The Mayans Rule
(Lifted from Beam Me Up) Archaeologists have discovered a labyrinth of tunnels/caves with Mayan pyramids and stone temples inside. Why is this cool? Because it just is. This is a major discovery that teaches us more about this mysterious lost culture. Here’s a quote: The discovery has experts wondering whether Maya legend inspired the construction of the underground complex—or vice versa.According to Maya myth, the souls of the dead had to follow a dog with night vision on a horrific and watery path and endure myriad challenges before they could rest in the afterlife.“We have this pattern now of finding temples close to the water—or under the water, in this most recent case,” said Guillermo de Anda, lead investigator at the research sites.“These were probably made as part of a very elaborate ritual,” de Anda said. “Everything is related to death, life, and human sacrifice.” If you’re curious and want more, head on over to National Geographic. (Don’t click the read more, there isn’t any more after this!)
SF: The Generation Gap?
Everyone else is talking about it, so I figure I should throw in my two cents. Firstly, I’m not going to go into the giant rants that others have, because I think the majority of what needs to be said has already been said. If you want in-depth discussion of this, then go here, here, here, or here.My thoughts on this are as follows: Should we be basing any of our discussions on voting population? I’ve never once voted on the Hugos and never really wanted to (no offense to the writers, I just don’t want to pay to be able to vote for a book). How many people are the same way? Also, in reference to the graph, that doesn’t really cover anything beyond a basic representation of the facts, and leaves out the fact that there aren’t a lot of writers in their twenties or thirties in the first place.I do believe there is a generation gap, but I think it will be nearly impossible to pin down to an exact percentage or number. There’s no way to be entirely certain that old folks only read old folks and young folks only read young folks. Heck, did anyone consider that a lot of readers might not even know what the hell the Hugos even are? Seriously. I didn’t know what the Hugo and Nebula awards were until I picked up a copy of Ender’s Game and read it on the cover. Even then I just went “oh, it’s an award, cool!” It wasn’t until my early twenties that I knew what the awards were and started to become more involved in the writing world. A lot of people may not even know the Hugos exist. After all, it’s not like the Hugos are on television or on the radio. The only time you hear about them is online or on a book and very rarely in regular conversation with folks.There are just too many factors in all of this for us to be even remotely capable of pinning down what the generation gap actually is. There probably is a gap, but I don’t know if it’s a significant one. It might be, though. Granted, I don’t know everything and perhaps I’m missing some valuable points on all this. What if the gap is accidental? It’s not like writers advertise their age’s, unless they happen to be very young and it’s needed to boost sales. I read just about everything, regardless of age, but I’m also not the average reader, I suppose. What do you all think about this? Do you feel there is a big generation gap in SF?
Poul Anderson: One of the Greats
If you’ve never read Poul Anderson, you’re missing out. I recently came across this article that profiles his work (discovered here).I’ve been a fan of Poul Anderson’s work for a long and have set out to collect all his printed works (I have most of them actually). His writing has always been inspiring to me. I first read “Call Me Joe” by him many years ago and it was the spark that got me into science fiction in the first place. It was a strange story, and I think that’s what made me so intrigued: it had that sense of wonder and amazement.Shortly after that I started buying up old SF titles and even spend quite a few bucks one christmas building up a collection of Analog SF backissues (from way back when, actually; I currently have two big boxes full of these things and they’re wonderful). I’m not as well read as most SF nuts (I’ve yet to reaed all the classics), but if it hadn’t been for Poul Anderson I don’t think I would have ever started writing SF. Maybe I would have if I discovered some of the writers I admire today, but that’s shaky at best. Poul Anderson was the catalyst for my newfound obsession with SF. Granted, other writers preceded him and it was them that got me to eventually read Poul Anderson (Richard A. Knaak, actually, was my introduction to fantasy literature, with the exception of a little Tolkien and some classics I had read, and without Knaak I probably wouldn’t have jumped into fantasy as much as I did; Knaak is one of my favorite fantasy writers and I’m somewhat disheartened by the fact that he doesn’t write enough of his own stuff and spends most of his writing time on shared world things, which sucks, cause the Dragonrealm books were good).So, here’s to Poul Anderson, a gem among gems, if that makes any sense. And now I’ll bring it back to you:What one author got you to read science fiction or fantasy? Or, what author got you interested in reading at all, since some of us have only recently realized the wonders of reading?
New Fiction Markets
Two new SF fiction markets, which look like they’re going to be awesome. First we have Federations from John Joseph Adams: Genres: Science Fiction only. Original fiction only, no reprints.Payment: 5 cents per word ($250 max), plus a pro-rata share of the anthology’s earnings and 1 contributor copy.Word limit: 5000 words. (Stories may exceed 5000 words, but $250 is the maximum payment per story, and stories 5000 words or less are strongly preferred.)Rights: First world English rights, non-exclusive world anthology rights, and non-exclusive audio anthology rights. See my boilerplate author-anthologist contract, which spells out the rights in detail.Reading Period: November 1-January 1, 2009Response Time: Most rejections will be sent out quickly, but stories that I like may be held until January 31 before a final decision is made.Publication date: May 2009Publisher: Prime BooksSubmission Instructions: Email your story in rich-text format (RTF) to John Joseph Adams at federations.anthology@gmail.com. Include the title of the story and your byline in the subject line of the email. I’ll be writing something for this one once I can think of a story interesting. Looks like something right up my alley though. Then there is Footprints from Jay Lake. I’ll try thinking up something for this, but no guarantees. Right now all I have are humorous ideas, which might work. Can’t copy and paste for some reason, so you’ll just have to click the link. Ther you go!
Creating Aliens: Ground Rules
Over at HowStuffWorks you’ll find this brilliant post called “How Aliens Work“. Pay careful attention to it. If you want realistic aliens, some of those rules should be firmly planted in your brain. Aliens, of course, would be bound by many of the same rules that we are (the laws of physics for example). Yeah, good little post. (Don’t click the read more, there isn’t any more after this!)
Science Fiction: Sometimes it’s wrong.
Browsing through today, I discovered a very interesting website that discusses the errors within science fiction, particularly in TV and movies. Some of these errors are, quite frankly, rather stupid on the part of the creators. Such as: In the Star Trek Voyager episode “The Fight”, Voyager encounters a Negative Space Wedgie that is “2 light years across”. They start “11,000 km” away from it and yet, the whole phenomenon is visible on the viewscreen. As the Agony Booth review of this episode points out, this is exactly like “putting your nose on the ground, and still being able to see the whole landscape from horizon to horizon” except…you know…even worse. The thing also looks about as big as Voyager when it engulfs it, which might make slightly more sense (for a given value of “sense”) since Voyager is apparently the size of a planet. Yup, that’s Star Trek. There are even a few related to literature. Such as: The original Dune series was set 10,000 years (human history goes back 7,000 years at present) after the Robot War known as the Butlerian Jihad, featuring an old, decadent society that had presumably been going downhill for a long time. However, when Frank Herbert’s son picked up the reigns and wrote prequals set before and during said Butlerian Jihad, the prequels end with all the social orders and customs, and even the religion, of Dune already established as nearly identical to the ones in the original novel. And the reader is expected to believe that they stayed exactly the same for almost a third longer than the time between the invention of writing and the present. Yeah, pretty interesting, don’t you think? Check out the site. Maybe one of your favorite shows is on there with an error.