Comment Policy Change
I have made some changes to how comments will work on this site. All comments will now be sent for approval by me. Why? Because I have been getting an inordinate amount of spam posts and I’m tired of deleting them. To those that might be concerned that I’ll prevent your comment from showing up because you disagree with me or some such, you have nothing to worry about. I’m only stopping comments that are clearly peddling something or leaving pointless words in order to post a link to some scam site. I’m just tired of it… Thanks for understanding.
Rewatching My Shelf: Volume One
I’m starting a new feature called Rewatching My Shelf. I own quite a few DVDs and have started rewatching some of them. In doing so, I’ve found myself either disliking films I previously loved, or enjoying, yet again, those classics that made me clamber to buy them on DVD in the first place. So here is the first batch: The Mothman Prophecies (Richard Gere)A Washington D.C. journalist mysteriously ends up in a small town where people have reported seeing a bizarre mothman creature…the same creature his wife drew before dying of a brain tumor…Pros: I’ve always loved this movie. It’s not a horror movie; it’s just damn creepy. The acting is decent, the story is good enough, and overall I just find this one enjoyable. I think it’s the creepy-factor that gets me; every time I see it I am overcome by creepiness.Cons: It’s not a perfect movie. You never find out what the heck the mothman really is, and a lot of strange stuff happens, but only a few people seem to take notice of what lies underneath. Still, it’s a good one, I think.Rating: 3.5/5Value: $7.50 The 13th Warrior (Antonio Banderas)Antonio Banderas plays an emissary on a mission to open communication with the barbarian peoples of the north. But strange things are happening in the far north and an unexpected roll of fate calls thirteen warriors (one of them the emissary) into action to battle an ancient foe. Based on Eaters of the Dead by Michael Crichton.Pros: Probably my favorite Banderas film next to Assassins. A lot of fantastic action, a decent enough story, and a lot of clever dialogue.Cons: The ending is incomplete and I am not entirely sure how accurate the film in regards to its Viking-like northmen.Rating: 4/5Value: $8.50 Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom, Kiera Knightly, and Geoffrey Rush)Honestly, I have no idea how to describe this movie in a short an succinct way. The best I can do is use the blurb on my DVD case: The roguish, yet charming, Captain Jack Sparrow’s idyllic pirate life capsizes after his nemesis, the wily Captain Barbossa, steals his ship, the Black Pearl, and later attacks the town of Port Royal, kidnapping the governor’s beautiful daughter Elizabeth. In a gallant attempt to rescue her and recapture the Black Pearl, Elizabeth’s childhood friend, Will Turner, joins forces with Jack. What will doesn’t know is that a cursed treasure has doomed Barbossa and his crew to live forever as the undead.Pros: Everything about this film is brilliant. Wonderful effects, wonderful characters (I mean, come on, we all know Captain Jack Sparrow by now, right?), and a downright awesome story. This is a classic. Period. End of story. If you haven’t seen it, or disliked it, then I disown you forever!Cons: If you hate pirates or fantasy, then don’t see this movie. That’s the only con…Rating: 4.75/5Value: $11.00 (or whatever IMAX charges now) Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark (Harrison Ford)Archaeologist Indiana Jones sets out to find the legendary Ark of the Covenant when a duo of government operatives question him about a series of strange Nazi messages that indicate that Hitler has been searching for all kinds of ancient relics. Filled with Nazis, a Frenchman, Marian (Indy’s female accomplice), and the forces of good and evil, this Lucas/Spielberg classic is not one to be missed or forgotten.Pros: I’m actually surprised how well this one has aged. Unlike a lot of films, this one still stands up to the tests of time. The action is wonderful, the dialogue is witty and fun, and Harrison Ford is simply delightful. Toss in a fun story, beautiful scenery and special effects, and you’ve got one hell of an action adventure film!Cons: The only problem I have with this film is that it suffers from being too stereotypical about its enemies. Then again, they’re Nazis and I think any director or writer would have a hard time turning them into gray characters.Rating: 4/5Value: $9.50 Star Wars, Episode I: The Phantom Menace (Ewan McGregor, Liam Neeson, Natalie Portman, and Samuel L. Jackson)When the Trade Federation sets up a blockade around the small planet of Naboo, two Jedi set out to negotiate the cessation of hostilities. But the Trade Federation is not acting alone: the Sith, long thought extinct, have re-emerged in an attempt to reclaim power. When negotiations fail the two jedi (Qui-gon Jin and Obi-won Kenobi) set out to save the Queen, and in the process discover a small boy on the familiar planet Tattooine…a boy who may very well be the Chosen One to bring balance to the Force. (Does that sum it up well?)Pros: Beautiful graphics, a decent enough story, and freaking amazing lightsaber battles. Probably the best of the prequels, to be honest.Cons: Some questionable acting from the younger cast and too much reliance on CGI. It’s not a perfect movie, but it’s enjoyable. I agree with everyone else that Darth Maul should not have died in this particular movie.Rating: 3.5/5Value: $10.00 (Star Wars is totally worth seeing on the big screen.) And there you have it!
Racist/Sexist Editors: Still Bad Even If They’re Not
So, apparently if you’re an editor and you don’t publish enough women or people of color in an anthology or magazine, but it’s because your slush pile contained primarily white males, you’re still a sexist or racist bastard. At least, that’s what oldcharliebrown says. It seems that no matter what, even if you have a legitimate excuse, if you don’t publish enough women or people of color, you’re a sexist or racist bastard. Period. No argument. That’s it. Because if your slush pile didn’t have enough women or people of color in it, then you, the editor, clearly didn’t spend enough time “reaching out.” Well I’m calling bullshit. Blaming editors like this is like blaming a police officer in another county for not stopping a drunk driver from driving into a tree. Sound frakked up? That’s because it is. It makes no logical sense. I’m not saying that there aren’t sexist/racist editors out there, but the idea that an editor can only work with what is submitted to him or her is 100% true. The whole idea of “reaching out” is neither here nor there. Whether you “reach out” or not does not suddenly make you a sexist/racist bastard—not by a long shot. The fact that some people are still actively condemning editors even when they are not at fault suggests a mindset that is quite disturbing to me. It’s almost as if some people want editors to be sexist/racist bastards so we have someone to blame for the disparity in minority representation in SF/F. I don’t honestly think there is anyone to blame for this except culture. There are probably dozens of reasons why there are not a lot of women or people of color in the SF/F community, and that long list does not include dozens of different ways to say “racist” or “sexist.” Sometimes racism/sexism is responsible; sometimes it’s not. Let’s not forget that historically speaking, science fiction (and publishing in general) has been a masculine enterprise, or that there seems to be far more people of color writing about issues such as colonialism/imperialism than there are about space ships or magic swords. That’s not to say that there aren’t women who write science fiction (there are quite a few, many of them damn good ones) or people of color who write SF/F (there are a few that I can name off the top of my head, though, to be fair, there could be more that none of us know about because names rarely indicate someone’s skin color). What I’m saying is that there very well may be other factors influencing the percentage of women and people of color in slush piles that have nothing to do directly with editors working today (editors in the past, yes, but today, not so much, with exception). But, then, you have to wonder how anyone knows how many people of color are in those slush piles in the first place if names are not good indicators of skin color…editors do not typically ask for one’s skin color (though a name can indicate sex, but that’s not always a sure thing, particularly if you’re dealing with writers from countries with non-English names like India or China). What needs to be done is for all aspects of the community to reach out, not just editors. History is working against women and people of color, and there’s no reason why we cannot circumvent historical tradition. But, history also does not make editors today sexist or racist bastards just because they do not publish enough women or people of color. If we want to talk about racist/sexist bastards, then we need to go back in time and point a finger at the people who dominated the publishing industry in the first place, and then at society, who played the race and gender game for centuries. The point of all of this is that, yes, it is a viable excuse to say that the reason for gender/race disparities in your work is due to a low percentage of women or people of color in the slush pile. That’s a perfectly acceptable excuse, and whether or not an editor should spend time reaching out is an entirely different argument. I think the problem is that people need someone to blame, and why not an editor? They have their hand on the big button, after all. But there’s more at work here than just an editor. This is a community problem and there are no individuals that can be blamed. That is all.
Interview w/ Edward Willett
Edward Willett is the author of Terra Insegura (see my review here) and Marseguro (see my review here), among other novels. Special thanks to Mr. Willett for doing this interview. Here goes: Can you talk a little about Terra Insegura for those that have yet to read it? Terra Insegura takes up immediately where Marseguro left off. The people of Marseguro have reason to believe that a genetically modified super-plague has made its way to Earth and have decided, even though the Body Purified, the religious dictatorship on Earth, just tried to “purify” their planet, they have to at least attempt to help by sending a vaccine. Good impulse, but things go awry when it turns out the Body Purified is not entirely destroyed yet, nor are the Selkies of Marseguro, genetically modified to be amphibian, the only new race of humans spawned by Victor Hansen, the genius geneticist who both created them and had a nasty habit of leaving clones of himself around for other people to trip over. Terra Insegura is about the battle to decide the shape of the new society about to arise on the depopulated Earth. One of the things I loved about Marseguro, and which continues in Terra Insegura, is your approach to human/Other relationships, with the Other being the Selkies (a genetically augmented human/fish race). What about science fiction makes it “easier” to address humanity’s less appealing qualities (discrimination, segregation, and even violent extermination of “the Other”)? (In your opinion, of course) One of the strengths of science fiction in general is that it allows you to strip out aspects of present-day life that in the real world are wrapped in too many layers of other stuff to be seen clearly. A story about, say, the progressives of the early 20th century who saw forced sterilization or forbidding marriage to certain types of individuals as a good way to improve society, has to deal with so much historical baggage concerning the real people and events of the time, not to mention the politics of the reader (who may not like to be told that some historical figure they revere–Woodrow Wilson, Margaret Sanger, George Bernard Shaw, etc.–had this unsavory side to them), that it can be hard to examine the central issue of eugenics clearly. Science fiction gives us a way of finding, baring and illuminating these kinds of big-picture problems so that we can look at them in a different light and perhaps gain a better understanding of the issues involved. Terra Insegura follows Marseguro, a particularly dark dystopian future/space opera, yet it takes your already established darkness to new heights. Is there some really scary part of you that just loves to put your characters through hell? Do you mentally torture little voodoo dolls? Or is all this darkness simply you way of making a darn good science fiction story? It’s funny, because while I was reading a recent thread on the SF Canada listserver about dark and dystopian fiction (prompted, I think, by the latest book by Margaret “I Don’t Write Science Fiction Because There Aren’t Any Talking Cabbages from Planet X” Atwood), I kept thinking, gee, you people are depressing. I’m glad all my fiction is upbeat! At which point a little inner voice cleared its throat and said, “Have you actually read your own last couple of books?” Really, the darkness in these two books was entirely a function of the story situation I set up. As I think I explained in the last interview, Marseguro grew out of a writing class exercise, the whole thing springing from a couple of opening sentences, one of which contained the line “the water in her gills smelled of blood.” The darkness was built into that first sentence, and the story that grew out of it just seemed to demand the level of unpleasantness I heaped on my poor characters. I’m actually a very cheerful guy. Really! As a sequel, you run the risk of falling short of the preceding novel, of letting your fans down. Terra Insegura never disappoints, and in some ways it is a superior novel to its predecessor. Was Terra Insegura planned from the start, or was it something you put together later on? How did you go about approaching the idea of a sequel and were you at all concerned about “sequelitis?” Terra Insegura was not planned from the start, and Marseguro was complete before I knew for certain I would be writing a sequel, though obviously I had hopes, since I crafted an ending on which to hang one. Outlining the sequel was really the same process as outlining the original book. Marseguro started from just a couple of sentences, as I mentioned, and I just began asking myself questions about those sentences as a way of getting to the story they implied. Terra Insegura was the same process, except I was asking myself questions about things I had mentioned in Marseguro, so I had a lot more to work with. There are always loose ends in a novel, alleyways you could have explored but didn’t, little bits of throw-away scene decoration or dialogue that you put in really as a kind of stage trick, to imply that there is more to the world than is in the foreground of the story. When I started thinking of a sequel, I looked for those bits and pieces that hinted at something more…and then developed that something more. For instance: in Marseguro, early on, there is a scene at a religious service of the Body where a genetically modified female attacks the priest and is shot down. I described her as being feline. That was a throw-away bit, really, just something to dramatize how moddies were being treated on Earth by the Body Purified. Didn’t give that poor dead moddie another thought…until I started plotting Terra Insegura. And then I remembered her and thought, wait. If there’s one feline moddie, there must be others…maybe a whole race
Quickie Movie Reviews (2009): Volume Nine
Yet another batch of old movies viewed and reviewed. Some interesting ones this time, but also some really bad ones. Here goes: Wings of Desire (Peter Falk) Daniel, an angel who spends his days easing the mental suffering of human beings, falls in love with a young woman and must sacrifice his wings and immortality in order to be with her. Pros: An interesting concept (this is a film that predated City of Angels) and the last 20-30 minutes of the film are actually quite good. Plus, there’s the lovely Peter Falk playing himself in a rather unique way (in fact, the little surprise about Falk at the end made me grin). Cons: It’s really boring. Most of the film is spent establishing the concept, and, quite honestly, they could have spent more time on other things. The concept was obvious in the first ten minutes, but the writer/director wouldn’t let up and just pounded it into my head relentlessly. It was too much. Rating: 1.5/5 Value: $2.00 Hole This quasi-science fiction / psychological comedy movie posits a world in which a strange cockroach virus has devastated Taiwan, forcing the government to begin evacuating people against their will. But for a couple of unusual characters (a sleazy young man whose upstairs apartment perpetually leaks into the one below it, a woman who randomly breaks out into song, and a bicycle-riding boy who plays games with people’s doorbells), evacuation is not an option. Pros: There are moments of sheer brilliance in this, like when the guy upstairs decides to shove his whole leg into the whole in his floor and dangle his foot around in the singing woman’s apartment. I found myself laughing here or there, but I think it’s fair to say that this is not a comedy so much as a weird psychological film. Cons: There is no plot and the movie plods along at an astonishingly slow pace. The good bits are far and few between. There is some good here, but I’m not sure if the wait is worth it. Granted, at least it’s not as boring as some of the films I’ve watched. The subtle humor seems to work well. Rating: 1.5/5 Value: $2.25 Jigoku A Japanese version of Dante’s Inferno, this follows a young man whose life gets turned upside-down when he and a friend run over a drunk gangster on the way home. The event causes an avalanche of disasters that eventually land him and his entire family in hell… Pros: For its time, this must have been freaking terrifying. It’s fairly gruesome and doesn’t pull any punches. Hell literally looks like hell. The story itself is convenient, but it gets the job done. Cons: Can be a bit slow in parts and is clearly outdated. It’s good, but it’s from a different era of film, and if you’re not into that, then you won’t be into this. The acting is somewhat ridiculous, too, but, to be honest, I think the insanity portrayed by the characters worked well. Rating: 3/5 Value: $5.50 The Big One (Michael Moore) In this short companion to one of Moore’s first book tours, our favorite Flintian takes on corporate downsizing and outsourcing. Pros: It’s Michael Moore. You either love him or you hate him. Here Moore is somewhat more level-headed than in his higher profile documentaries, and his jokes and antics are much appreciated and enjoyable. Cons: This isn’t really a documentary, though I had expected it to be. It’s good, but Moore really should have taken this further and made it more a traditional documentary. Rating: 2.5/5 Value: $3.50 Titus (Anthony Hopkins) A semi-modern adaptation of one of Shakespeare’s most twisted works about a Roman general who slowly loses his sanity after his children are killed, maimed, or worse by a vindictive Goth queen-turned-Roman-empress. Pros: The opening for this is amazing. I absolutely loved it. The story is also twisted in a good way, and Anthony Hopkins is amazing here. The other actors are mostly good, with a couple bad eggs here or there. Cons: Not for the faint of heart, though not nearly as gruesome as some of the horror films being made to day. One of the key problems with this film is that all the dialogue is in typical Shakespeare style, which makes it really difficult to understand what is going on at times. Most of the time it’s pretty obvious, but unless you’re familiar with this particular story, the subtlety is lost to you. Rating: 3.25/5 Value: $6.50 And that’s that! I think I’m going to get Netflix, because the University of Florida library is running out of good stuff…
Good News: A Presentation Involving Fantasy
I recently submitted a proposal to present a paper entitled “Fabricated Histories and Non-Nationalist Identities” to a conference being held here at the University of Florida next month. Just a few days ago I found out that my proposal had been accepted. So, on November 13th, 2009, I will be presenting my paper in front of a bunch of people, probably fellow graduate students and faculty. This, I’m sure, will be a terrifying experience when I am questioned by people far more learned than myself. But, none of this seems relevant to any of you without context. This particular paper happens to spent quite a good deal of time analyzing The House of the Stag by Kage Baker, and fantastic fantasy novel from last year that I reviewed here; I also interviewed the author some time back. The paper also deals with an interesting book called In an Antique Land by Amitav Ghosh, which is not fantasy, but certainly worthy of your consideration. In any case, what I am most curious about in this paper are the relationships the characters in both novels have to history, particular that of fake or fabricated histories, and how their identities are formulated through their use of such things. It may sound dull, but the Baker text is particularly good at making this rather fascinating to a less academic crowd, since her use of a fabricated history is embodied by what you might call the “Dark Lord narrative.” I won’t go any further than that, since I have a presentation to work on, but I thought you all might find this fascinating indeed!