paul, you see, is far better read than myself, particularly in the literary history of science fiction and fantasy. What could I say about the topic that Paul couldn’t say better? Well, I’m going to take a stab at it! There was also another problem: which period of these two genres are we talking about? If we’re looking at the early years of space opera and epic fantasy, then the connection is apparent, but diffuse. Both epic fantasy (what might have been better termed as heroic fantasy in its “root” period) and space opera in the first half of the 20th century shared roots with the adventure fictions that preceded them. Space opera arose, more or less, out of the planetary romances of writers like Edgar Rice Burroughs, proto-space opera writers like E.E. “Doc” Smith (though some might disagree with that assessment) and late-19th century “future war fiction” (see I.F. Clarke; I would argue that space opera gets its political undercurrents from this movement).[1] Both forms (space opera and planetary romance) are hard to distinguish,[2] since they often share in the same melodrama, with “space opera” typically playing within a much wider canvas (though not always), and both forms share a common root in the late 19th century adventure stories and the pulps that followed. Epic fantasy, too, can be traced back to 19th century adventure stories, and early forms of epic fantasy (probably just called fantasy or heroic fantasy and certainly bearing little resemblance to contemporary epic fantasy today) were not unlike early forms of space opera: melodramatic adventures set in exotic locales, grandiose in scale. and featuring one or more heroes at center stage. Tolkien is the obvious modern “father” of epic fantasy, but even The Lord of the Rings was preceded by heroic fantasy writers such as Robert E. Howard, Evangeline Walton and Eric Rücker Eddison or other fantastists such as Richard Wagner, George MacDonald, etc. — anyone with a passing familiarity with these writers can see the connections. Epic fantasy, of course, diverges quite a bit from space opera: its heroes are mostly pitted against some variation of absolute evil; the world or “world as we know it” is usually at stake, rather than galactic civilizations; magic serves as the operative “speculative” element rather than science; and the conversation an epic fantasy has with its time is less pronounced or more abstracted (having come from a genre whose speculations are not rooted in the real). These are simplistic explanations, of course. If you want to know the full history of either field — science fiction or fantasy — you need to read a few books on the subject, and that’s certainly true of me, since fantasy is not my academic field. Regardless, even if we start from such fundamentals as the roots, it becomes clear that though the genres start from very similar places (divergent in parts, of course), their paths to the present were drastically different. Space opera began to move away from its planetary romance roots by the time the Golden Age rolled around, embroiling its future narratives in complicated allegories of contemporary politics and economics and developing grandiose “universes” in which larger questions about humanity and its culture could be asked and sometimes answered. This is not to suggest that space opera discarded the melodramatic space adventures of its roots. Rather, space opera gained three faces best exemplified by Star Wars (1977; dir. George Lucas), Star Trek (1966-1969; created by Gene Roddenberry), and 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968; dir. Stanley Kubrick): it became the high-flying epic adventure of its roots (similar in style to early epic fantasy), the wide-canvas exploration of human ingenuity and identity, and the philosophical interrogation of the human self. Epic fantasy, however, didn’t begin to transcend its generic roots until the last 20 years or so; it has, for so long, been mired in repetition, imitation, and simplified heroic tropes, even as writers within epic fantasy have tried to push against such things. We can point to exceptions, of course, but one would be hard pressed to argue that the face of epic fantasy has been anything but writers struggling to swim out of the wake of Tolkien for much the 20th century. Now, I think epic fantasy is experiencing a resurgence of what might be called “critical engagement,” not as “exceptions” but as the “face.” From Kameron Hurley’s The Mirror Empire (2014) to Joe Abercrombie’s grimdark First Law trilogy (2009-2012) and on and on and on, epic fantasy (and fantasy in general) appears to be having a new Golden Age (much like space opera has had with the New Space Opera movement), brought on by decades of slow, deliberate pushes against the Tolkien model — not because Tolkien’s model is bad, but because it is so often repeated to lesser effect. I hope this is a real trend and not some figment of my imagination. Science fiction and fantasy are my great literary loves, but I think it’s the perception of fantasy as the “less serious” genre which has left it out of academic conversations, except in those rare cases where one must talk about a fantasy without talking about it being a fantasy. I’ve certainly seen things changing within academia overall, though science fiction still remains the critical focus. But if I’m right that fantasy is pushing back against its roots, not to “diss” those roots, but to advance the genre as a whole towards more original (or at least less derivative) narrative practices, then fantasy will become as much a part of the academic discussion as science fiction. For me, that’s a good thing, because it makes talking about fantasy less like talking with a push and more like having a conversation with a forest. Of course, I could be very very wrong here. If so, please put forth your own argument in the comments! —————————————————
My Complete 2015 Hugo Awards Nominations Ballot (Finished on 3/10/15)
It’s that time again. Hugo Awards time. Since the nomination period closes on March 10th, 2015, I figure it’s time to start sharing my ballot with the world. Note: this list is extremely incomplete and will be periodically updated as I find things to add to unfilled categories. Categories are also subject to change. If you have suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments (seriously; I’m very scatterbrained at the moment, so I’m missing all kinds of things). Here goes: Best Novel (Just Let Me Nominate 12 Novels…) City of Stairs by Robert Jackson Bennett Ancillary Sword by Ann Leckie Memory of Water by Emmi Itaranta Breach Zone by Myke Cole The Mirror Empire by Kameron Hurley Best Novella Scale Bright by Benjanun Sriduangkaew (Immersion Press) Grand Jeté (The Great Leap) by Rachel Swirsky (Subterranean Press) Where the Trains Turn by Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen (Tor.com) The Mothers of Voorhisville by Mary Rickert (Tor.com) Hath No Fury by Kat Howard (Subterranean Press) Best Novelette “From the Nothing, With Love” by Project Itoh (Phantasm Japan) “The End of the End of Everything” by Dale Bailey (Tor.com) “Among the Thorns” by Veronica Schanoes (Tor.com) “Reborn” by Ken Liu (Tor.com) “The Bonedrake’s Penance” by Yoon Ha Lee (Beneath Ceaseless Skies) Under consideration: “Three Partitions” by Bogi Takács (Giganotosaurus) Best Short Story “A Whisper in the Weld” by Alix E. Harrow (Shimmerzine) “Autodidact” by Benjanun Sriduangkaew (Clarkesworld) “A Stretch of Highway Two Lanes Wide” by Sarah Pinsker (F&SF) “The Vaporization Enthalpy of a Peculiar Pakistani Family” by Usman T. Malik (Qualia Nous) “Makeisha in Time” by Rachael K. Jones (Crossed Genres) Under consideration: “Never the Same” by Polenth Blake (Strange Horizons) “Resurrection Points” by Usman T. Malik (Strange Horizons) Best Related Work Jodorovsky’s Dune (dir. Frank Pavich) Special Needs in Strange Worlds (SF Signal; ed. Sarah Chorn) Speculative Fiction 2013 (Ana Grilo and Thea James) Rocket Talk (Justin Landon; Tor.com) Best Graphic Story Ms. Marvel Vol. 1: No Normal (G. Willow Wilson and Adrian Alphona) The Wake (Scott Snyder and Sean Murphy) Saga Vol. 3 (Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples) Saga Vol. 4 (Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples) Uncanny X-Men: The Good, the Bad, the Inhuman (Brian Michael Bendis, Chris Bachalo, and Kristafer Anka) Best Dramatic Presentation (Long Form) Interstellar (dir. Christopher Nolan) Snowpiercer (dir. Bong Joon-ho) Edge of Tomorrow (dir. Doug Liman) Big Hero 6 (dirs. Don Hall and Chris Williams) Guardians of the Galaxy (dir. James Gunn) Reconsidering: Captain America: The Winter Soldier (dirs. Anthony and Joe Russo) Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form) “Tempest Fugit” from Sleepy Hollow (Season One)(written by Mark Goffman; dir. Paul Edwards) “Turn, Turn, Turn” from Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (Season One)(written by Jed Whedon and Maurissa Tancharoen; dir. Vincent Misiano) “The Watchers on the Wall” from Game of Thrones (Season Four)(written by David Benioff and D.B. Weiss; dir. Neil Marshall) “The Children” from Game of Thrones (Season Four)(written by David Benioff and D.B. Weiss; dir. Alex Graves) “The Last Stand” from Legend of Korra (Season Four)(written by Michael Dante Dimartino; dir. Melchior Zwyer) Best Editor (Long Form) Anne Perry (Hodder & Stoughton) Jenni Hill (Orbit UK) Lee Harris (Angry Robot Books) Amanda Rutter (Strange Chemistry and Angry Robot Books) Julian Pavia (Crown/Broadway) Best Editor (Short Form) Neil Clarke (Clarkesworld) Andy Cox (Interzone) Julia Rios (Strange Horizons and Kaleidoscope) Alisa Krasnostein (Kaleidoscope) Ellen Datlow (Tor.com) Best Professional Artist Victo Ngai Stephen Martiniere Abigail Larson Kekai Kotaki Kentaro Kanamoto Under consideration: Sam Burley, Richard Anderson, Galen Dara, and Noah Bradley. Best Semiprozine The Book Smugglers (Ana Grilo and Thea James) Interzone (ed. Andy Cox) Strange Horizons (ed. by a legion) Giganotosaurus (ed. Rashida J. Smith) Crossed Genres (eds. Bart R. Leib, Kay T. Holt, and Kelly Jennings) Best Fanzine A Dribble of Ink (Aidan Moher) Nerds of a Feather, Flock Together (TheG and Vance Kotlra) Bookworm Blues (Sarah Chorn) Ecdysis (Jonathan Crowe) Lady Business (Renay, Ana, and Jodie) Under Consideration: SFF Mistressworks (Ian Sales) Best Fancast Doorway to the Hidden World (Jeffrey Pelton, who is totally not Kevin Lux) The Incomparable (Jason Snell) The Book Was Better (???) The Writer and the Critic (Kirstyn McDermott and Ian Mond) Best Fan Writer Sarah Chorn Paul Weimer Foz Meadows Abigail Nussbaum Natalie Luhrs Best Fan Artist Alice X. Zhang (OMG YES) Finnian MacManus (OMG YES) euclase (some of the best still lifes ever) Evankart (loving the Winter Soldier work) Sandara (more beautiful art; should be making book covers) The John W. Campbell (YES IT IS A FUCKING HUGO SHUT UP) Award S.L. Huang (author of Zero Sum Game) Benjanun Sriduangkaew (author of Scale Bright) Usman Malik (author of “Resurrection Points”) Brian McClellan (author of the Powder Mage Trilogy) Michael J. Martinez (author of The Enceladus Crisis) ——————————— Disclaimer (because we need these now, given the current Hugo Awards climate): This list reflects what I think are worthy works. It is not intended for any sort of logrolling. It is not my effort to tell anyone “this is what you should vote for.” Vote for whatever the hell you want. My only hope with this list is that it introduces some folks to things they might otherwise have missed (or that it will reveal gaps in my reading/viewing that need filling).