Five Irritating Things About Other Writers (part two)
Irritation, it seems, is not limited to five things. Here is another list of irritating things about other writers (plus Part One and Part Three). Enjoy: People who think that free publication is the same as being published in a professional magazine. It’s not. Stop pretending that your free podcast fiction piece that nobody paid you for and is being put out on the net to about thirty people is the same as someone like Jason Sanford selling a piece to Interzone. It’s not remotely the same. It’s nice that you’re building yourself up and trying to get publication credits, but editors care about as much as I do about non-paying markets: none. It’s worth very little, especially when placed next to someone of equal skill who has sold to better markets. (For the record, I am editor of a small magazine, but we’re a paying market. We don’t pay much, hardly anything, but it’s better than free. Writers with talent deserve to be paid for their work. You wouldn’t work for Taco Bell for free would you?) Writers who say stupid things like “science fiction is dead” or “I write to the market.” Science fiction isn’t dead and you can’t technically write to the market unless you happen to be incredibly good at predicting the future. Trends change so damn rapidly these days that most people just get lucky when they hit on a big thing. Maybe a few writers are capable of writing fast enough to write to the market, but that’s still stupid. At least to me it is… Infodumps in short stories. It’s a short story; there isn’t time for that sort of thing. People who think they are better than you because they wrote a book. Nothing wrong with being humble. Seriously. Try it. People who think that science fiction is exactly the same as fantasy, based upon the terms’ standard definitions and common understandings. The categories are held to be generally distinct for a lot of reasons, but mostly for marketing purposes. Generally speaking science fiction is spaceships, technology, and science, while fantasy is dragons, wizards, and magic. That’s speaking generally. There’s certainly something to be said about the blending of genres, as discussed in the comment to one of my recent posts, but the two are still distinct genres for the most part. Any thoughts?
Five Irritating Things About Other Writers (part one)
Sometimes in this thing called the “writing life” you can’t help but be annoyed by the things going on in the profession you wish to be a part of. Call it jealousy in some cases or just being a jerk, but as a budding writer I find the following things to be discouraging, frustrating, and downright irksome (plus Part Two and Part Three): People with less talent/skill getting published and recognized for mediocre work. Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy for people who have success, but it really puts a dampener on things when you’re trying your butt off just to get your foot in the door and the people whose work you’ve actually read and wondered “how the hell did this get published” are simply doing better than you. People with more talent/skill not succeeding. I know several people who are actually better writers than me. I’m enormously jealous of them because they have a grasp of the craft that I don’t. Most of them are much younger than me, haven’t been doing it very long, and generally have little self-esteem about it, which is tremendously unfortunate. So when I see these talented writers who have a gift, who are better than me, and they aren’t doing well or don’t know what to do, I’m put in a position where I want to help, but I’m also disheartened that they aren’t doing well when they’re trying. Vampires without fangs. Sorry, that should be illegal. Yes, we should pass a law that bans this practice. It’s literary rape and the poor vampires can’t defend themselves. I’m setting up a charity next week… People who try to explain away cliches by calling them something else. There’s a reason why it’s called a cliche. The Creationism people didn’t get away with changing their name to Intelligent Design. What makes you think you can get away with something similar? People who write science fiction, but refuse to acknowledge it (Margaret Atwood, I’m looking at you). If you wrote a science fiction novel, then that’s all there is to it. You wrote it. Accept it. Hell, even embrace it! Trying to pretend that your novel isn’t science fiction because it’s literary is about as intelligent as Bush trying to explain why OBGYNs aren’t allowed to share their love with women. There you have it! What about you? Any irksome things you can think of regarding other writers?
Top Posts For November
I decided I should start doing this until I can figure out a good way to put top posts on my blog. Here are the top ten posts for the month of November (for all the old folks and new folks out there): What If Dragons Were Real? The Terminator Movies: Why the Robots Lost…Badly Werewolves and Misconceptions About Science Fiction Ten SF Ideas/Concepts I Think Won’t Come True SF/F Links: February Roundup Part Two Oh Sweet NASA Otherism: The Dissection of Humanity and the Human in Science Fiction Film eReaders: Comparison Study Top Ten Worst Science Fiction Shows Show Review: Sanctuary (the pilot episode) So, feel free to check them out and leave a comment! Oh, and I should note that these are based on traffic and include any and all posts I’ve ever made. Anywho!
Otherism: The Dissection of Humanity and the Human in Science Fiction Film
The title is a mouthful, but represents the core idea behind the research project for which I received a monetary grant from UC Santa Cruz. Given that, I give my the proposal for my research project: What is the human? What does it mean to be human? These are questions that motivate many, if not most, fields in the humanities. I’m applying for the Humanities Undergraduate Research Award (HUGRA) because I wish to address these deep-rooted and enduring questions, albeit using a relatively new medium: science fiction television and film. As a genre, science fiction (SF) lends itself easily to investigations and interpretations of the human-other dichotomy. How does SF grapple with this dualism? How does it challenge our preconceptions of the human and offer new definitions? And does the genre make sociohistorical processes, such as racialization and the vilification of difference, more accessible due to its futuristic and fantastic narratives and settings? These are the questions that motivate my project, “Otherism: The Dissection of Humanity and the Human in Science Fiction Film.” My primary focus is on science fiction film—such as Battlestar Galactica, Space Above and Beyond, Blade Runner, Ghost in the Shell, and others—and how the relation between the human and the other is represented. Drawing from post-colonial discourse, I argue that science fiction negates the existence of a human category, with exception to biology, by blurring the line between human and non-human—the cyborg, android, humanoid alien, non-humanoid alien, robot, etc. This negation is, in my mind, a challenge to our preconceived notions of humanity and a challenge on a fictive level to the foundations of human indifference and intolerance. As an ardent SF fan, I’ve read numerous science fiction novels and short stories. Additionally, I’ve taken courses at UCSC that have allowed me to pursue my passion. These courses include AMST 109B: Science Fiction in Multicultural America; Lit 101: Animal Theory; and an independent study on the writings of Philip K. Dick. Moreover, I’ve found immensely helpful LTWL 115A: Fiction in a Global Context (from the African Continent) and LTEL 160C: Postcolonial Writing. Through further researching colonial/postcolonial discourse I hope to relate the conditions and issues of colonialism to the otherworldly portrayal of human “racism” towards the other, slavery, post-slavery, and cultural merging and its effects. With a HUGRA, I intend to spend Fall Quarter primarily researching at UC Santa Cruz, either viewing materials available to me in McHenry Library or finding materials at other libraries that I find to be of interest. During Winter Quarter I will visit the Science Fiction Foundation Collection at the University of Liverpool and in Spring Quarter I will attend the Eaton Conference at UC Riverside—where John Rieder (author of Colonialism and the Emergence of Science Fiction) will be giving a lecture. Also during Spring Quarter I will spend time in the Eaton Collection and hopefully attend the Science Fiction Research Association’s conference.A HUGRA will enable me to achieve the goals I put forth in this timeline. Ultimately, I intend to produce a research paper and to continue to pursue this question of the human in graduate school—the University of Liverpool’s Science Fiction Studies MA and Brunel University’s Contemporary Literature and Culture MA are programs of significant interest to me. The paper will comprise an important part of my undergraduate dossier. So, any questions?
Research Award Received!
Just thought all of you would like to know that I am officially a recipient of UC Santa Cruz’s Humanities Undergraduate Research Award (HUGRA)! It’s given out to ten people each year who propose an interesting topic. My topic was on a science fiction subject. I’ll post my proposal if anyone would like to see it. I’m really excited about this. For the next seven or so months I’ll be doing research! (Don’t click the read more, there isn’t any more after this!)
Peggy’s Qs and My As (about science fiction)
I’m not sure if Peggy of Biology in Science Fiction wanted professional science fiction writers. If so, then I guess she can ignore my answers. If not, then here are my answers to her questions for science fiction writers (if you’re a science person, go check out her questions for science writers): Why are you writing science fiction in particular? What does the science add?I think the primary reason I write science fiction first and fantasy second is that science fiction seems to grab at my imagination in a more profound way than fantasy (which isn’t meant to be a slight on fantasy). The reasons for this are also my reasons for not clinging to a particular religion, and also being rather critical of religion: I’m a rational/logical/non-pseudo-supernatural-whatsit person. You can argue that I’m not rational or logical, but I do spend more of my time looking at things from a viewpoint born out of what is known and provable, to a certain extent, rather than looking at stuff that is, to put it bluntly, bunk. I find things like quantum computers or astronauts losing $100,000 tool bags in space far more interesting on a more consistent basis than TV shows about ghost hunters or listening to people explain to me how dinosaurs and humans lived together.So, from this perspective science fiction offers me a way of thinking “realistically” about the future. Science fiction is the literature of the future, whether that future be distant or near. I like being able to write about what the world could be like in 20 years, or 50 years, if one thing were to show up, or a new technology were to become a part of traditional culture, etc. I like how science fiction offers me a lot of ways of dealing with what interests me, such as human reactions to the other (in science fiction this translates to human reactions to aliens, cyborgs, clones, robots, human replicas, etc.).Perhaps what science adds, when I make an effort to really use it (and I guess I use science all the time in science fiction, but when I talk about really using it I mean actually going out of my own little box to find new concepts to work with or trying to portray a better grasp of something I don’t know a lot about), is a sense of reality. The idea that this story I’m writing could actually happen. That’s important to science fiction I think: that the science make the stories and imagined futures seem real enough for the reader to actually consider the possibilities. The science makes the fiction stronger. Part of this is my personal distaste for regular fiction. I like things that aren’t currently real. I like spaceships and aliens and bizarre future technologies, etc. To me, the science simply makes the fiction stronger by allowing for more complex themes than are present in “traditional” fiction. You could argue with me on this if you wanted to, but “traditional” fiction cannot do what science fiction does. Period. Science fiction is unique because of its ability to do what other fictional forms cannot do. What is your relationship to science? Have you studied or worked in it, or do you just find it cool? Do you have a favorite field?I consider myself a science enthusiast. I don’t claim to know everything about science and am honest enough to say that I probably couldn’t explain without flailing my arms around like a moron how basic aspects of science work. I don’t remember how to do most of things I learned in chemistry and I couldn’t easily tell you the specifics of every step of cell division. But I love science, even when I don’t understand it (and that happens a lot, because I have no idea how quantum physics works, or what string theory really means, or how the heck a computer works, etc.). I consider myself relatively knowledgeable, though, regardless of my weaknesses. I’m not Mike Brotherton, who is a scientist, and I would never take up arms against him on any scientific issue, because I would lose horribly.That said, I have studied bits and pieces of science. I think I know a bit more about biology and evolution than I do about, say, complex subjects such as the eleven dimensions or string theory or quantum theory. I have a lot of sociology-type experience in college primarily because I wanted to be an evolutionary biologist before I decided literature and writing was more up my alley. I really find myself fascinated by primates and how close they are to us (and if you researched you’d be absolutely astonished at how intelligent and “human” they really are). Outside of that, I utilize Google on a regular basis to keep myself as knowledgeable as possible about subjects I don’t know very well (such as physics, astronomy, etc.–although these subjects are actually fascinating to me, so I find myself learning more and more as I go along).If I had to pick a favorite field, I’d have to say astronomy. While evolution and primatology are all hot topics for me, I find the recent news in science regarding exoplanets, asteroids, deep space satellites, supernovas, dark matter, etc. absolutely astonishing. Whoever said we weren’t still advancing our at an exponential rate was a complete moron, because the things we’re learning from space are mind boggling. Pretty soon someone is going to be able to prove that that whole panspermia thing is real…imagine that day, eh? How important is it to you that the science be right? What kind of resources do you use for accuracy?This really depends. First off, I’m willing to make exceptions about certain tropes in science fiction for the sake of a story. Faster-than-light travel is still impossible according to our good friend Einstein. But, if FTL isn’t possible and you don’t want to be one of those folks who uses wormholes and other loopholes, then you’re pretty much screwed if you