SF/F Commentary

SF/F Commentary

Link of the Week: “The Problem of Toni Weisskopf” by Foz Meadows

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Foz Meadows has some things to say about a recent post by Toni Weisskopf on all the debates going on in sf right now.  It is what I’d call essentially reading at this point. Here’s one of my favorite parts: “…intentionally or not, Weisskopf has begun by framing both SFF itself and the current tensions within the community as being a purely American concern, grown from American politics and American culture. The fact that much of what she’s observing stems rather from a deliberate rejection of this attitude – from the idea that SFF is a global community – seems completely to have escaped her…But in the age of international blogging and social media platforms, where it’s possible to communicate daily with fans and authors from all over the world; where Tor Books is about to publish Liu Cixin’s The Three-Body Problem, the first Chinese SF novel ever translated into English; where Japanese anime and manga have so long been staples of global fandom that it’s impossible to try and deny their relevance; where award-winning authors like Nnedi Okorafor, Aliette de Bodard and Helen Oyeyemi are writing (among other things) about cross-cultural politics through an SFFnal lens; where there are whole conventions dedicated to diversity and inclusivity, like WisCon and Nine Worlds; and where many of the field’s best writers are anything but straight, white and male, then acting as though every conversation and argument surrounding these issues is simply the result of Americans misunderstanding each other is, to put it bluntly, utterly wrongheaded.” Go on.  Read the whole thing.

SF/F Commentary

Great SF/F Books by Female Authors: A Massive Twitter List! #sffbywomen

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Earlier today, I posted seven sf/f books by women worth checking out for International Women’s Day.  This led to a tweet asking folks online to list a single sf/f work by a woman that they think is exceptional.  Folks promptly ignored the “single” part and sent me a lot of suggestions.  You can add your own suggestions in the comments here or via the #sffbywomen tag on Twitter. In any case, if you’re looking for something new to read and care about gender parity, here’s a massive list of great works of sf/f by women (note:  the list may be edited later; I may send the question to Facebook and Google+ to make things interesting). Enjoy! Alexander, Alma. Midnight at Spanish Gardens Alexander, Alma. Secrets of Jin Shei Alexander, Alma. The Worldweaver Books Anderson, Laura S. The Boleyn King Andrews, Ilona. The Kate Daniels Series Aquirre, Ann. The Perdition and Sirantha Jax Series Arakawa, Hiromu. Full Metal Alchemist Armstrong, Kelley. The Cainsville Series Armstrong, Kelley. Women of the Otherworld Series Asaro, Catherine. The Last Hawk Atwood, Margaret. The Handmaid’s Tale Baker, Cage. The Company Novels Baker, Kage. The Anvil of the World Baker, Kage. The Garden of Iden Bear, Elizabeth. Carnival Bear, Elizabeth. Chill Bear, Elizabeth. Dust Bear, Elizabeth. Grail Bear, Elizabeth. Hammered Bear, Elizabeth. Range of Ghosts (and sequels) Bear, Elizabeth. Scardown Bear, Elizabeth. Undertow Bear, Elizabeth. Worldwired Bennett, Jenna. Fortune’s Hero Bernobich, Beth. Allegiance Bernobich, Beth. Passion Play Bernobich, Beth. Queen’s Hunt Bernobich, Beth. The Time Roads Beukes, Lauren. The Shining Girls Beukes, Lauren. Zoo City Bishop, Anne. Black Jewels Trilogy Bishop, Anne. Ephemera Series Bishop, Anne. The Others Series Bobet, Leah. Above Bodard, Aliette de. The Xuya Series Bond, Gwenda. Blackwood Bond, Gwenda. The Woken Gods Bradley, Marion Zimmer. The Avalon Series Bradley, Marion Zimmer. The Sword of Aldones Brennan, Marie. A Natural History of Dragons Brennan, Marie. Tropic of Serpents Briggs, Patricia. The Mercy Thompson Series Brook, Maljean. Heart of Steel Brook, Maljean. Riveted Brook, Maljean. The Iron Dukes Brown, Rosel George. Galactic Sibyl Sue Blue Bujold, Lois McMaster. Barrayar Bujold, Lois McMaster. Curse of Chalion Bujold, Lois McMaster. Komarr Bujold, Lois McMaster. Memory Bujold, Lois McMaster. Mirror Dance Bujold, Lois McMaster. Paladin of Souls Bujold, Lois McMaster. The Vorkosigan Saga Bujold, Lois McMaster. Warrior’s Apprentice Bull, Emma. War for the Oaks Butler, Octavia. Kindred Butler, Octavia. Parable of the Sower Butler, Octavia. Parable of the Talents Cadigan, Pat. Synners Caine, Rachel. The Weather Warden Series Carson, Rae. Girl of Fire and Thorns Series Cashore, Kristen. Bitterblue Cawkwell, Sarah. The Silver Skulls Books Cherryh, C.J. Downbelow Station Cherryh, C.J. Foreigner Cherryh, C.J. Fortress in the Eye of Time Cherryh, C.J. Pride of Chanur Chng, Joyce. Starfang Clarke, Susanna. Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell Cooper, Brenda. The Creative Fire Cooper, Brenda. The Diamond Deep Cooper, Elspeth. The Wild Hunt Series Cooper, Karina. Tarnished Cooper, Louise. The Indigo Series Cooper, Louise. The Time Master Trilogy Cooper, Susan. The Dark is Rising Sequence Czerneda, Julie. A Thousand Words for Stranger Czerneda, Julie. In the Company of Others Downum, Amanda. The Drowning City Elgin, Suzette Haden. Communipath Worlds Elgin, Suzette Haden. Native Tongue Elliot, Kate. Crown of Stars Elliott, Kate. Cold Magic Engh, M.J. Arslan Eskridge, Kelley. Solitaire Files, Gemma. A Book of Tongues Fisher, Sharon Lynn. Ghost Planet Flewelling, Lynn. Luck in the Shadows Forsyth, Kate. Bitter Greens Foster, M.A. The Morphodite Trilogy Frohock, Teresa. Miserere: An Autumn Tale Gentle, Mary. Golden Witchbreed. Goldstein, Lisa. A Mask for the General Goldstein, Lisa. Red Magician Goldstein, Lisa. Strange Devices of Sun and Moon Goldstein, Lisa. The Dream Years Goldstein, Lisa. Tourists Goldstein, Lisa. Uncertain Places Goodman, Alison. A New Kind of Death Graham, Ellen. Lana’s Awakening Grant, Mira. The Newsflesh Series Griffith, Nicola. Hild Hall, Sarah. The Carhullan Army Hambly, Barbara. Dragonsbane Hamilton, Laurell K. Bite Hamilton, Laurell K. Carvings Hamilton, Laurell K. Never After Hamilton, Laurell K. Strange Candy Hand, Elizabeth. Winterlong Hartman, Rachel. Seraphina Henderson, Zenna. Ingathering: the Complete People Stories Hobb, Robin. The Liveship Traders Trilogy Hopkinson, Nalo. Sister Mine Hopkinson, Nalo. The New Moon’s Arms Höst, Andrea K. The Touchstone Series Jemesin, N.K. The Broken Kingdoms Jensen, Liz. The Rapture Jensen, Liz. The Uninvited Jones, Diana Wynne. A Sudden Wild Magic Jones, Diana Wynne. Black Maria Jones, Diana Wynne. Conrad’s Fate Jones, Diana Wynne. Deep Secret Jones, Diana Wynne. Homeward Bounders Jones, Diana Wynne. Islands of Chaldea Jones, Diana Wynne. Magicians of Caprona Jones, Diana Wynne. Ogre Downstairs Jones, Diana Wynne. The Dalemark Quartet Jones, Diana Wynne. The Merlin Conspiracy Jones, Diana Wynne. Wilkins’ Tooth Jones, Diana Wynne. Year of the Griffin Kane, Stacia. The Personal Demons and Magic Series Kellog, Marjorie B. The Lear’s Daughters Series Kennedy, Leigh. Journal of Nicholas the American Kerr, Katherine. The Deverry Series Kiernan, Caitlin R. The Drowning Girl Kittredge, Caitlin. The Black London Series Kowal, Mary Robinette. Glamour in Glass Koyanagi, Jacqueline. Ascension Kress, Nancy. Probability Moon Kurtz, Katherine. The Deryni Series L’Engle, Madeleine. A Wrinkle in Time. Larke, Glenda. The Last Stormlord Le Guin, Ursula K. Lavinia Le Guin, Ursula K. The Dispossessed Le Guin, Ursula K. The Left Hand of Darkness Leckie, Ann. Ancillary Justice Lee, Yoon Ha. Conservation of Shadows Leicht, Stina. And Blue Skies From Pain Leicht, Stina. Of Blood and Honey Lindholm, Mega. Cloven Hooves Link, Kelly. Magic for Beginners Loenen-Ruis, Rochita. “Alternate Girl’s Expatriate Life” Lord, Karen. Redemption in Indigo Lord, Karen. The Best of All Possible Worlds Lowachee, Karin. Burndive Lowachee, Karin. Cagebird Lowachee, Karin. Warchild Lowe, Helen. Heir of Night Lynn, Elizabeth. The Northern Girl MacAvoy, R.A. Damiano MacAvoy, R.A. Damiano’s Lute MacAvoy, R.A. Raphael MacAvoy, R.A. Tea with the Black Dragon Marks, Laurie. Fire Logic Marley, Louise. The Terrorists of Irustan Marr, Melissa. Carnival of Souls Marshall, Helen. Hair Side, Flesh Side Matthews, Susan R. The Jurisdiction Series Maurier, Daphne du. The House on the Strand May, Han. Star Sapphire McCaffrey, Anne. The Dragonriders of Pern Series McCaffrey, Anne. The Ship Who Sang McGuire, Seanan. One Salt Sea McIntyre,

SF/F Commentary

7 SF/F Books by Female Authors to Pick Up on International Women’s Day

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If the title didn’t make it clear, today is International Women’s Day!  In celebration of that, here are seven wonderful books by female sf/f writers that I think you should check out, if not now, then certainly before the weekend ends.  Consider it homework…the fun kind… Here they are: The Female Man by Joanna Russ (1975) As the only classic on my list, Russ’ incredible feminist narrative is easily one of the most important sf/f books by anybody written in the 20th century.  The use of alternate realities to explore sexism is part of what makes this book truly a masterpiece.  If you haven’t read it, you really should.  It’s challenging, sometimes disturbing, sometimes confusing, but endlessly compelling. The Best of All Possible Worlds by Karen Lord (2013) There are two Caribbean authors on this list.  I’m biased because of my academic interests.  Regardless, Lord’s interesting exploration of extinction, genetics, relationships between disparate peoples, and future cultures is worth checking out if only because you’re a fan of social science fiction.  It’ll also amuse those of you who love fantasy, as there are certainly some “fantasy” elements here. For the curious, we interviewed Lord on The Skiffy and Fanty Show here. Sister Mine by Nalo Hopkinson (2013) Nalo Hopkinson is one of my favorite writers.  Her novel, Midnight Robber (2000), is easily one of the best novels of the last 20 years.  Sister Mine is nothing like Midnight Robber, but it does offer a fascinating look into the lives of a pair of formerly-conjoined twins, one of whom lost her magic when they were separated.  Orishas, magic, music, and a little punk attitude make this one of my favorite reads from 2013. I interviewed her about Sister Mine here. Conservation of Shadows by Yoon Ha Lee (2013) Lee is by far one of the greatest short story writers publishing today.  Conservation of Shadows is an incredible collection of stories.  They feel original, deep on a metaphorical level, and stunning in their visual brilliance.  I cannot begin to do the stories justice here.  So I’ll leave you with this:  kiteships.  If that doesn’t entice you, then I will just have to throw things until you read this book.  Go on, test me. Or you can check out this interview. The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes (2013) I’ve been a fan of Lauren Beukes since Zoo City (2010), which I think belongs on a “best of the 2010s” list.  The Shining Girls, however, is a very different kind of book.  Following a time traveling serial killer and one of his surviving victims (among other POVs), this book is a twisted narrative about survival, psychosis, and time.  If you’re a fan of Beukes’ work and missed this one, shame on you. We interviewed Beukes about The Shining Girls here. Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie (2013) To hell with the gender binary, amaright?  Leckie’s Ancillary Justice tosses old standards of sf out the window and explores a far future empire where gender pronouns are fluid and ships are manned by thousands of minds.  It’s one part gosh wow and two parts sf power.  Expect this one on the Hugo Awards ballot. We interviewed Leckie about Ancillary Justice here. The Testament of Jessie Lamb by Jane Rogers (2011) Rogers won the Clarke Award for this novel.  It was well deserved, too!  The Testament of Jessie Lamb may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but its aggressive treatment of a post-disaster future in which women die when they become pregnant is noteworthy.  The point of the book isn’t to agree with the narrator, but to understand her.  Fans of Joanna Russ should definitely check this one out. We interviewed Rogers about The Testament of Jessie Lamb here. ——————————– There you go.  Who would you add to the list?

SF/F Commentary

Movie Review: RoboCop (2014)

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So.  They remade RoboCop (1987).  And while I’ve been looking forward to it for months, it wasn’t until some of my friends said “it was surprisingly good” that I decided, “alright, I’ll see it in theaters.”  Unfortunately, my friends are liars (love you guys). If you’ve seen the original RoboCop, then you already know the basic story.  The 2014 reboot, directed by Jose Padilha, alters the original concept as follows:  in 2028, OmniCorp, a high-tech military contractor, has teamed up with the military to combat crime and terrorism abroad, using robotic enforcers.  OmniCorp’s CEO, Raymond Sellars (Michael Keaton), wants to bring this technology to the United States, but the public and Congress fear the absence of the human component.  In steps Alex Murphy (Joel Kinnaman), an overzealous Detroit police officer who is seriously injured in an assassination attempt after discovering dirty cops within the DPD.  In order to sway public opinion, OmniCorp repairs Murphy’s body to create RoboCop, a cyborg which will, we’re told, end crime for good.  Unfortunately (or fortunately), the human component almost always gets in the way… Honestly, that description is pretty crap.  Trying to explain what this movie is about without simply saying “a guy becomes a robot and fights crime; things don’t go according to plan” reveals a lot of what’s wrong with this film.  How do I describe the massive disappointment that is the remake of RoboCop?  I could say that this film is a testament to the fact that good things from the past are better off left alone.  We would have been better off receiving some kind of Final Director’s Cut version of the 1987 classic.  The studios could have given us a cool box set with documentary material and a remastered film — maybe they could have shoved an mp3 download for the soundtrack and a RoboCop figurine in there, too…or the box could have sung to us as if it were an advertisement for that spoof Robocop musical from Funny or Die.  Or maybe the box could have been a mini-RoboCop that actually walks to you when you call it.  All of these would have been better uses of the studio’s money. Alas, what we’ve been given here is little more than a sad, bloated, confused little “update” of a film.  Sure, the writers tried to add some more stuff about downloading data and memory overloads and other techno mumbo jumbo, but in the end, it’s just a mess of a film that wishes it could capture the feeling of the original. A mess.  That’s what I’m calling it.  RoboCop is not unlike the first Hobbit film in that it tries to do so many different things at the same time, but without any clear tie between them all.  In the first half hour of the movie, we’re presented with a satire of FOX News or Glenn Beck (seems like both), a commentary on the use of military drones and robots in the Middle East, questions about the use of said machines in the U.S., police corruption and rampant crime, a buddy-cop drama, the shock of prosthesis, what it means to be human, how memories are not easily controlled, human autonomy, and a whole bunch of other minor threads I won’t talk about here.  There’s so much going on in the beginning of this film that I’m left with a series of questions:  What exactly is this movie about?  Is it a commentary on drones?  Is it a commentary on the human condition through the use of cyborg tech?  Is it about the police?  Is it about corporate greed and the desperate push for technology?  Is it about human relationships?  WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS MOVIE ABOUT? I ask these questions because I think it’s obvious from the start that this film is about something.  It has a message or a point.  It wants us to follow that point to its logical conclusion and ask ourselves to consider the possibilities.  But the film asks so many fucking questions that I can’t fathom how we are supposed to go from Point A to Point B to Point C without jumping from Question #2 to Question #13154.  The end of the film seems to suggest that question we should have been asking is the one about corporate greed and human autonomy, with a side of human relationships, but the beginning of the film and the middle are all over the place, jumping from a narrative about politics to one about technology to one about the police to one about family relationships to one about X and Z and Y and Q.  There’s no narrative cohesion here.  RoboCop is a film that tries to do so much at once that it loses sight of what made the original so good:  it set up its major concerns right from the start and did its best to keep those in sight.  In the reboot, the main “issue” of the original (the idea of one’s memories clouding one’s programming) is saved until more than halfway through.  Sure, the original takes a while to get to that point too, but the reboot goes about it by showing us normal Murphy-as-RoboCop (combating all of his “I’m a robot” worries and family problems), reverting him to the RoboCop we remember from the original (the corporate greed is coming!), and then proceeding with the “but his memories will take over” bit.  It’s a mistake of order — too much back and forth. If the structure of the narrative doesn’t provide a sense of cohesion, then the tone of the film doesn’t help either.  RoboCop cannot decide if it’s a blistering satire or a serious thinking flick.  From the start, we’re presented with Samuel L. Jackson’s patently absurd Pat Novak, modeling himself, I assume, after FOX News and Glenn Beck.  Novak provides our introduction to OmniCorp’s involvement with the military, but all of that is funneled through an insanely biased mockery of cable news.  Unlike in the original, which was itself a withdrawn satire,

SF/F Commentary

Month of Joy Begins Now

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Given all the grumpiness in the sf/f community and the horrible stuff happening in Ukraine, I am taking the rest of the month off from anything annoying, fiasco-y, douche-y, and so on.  I’m also doing this to gain some perspective, particularly given that I have been part of some of the community-based debates and have begun questioning that involvement to some extent.  I feel like I need to refocus, to think about what I’m doing, why I’m doing it, how I feel about those things, and where I want to go. So for the rest of the month, I’m only going to write and discuss and read about things that make me happy.  You can expect the following: Book Reviews SFF Film Odyssey Reviews/Columns Random Discussions About Genre (I love books :P) Maybe some comics-related stuff Something else that is happy-ful Feel free to join me.

SF/F Commentary

Movie Review: Monsters (2010) (A SFF Film Odyssey Selection)

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I didn’t realize until pulling up the IMDB page for Monsters (2010) that its writer and director, Gareth Edwards, is also the director of the upcoming Godzilla (2014).  And that makes a ton of sense.  While Monsters is hardly Godzilla-ish in form, it does take what is a painfully small budget for a kaiju film (supposedly $500k) and put it to good use, providing a measured and sometimes look into humanity’s interaction with nature and with himself.  In short, where Cloverfield fell into all the wrong traps, Monsters simply avoids them in favor of what should have mattered in Abrams’ viral-media monstrosity:  the characters. The plot of Monsters is fairly straight forward.  Six years ago, enormous alien creatures arrived on Earth.  Everyone believes this is an invasion and quarantines the “infected zones” in hopes of keeping the aliens from taking more territory.  Jump ahead to the present:  a photojournalist in search of the perfect shot of the enormous creatures is forced by his boss to escort Samantha, the boss’ daughter, out of Mexico to the American border before the next cycle of aggression threatens the quarantine borders.  In their struggle to escape, Samantha and Andrew learn about one another’s past:  what they’re running from, what they’re running towards, and who they really are in a world that wants them to conform to contradictory identities. I’d like to take a moment to focus on the last line of my description, because I think one of the points of this film is to question the nature of the title.  What does it mean to be a monster?  One of the things I had expected from this film, particularly given the locale and the ways in which places south of the American border are typically portrayed, was a sea of humans doing horrifically violent things to one another.  In many respects, I think that was a narrative this needed, if not in a direct allegory about “the third world,” then certainly as a commentary on what desperation does to people.  But the film never goes there.  Instead, it opts for humans betraying one another on a relatively mundane level while the “monsters” are shown to be, as I expected, misunderstood.  It also tried to convey a message about the interaction of man and nature, particularly when a group of armed escorts tell Samantha and Andrew how these enormous aliens fit into the new ecosystem — they likewise convince us that we really don’t know what to think about the creatures; thus, we shouldn’t come to any hard conclusions on the matter.  When we finally see the creatures, that narrative is already apparent, and the film handles that revelatory moment with a deliberate minimalism:  the only ones who seem to have any significant dialogue are the aliens (albeit, it is animalistic and unintelligible to Samantha and Andrew, as well as to us). That said, I don’t think the narrative about humanity’s “monsters” is given the attention it deserves.  While Samantha and Andrew do get screwed over a number of times in this movie, the threat this poses always seems muted by the fact that there’s really no reason for Samantha and Andrew to enter the quarantine zone to escape when they could simply head south (maps in the film suggest this is a possibility).  The monstrosity of man, then, is hardly monstrous.  It is mundane and largely uninspired.  A corrupt ferry worker?  A thieving “prostitute”?  A thieving and corrupt armed transport system?  All here, and all are resolved with uncharacteristic simplicity (or sort of ignored).  In effect, the dread these situations should have produced never came to fruition.  This isn’t a terribly suspenseful film, even though it needs to be.  It’s a numbed film, one which opts for an almost extreme minimalism by the standards of the kaiju format that I think something really does get lost in the translation. Part of the flaw of the film’s minimalistic approach likewise limits the performances of the lead actors:  Scoot McNairy (Andrew) and Whitney Able (Samantha).  Overall, their performances are serviceable, but not as emotional as one might expect given a) the situations they’re in throughout the film (the verge of death), and b) the situations they were in before everything went to hell (Samantha and her broken relationship with her fiance; Andrew with his “I’m the father, but I can’t tell him because it would confuse him” scenario).  In a weird way, I thought I was watching an anime along the lines of, say, Makoto Shinkai, with minimal, limited performances (The Place Promised in Our Early Days, for example), but what differentiates Shinkai from Monsters is a kind of Hemingway-an iceberg effect, in which the larger plot concerns are made almost secondary to the internal conflicts of the characters and their struggle with how to express it; even with that minimalism, a film like The Place Promised in Our Early Days gives in to the necessity for emotional displays in scenarios where the internal explodes over the external. Monsters, however, contains so few of these bursting moments that the emotional connection to the world is sometimes lost.  Andrew has one incredibly tense scene in which he engages in a phone call with the boy we now know is his son (but who himself thinks Andrew is just a family friend); McNairy loses composure and struggles to keep his voice straight as his body and face contort in agony — the intensity of this scene is notable because it is so separate from the film’s previous performances.  Samantha has a similar moment at the sight of several dead bodies, including that of a young child.  But everywhere else, it’s as if these characters haven’t entered a certain kind of hell; they seem detached, but without a clear reason for it. Though I’ve largely criticized the film for many of its important aspects, I will say that in terms of the portrayal of characters over spectacle, Monsters succeeds.  These are characters, not caricatures.  They have real motivations

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