Haul of Books 2010: Stuff For Me v.2
Time for another edition of the Haul of Books. Since I’m playing catchup for 2010, a lot of these are either old news for me, or just things I forgot to talk about in the last few weeks that I very well should have. This batch is a mixture of stuff I bought, stuff I snagged at the conference I recently attended, and stuff that I’m either subscribed to or that came in the mail for whatever reason. Here goes:Here’s some brief descriptions of the images in the picture, moving from left to right, top to bottom. 1. SFRA Review, Winter 2010, #291 (subscribed) The SFRA Review is available to all members of the Science Fiction Research Association. This particular issue contains a pretty interesting, though sadly brief, article on the New Weird movement (it’ll be useful to me, since I’m writing a paper on that very topic). Other elements include professional book and movie reviews for all kinds of things, such as Scott Westerfeld’s Leviathan and the movies 9, Zombieland, and loads of others. Obviously it’s a little dated now, but it’s still a very interesting little magazine. 2. The Journal of American Culture, March 2010, Vol. 33:1 (subscribed) This is the first issue I have received from them. It contains several academic articles on everything from county fairs to the emergence of outdoor grilling in postwar America, and other things (this was a special themed issue on parties and celebrations in American culture, so the articles clearly lean towards that). There are also a number of book reviews, two essays on media education and American politics, and a lot of interesting stuff to look forward to. Apparently Abe Lincoln is making a come back this year; there are a few books dedicated specifically to honest Abe in this issue. 3. Bull Spec, Issue One (bought online) I’m going to send you to their website for a description. The table of contents looks interesting, and hopefully I’ll get a chance to read this soon. 4. The Journal of Popular Culture, February 2010, Vol. 43, #1 (subscribed) Another first for me. The articles here are a little more up my alley than those in the American Culture journal above. The articles range from British opera to the film Salem’s Lot to Japanese dolls on Western toy shelves. I’ll definitely read the Salem’s Lot essay soon. Book reviews are, as usual for academic publications such as this, in copious supply, and there are some interesting titles on film noir, Alan Moore, and Japanese horror cinema. Looking forward to this one for sure! 5. Science Fiction Studies, March 2010, Vol. 37, Part One, #110 (subscribed) I’ve seen SFS before, but this is the first time I’ve ever been subscribed. I don’t think I’ll ever go without it again. As an emerging science fiction scholar, it seems stupid that I have gone so long without this fascinating academic journal filling my mail box. This particular issue has a section devoted to science fiction and history (apparently as a result of the 2009 SFS Symposium), book reviews for a number of non-fiction books on various aspects of science fiction (pretty much all of them critical works, with the exception of The Routledge Companion to SF, which I suspect is less critical than everything else on the list). The essays seem heavily focused on cyberpunk and issues of selfhood in tech-oriented hacker culture and cyberspace. I’ve always wanted to spend time looking into cyberpunk, but the problem with that particular genre is that it has either already been mined for ideas, or it has, as a distinct genre, more or less died out in American literary circles (we still read it and elements appear elsewhere, but there are few American cyberpunk writers doing anything of note in that genre). Cyberpunk is still big in the Eastern European bloc, though. Another goodie for my academic brain! 6. FemSpec, 2002, Vol. 3, Issue 2 (bought at the PCA/ACA conference) I’m new to FemSpec. I’ve known about it for a while, but I didn’t know what kind of journal it was until the PCA/ACA conference. This issue contains fiction from Tananarive Due (who I absolutely love; read “Like Daughter”), and articles on everything from Planet of the Apes, the Empresss of China, utopian impulses in Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents, and even an article by Darko Suvin, who is, if you don’t know, one of the foremost science fiction scholars still breathing. I may subscribe to this journal. It seems like one that I need to have filling my academic coffers… 7. The 40th Annual PCA/ACA Conference Program Book (received at the conference) Not much to say about this one. You can’t buy it anywhere. It contains all of the programming for the entire conference, along with contact information for pretty much everyone that was there (it’s a long list) and other nifty information (there are some advertisements in there too, and contact information for professional purposes). There you go. Did you get anything interesting this week? Let me know in the comments!
International SF/F: Does it get an out from the “cliche” argument?
I’ve been meaning to talk about this subject for a while, and it is result of an experience I had a few weeks ago when the fine folks over at Tor sent me Alexey Pehov’s Shadow Prowler. I am, by all accounts, somewhat more critical of fantasy for its lack of originality than I am of other genres. It’s not an unusual position to take, since so many arguments launched against various fantasy titles typically include terms like “derivative” or “Tolkien-esque” and so on. The genre is saturated with familiar tropes. But, as I’ve argued many times before, a good writer can take a fairly cliche idea and make it good. Additionally, Sometimes the way a book presents itself (i.e. via the cover and the cover synopsis) can alleviate a lot of the knee-jerk reactions readers may have when they discover a new fantasy title. It is this reaction that I want to talk about here.When I received Shadow Prowler in the mail, I was immediately pleased by the cover (see above), which led me straight to the text on the cover jacket. That is where the problems started. The description of Pehov’s story is, to put it mildly, about as cliche as it gets. Read for yourself: After centuries of calm, the Nameless One is stirring. An army is gathering; thousands of giants, ogres, and other creatures are joining forces from all across the Desolate Lands, united, for the first time in history, under one, black banner. By the spring, or perhaps sooner, the Nameless One and his forces will be at the walls of the great city of Avendoom. Unless Shadow Harold, master thief, can find some way to stop them.Epic fantasy at its best, Shadow Prowler is the first in a trilogy that follows Shadow Harold on his quest for a magic Horn that will restore peace to the Kingdom of Siala. Harold will be accompanied on his quest by an Elfin princess, Miralissa, her elfin escort, and ten Wild Hearts, the most experienced and dangerous fighters in their world…and by the king’s court jester (who may be more than he seems…or less). Great. Another novel about some Nameless One with elfin princesses and a city so cleverly called Avendoom (ha ha ha, get it, Avendoom…and the city is threatened by the Nameless One). But then I read this and my reaction changed: Reminiscent of Moorcock’s Elric series, Shadow Prowler is the first work to be published in English by the bestselling Russian fantasy author Alexey Pehov. The book was translated by Andrew Bromfield, best known for his work on the highly successful Night Watch series. Something about the explanation of the texts’ origins caused me to pause. A Russian fantasy epic originally published in Russian? A link to another fantastic series by another Russian SF/F great? Suddenly I was interesting and a little inner dialogue shot off in my head: Me: Oh, well, he’s a Russian author writing fantasy. That’s interesting.My Head: So?Me: So, I want to read it.My Head: But a minute ago you rolled your eyes and sighed because it sounded too cliche.Me: Yeah, but that was before I knew he was Russian.My Head: So, if you’re Russian, you can get away with it?Me: Apparently.My Head: You realize how stupid that sounds, right?Me: Quiet, you. You’re just my head talking. While the dialogue didn’t proceed exactly as described above, it does provide a basis for the complete turnaround I had when I discovered the novel’s origins: translated from Russian. I even gawked at my own idiocy. Why was I suddenly okay with a novel that sounds horribly cliched? Why did the fact that it is an international book change my mind? Stranger yet is the fact that I am/was fully aware of the long tradition of genre fiction in Russian history, dating back centuries. But, there I was, suddenly excited about a novel that only moments before I was about to toss onto my “likely will never read because it’s too cliche” pile. Maybe it’s a good thing, though. Maybe more reactions like this should happen so that novels like Shadow Prowler don’t get lost in the sea of English-based fantasy titles loaded with just as many cliches. Something about that makes me feel strange, though. To end this, I have a few questions:–Does international SF/F get an out from the “cliche” argument simply because it is international? (apply this to any international SF/F, not just Russian)–Is it a good thing that one can go from being annoyed to being excited about a book due entirely to the discovery of its international origins? I feel uneasy saying yes to the first question, simply because of the stages many developing or developed nations go through in terms of genre fiction (you can, largely speaking, trace the same general literary developments in science fiction in just about every nation, with some exceptions). And, I feel uneasy saying no to the last question, because excitement for any text is a good thing; if my interest in this text leads me to read it and, perhaps, love it, it might engender a willingness to open my mind to more fiction in this particular vein and more fiction from international venues (which I’m already fairly open to, though I don’t go out of my way to find the stuff, with exception to Caribbean SF–more on that some other time). What do you think? Am I insane? Has this ever happened to you?
Shared Worlds Teams Up With Science Fiction and Fantasy Greats!
Matt Staggs recently sent me this via email: Sci Fi and Fantasy’s Best Writers Join Forces with Shared Worlds Writing Camp for Bestiary of Strange Beasts! Here there be monsters! And beasts! And fantastical creatures. The faculty of Shared Worlds creative writing camp has called on some of speculative fiction’s most compelling storytellers to chase down and gather up all manner of wondrous beasts, and you can examine them all here. Featuring contributions from: Elizabeth Bear, Michael Bishop, Tobias Buckell, Jesse Bullington, Gail Carringer, Cory Doctorow, Steven R. Erikson & Ian C. Esslemont, Ed Greenwood, Daryl Gregory, Lev Grossman, Elizabeth Hand, Will Hindmarch, Kathe Koja, Nancy Kress, Jay Lake, Jeff LaSala, James Morrow, Nnedi Okorafor, James O’Neal, Robert V. S. Redick, Ekaterina Sedia, Paul G. Tremblay, Marly Youmans and Zoran Zivkovic. Shared Worlds is a summer think tank at Wofford College for teenagers who have an interest in fantasy and science fiction literature. For two weeks, students create imaginary worlds and write fiction under the guidance of writers and professors. As part of the program, this year’s students will illustrate the fantastic beasts in our bestiary, so be sure to return at the end of the summer to see what they’ve done! Instructors for 2010 will include Spiderwick Chronicles creator Holly Black, critically acclaimed YA and adult authors Kathe Koja and Marly Youmans, Nebula Award winner Michael Bishop, writer and gaming expert Will Hindmarch, and World Fantasy Award winner Jeff VanderMeer. Artist Scott Eagle will also conduct a workshop during the camp. Register online today! Jeff VanderMeer talks a little more about it here. Talk about an impressive list of people! The teens who get to go to this thing are lucky bastards indeed. Where’s Shared Worlds For Old People when you need it? This will definitely be one of the biggest events of the year.
Haul of Books 2010: Stuff For Me v.1
I’m rebooting the Haul of Books feature to show you all what I’ve been buying or getting in the mail (for review or otherwise). My hope is that you’ll at least find some interesting new reads to add to your own collection. Since I’m rebooting this, I am also changing the format. I’d appreciate comments on the format, if you can spare the minute or two to scribble something down at the bottom of this post. If you don’t like it or have suggestions, let me know! So, without further ado, here is the first of my Haul of Books posts for 2010:These books should seem familiar, because I talked about them very briefly here. I bought all of these (and a couple others to come later) at the Popular Culture and American Culture Association Conference in St. Louis earlier this month. Back cover information about the books, in order from left to right, top to bottom, follows (taken from Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk): 1. Cyberculture, Cyborgs and Science Fiction: Consciousness and the Posthuman by William S. Haney II Addressing a key issue related to human nature, this book argues that the first-person experience of pure consciousness may soon be under threat from posthuman biotechnology. In exploiting the mind’s capacity for instrumental behavior, posthumanists seek to extend human experience by physically projecting the mind outward through the continuity of thought and the material world, as through telepresence and other forms of prosthetic enhancements. Posthumanism envisions a biology/machine symbiosis that will promote this extension, arguably at the expense of the natural tendency of the mind to move toward pure consciousness. As each chapter of this book contends, by forcibly overextending and thus jeopardizing the neurophysiology of consciousness, the posthuman condition could in the long term undermine human nature, defined as the effortless capacity for transcending the mind’s conceptual content. Presented here for the first time, the essential argument of this book is more than a warning; it gives a direction: far better to practice patience and develop pure consciousness and evolve into a higher human being than to fall prey to the Faustian temptations of biotechnological power. As argued throughout the book, each person must choose for him or herself between the technological extension of physical experience through mind, body and world on the one hand, and the natural powers of human consciousness on the other as a means to realize their ultimate vision. 2. Red Planets: Marxism and Science Fiction edited by Mark Bould and China Mieville Science fiction and socialism have always had a close relationship. Many of novelists and filmmakers are leftists. Others examine explicit or implicit Marxist concerns. As a genre, if is ideally suited to critiquing the present through its explorations of the social and political possibilities of the future. This is the first collection to combine analysis of science fiction literature and films within a broader overview of Marxist theorizations and critical perspectives on the genre. This is an accessible and lively introduction for anyone studying the politics of science fiction, covering a rich variety of examples from Weimar cinema to mainstream Hollywood films, and novelists from Jules Verne and H.G. Wells to Kim Stanley Robinson, Ken MacLeod and Charles Stross. 3. History, the Human, and the World Between by R. Radhakrishnan History, the Human, and the World Between is a philosophical investigation of the human subject and its simultaneous implication in multiple and often contradictory ways of knowing. The eminent postcolonial theorist R. Radhakrishnan argues that human subjectivity is always constituted “between”: between subjective and objective, temporality and historicity, being and knowing, the ethical and the political, nature and culture, the one and the many, identity and difference, experience and system. In this major study, he suggests that a reconstituted phenomenology has a crucial role to play in mediating between generic modes of knowledge production and an experiential return to life. Keenly appreciative of poststructuralist critiques of phenomenology, Radhakrishnan argues that there is still something profoundly vulnerable at stake in the practice of phenomenology. Radhakrishnan develops his rationale of the “between” through three linked essays where he locates the terms “world,” “history,” “human,” and “subject” between phenomenology and poststructuralism, and in the process sets forth a nuanced reading of the politics of a gendered postcolonial humanism. Critically juxtaposing the works of thinkers such as Friedrich Nietzsche, Adrienne Rich, Frantz Fanon, Edward Said, Michel Foucault, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Martin Heidegger, David Harvey, and Ranajit Guha, Radhakrishnan examines the relationship between systems of thought and their worldly situations. History, the Human, and the World Between is a powerful argument for a theoretical perspective that combines the existential urgency of phenomenology with the discursive rigor of poststructuralist practices. 4. Cylons in America: Critical Studies in Battlestar Galactica edited by Tiffany Potter and C. W. Marshall “Cylons in America” is the first collection of critical studies of Battlestar Galactica (its 2003 miniseries, and the ongoing 2004 television series), examining its place within popular culture and its engagement with contemporary American society. With its fourth season due to air in January 2008, the award-winning Battlestar Galactica continues to be exceptionally popular for non-network television, combining the familiar features of science fiction with direct commentary on life in mainstream America. “Cylons in America” is the first collection of critical studies of Battlestar Galactica (its 2003 miniseries, and the ongoing 2004 television series), examining its place within popular culture and its engagement with contemporary American society.Battlestar Galactica depicts the remnants of the human race fleeing across space from a robotic enemy called the Cylons. The fleet is protected by a single warship, the Battlestar, and is searching for a “lost colony” that settled on the legendary planet “Earth.” Originally a television series in the 1970s, the current series maintains the mythic sense established with the earlier quest narrative, but adds elements of hard science and aggressive engagement with post-9/11 American politics. “Cylons In America” casts a critical eye on the revived series and is sure to appeal to fans of the show,
Why SF/F Awards Are Meaningless To Me
I used to care about the awards. Seeing “Hugo Award Winner” or “Winner of the Nebula Award” on a book used to excite me and make me want to pick something up and buy it. But not anymore. Things have changed. In the last year or so, I’ve sort of lost interest in the awards (most of them, anyway). The Hugos, Nebulas, and Locus Awards haven’t really made me excited about SF/F literature the way they used to. That’s not to say that I’m not excited about SF/F literature, just that the awards aren’t making me excited about particular works; those of you reading this are probably just as aware of my SF/F lit obsession as my closest friends. Adding to this, there are all these dozens of other awards (Clarke, PKD, Gemmell, and so on), and none of them seem to matter to me as a reader (as a writer is a different story). With James Long over at Speculative Horizons stirring up the controversy pot, I don’t feel particularly alone in the discussion of the value of SF/F awards. But what is it about the awards that I find meaningless? For starters, as a reader with only one brain in this head and one set of eyes, I can’t possibly read all the books and stories that are nominated for the various major awards. The result is that I feel completely out of the loop, as if somehow I missed the SF/F Cool Train and ended up on the SF/F Ghetto Express. I read a lot of great books, some of which have been nominated in the past, but the awards have a tendency to leave readers like me so far outside of the spectrum of recognition that I find it rather difficult to get excited about the vast majority of the stuff on the various nomination lists. Maybe that’s normal (the result and not so much the reason leading to it), and it’s likely something that can’t ever be resolved, regardless of whether an award is voted on by the public or given out by committee. Second, I get the feeling that the awards have been spread so thin by the Internet as to render them valueless. There are too many damned awards now, all with some level of prominence. There’s the Hugo, the Nebula, the Locus, the Gemmell, the Clarke, the PKD, the Sturgeon, the Tiptree, the Campbell, and dozens of smaller awards, nationality specific awards (these seem reasonable considering what they are for), genre specific awards, and so on, all of which have some notoriety, if not the same pull as the big three (Hugo, Nebula, and Locus, which aren’t really the big three anymore). The field is too full of these things (and I’m certainly contributing by hosting the WISB Awards here, the most useless awards ever). Who am I, as the reader, supposed to pay attention to? Why? Which awards matter? Which don’t? Which are there to highlight authors for readers, and which are there to highlight authors to fellow authors? I don’t know. Maybe someone that attends the ceremonies can; regardless, with so many awards, it’s difficult to determine their value. I’m sure there are other reasons swimming around in my head, but I’ll leave the ending open for discussion. Whether you agree or disagree, I’d like to know your opinion. Are awards valuable to you? Why or why not? Update: I mistakenly put Worldcon on the list, despite the reality that there is no such award. Worldcon is where the Hugos are presented. Thanks to Kevin Standlee for pointing that out.
Science Fiction and Fantasy in Airports
As promised, I do have something interesting to point out about the presence of science fiction and fantasy in airports, and something that might be a good indicator of the power of books among travelers. First things first, I can honestly say that I’ve seen a significant increase in the number of book-specific shops in airports. I don’t know if this is national or international, but I’ve traveled a little bit over the last few years and I have noticed two things: 1) that there are more book-specific shops springing up all over the place, and 2) that some areas are insanely more book-friendly than others (St. Louis and Atlanta, for example, have a lot of book shops and places that carry books). But what is more interesting than this is how strong of a presence science fiction and fantasy have. When you walk into a book-specific shop, there is almost always a section specific to science fiction and fantasy (and a section for YA, which is usually loaded to the teeth with fantasy titles). Sometimes the section is quite small, and other times it’s about the same size as all of the other sections (non-fiction, general fiction, and so on). The only downside to this is that these shops have a tendency to carry very little in terms of new work, which means that many of these SF/F sections are more like the classic literature section that most of these places have. It’s unfortunate, but there must be a reason for it; you don’t carry old SF/F (as in classic SF/F) if you’re not selling it. This isn’t to say that these stores don’t carry newer titles; they do, but they typically only carry the more prominent new titles, such as works from various high-profile urban fantasy authors or big names in SF literature. But, what’s to complain about? They have SF/F in the bookstores in airports! Now that I’ve pointed out the more obvious aspects of SF/F’s presence in airports, I think it’s worth noting the much more hidden and telling presence: book sections within non-book-specific shops. While I was in St. Louis a few weeks back, I decided to check out this little tech shop (headphones, phones, DVDs, games, things like that–InMotion Entertainment, I think) in the airport and was surprised to discover that they had a book section that was not only SF/F friendly, but possibly one of the best SF/F book sections I have seen for the size (four shelves no more than three feet wide). What was so special about it? The titles they carried represented a wide range of unique titles you might not find in your local bookstore, and all of the books had gorgeous covers. They had, for example, Paul McAuley’s Gardens of the Sun:They had loads of other titles too, many of which I hadn’t heard of until then and most of which looked fascinating (yes, I’ve heard of McAuley’s work, but I didn’t write down the titles of all the others, and I’ve since forgotten them). I might have bought a book or two if I hadn’t already spent over $100 on books during the PCA/ACA conference. The selection was simply fantastic. If you wanted something new and a little less popcorn-y, then you’d have to go to this shop. The point of all of this is that airports are incredibly SF/F friendly. While the selection is not always the greatest (depending on the airport), there are almost always SF/F titles somewhere. I’m not sure what this says about our culture. These stores don’t carry SF/F if it doesn’t sell, so people must be requesting and buying the stuff. Do SF/F books make great travel reads in the same way that others genres have been for decades? Perhaps. What do you think?