SF/F Commentary

SF/F Commentary, Star Wars

Struggles in Heroism: On the (New) Star Wars Expanded Universe

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It’s probably not a big secret that I have had “issues” with Star Wars in its Disney years. There are a lot of things I love about the direction things are going — a more diverse cast, the emphasis on big sprawling adventure, etc. — but there are also problems I have with the cohesion of the stories, the structure of the narratives, Disney’s treatment of character, etc. Yet, it’s still Star Wars, and even when it’s not quite on the mark, it’s still enormously fun. However, there’s something a tad “off” for me about Star Wars, especially the new Expanded Universe. Recently, I’ve been listening to several audiobooks of new Star Wars novels — Chuck Wendig’s Aftermath and Rebecca Roanhorse’s Resistance Reborn — and it got me thinking a lot about some of the things that have made the Disney era so difficult for me as a Star Wars fan. To be clear: I have zero intention of bashing Star Wars here; rather, I want to talk a bit about what I have found less enticing about this new era while still keeping my love for this franchise.

SF/F Commentary

Pondering the Editors Behind Our Fiction

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Yesterday, I received an advanced copy of Subterranean Press’ new anthology, Edited By. The book collects notable works of short fiction that have been, well, edited by Ellen Datlow, one of the most notable short fiction editors in the world of SF/F/H. It’s a beefy book full of stories by some incredible writers, including Elizabeth Bear, Ted Chiang, Nalo Hopkinson, Kelly Link, and many others. Part of what interests me about this book is the concept behind it and the way it highlights the weird imbalance of awareness about editors in publishing. It is comparatively easy to collect work edited by one short fiction editor than it is to do the same for novel editors. Short fiction editors also seem, in my opinion, much more visible, perhaps because they work with so many authors at a time (a benefit of the short format) than their novel-editing peers.[efn_note]I’m aware that some editors work in both lengths.[/efn_note] This makes it rather easy for us to recognize the work editors do even if we don’t actually know what it is that they do.

SF/F Commentary

Snakes in SF/F/H (Or, Drumming Up Fear from Ignorance)

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As someone who keeps reptiles and still occasionally searches for them in the wild, very few things annoy me more than the way genre films treat snakes.[efn_note]In actuality, I really hate the treatment of most reptiles in genre, but snakes get it worse than most. They used bearded dragons (the inland or central subspecies, Pogona vitticeps) in Holes (2003) even though they’re not from the United States and don’t fan out their heads like some kind of Jurassic Park monster, and there was a recent film called Crawl (2019) set in Florida that was wildly confused about both the way alligators behave and the relationship Floridians have to the creatures. It’s really frustrating, y’all.[/efn_note] In fact, one of my biggest rants on Torture Cinema concerned the sea snake inaccuracies in Sphere (1998). To this day, I find it difficult to watch films which feature snakes of any kind because almost all of them get nearly everything wrong and most of them use snakes as plot devices for fear.[efn_note]All of my examples will be from films. However, I’m sure some of the problems I discuss in this post apply to literature, though probably to a lesser degree because a lot of novel writers are weirdly obsessed about research. :P[/efn_note] There are a lot of problems with the way snakes are portrayed in SF/F/H, especially film. The biggest, however, can be summed up in these three points:

SF/F Commentary

The Space Opera Project Continues!

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Some of you may recall that I began a database project last year containing space opera novels by women. To date, the list includes nearly 700 novels in the space opera genre.[efn_note]There is also a sheet for planetary romances, though I am not currently soliciting suggestions for that list. Eventually, though… :D[/efn_note] This has come through a combination of my own knowledge and the knowledge of the science fiction community, who have suggested numerous works for inclusion via this form. The goal for this project is two-fold:

SF/F Commentary

On Space Opera: The Heart of Genre, Forgotten by Scholars

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A few years ago, I taught an upper division literature course on American space opera. There were a couple reasons I chose that angle over many other possible science fiction topics I could have taught: It gave me an excuse to teach Ann Leckie, Tobias S. Buckell, and Star Wars. The course was marked as “American literature,” so I had to stick with U.S.-American writers. I snuck some other stuff in, though. It was a subject that I particularly loved (but, as I discovered, which scholars had largely ignored up to that point). It’s that last piece I will talk about here.

SF/F Commentary

Worldcon 2019 (Dublin): An Accounting of Events with a Side of Bacon!

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I am on my way home from Dublin OR have already arrived. Like science fiction, my future is fundamentally about the present. Naturally, that means Worldcon has ended along with my sadly short vacation in Dublin, Ireland, a quaint little city… Oh, who the hell am I kidding? Dublin is really cool, y’all. And since “recaps of adventures” are a thing in the science fiction community, I’m here to, well, recap my adventures. This one will be a long one, y’all. So here…we…go! The Dublin Worldcon was a bit like a dream. I pre-supported (or whatever it’s called) fairly early in the game AND bought an upgrade for my badge at the Worldcon in Finland (2017). I really wanted to go to a Worldcon in Dublin. More importantly, I wanted to support strong bids for non-U.S. Worldcons because, well, I actually take the “world” part of the name literally, and I don’t think you can have a “Worldcon” that doesn’t make an attempt to occur in various parts of the world.

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