Cynical-C Blog - » Battlestar Galactica Propaganda Posters — ofvarieddelights

Mundane science fiction →

Wiki-stumbling:

Geoff Ryman has contrasted mundane science fiction with regular science fiction through the desire of teenagers to leave their parents’ homes. Ryman sees too much of regular science fiction being based on an “adolescent desire to run away from our world.” However, Ryman notes that humans are not truly considered grown-up until they “create a new home of their own,” which is what mundane science fiction aims to do.

This seems to me to be where “real” SF is still being written. Most cutting-edge SF gets ossified and tossed off into sub-genres like military SF, cyberpunk, etc. Some of these sub-genres still have some life in them — I’m currently reading John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War series, which is quite good — but it seems mundane SF is where good work is still being done.

Is theatre sci-fi's final frontier? →

io9 links to this rant about theatre and SF:

Perhaps this is part of the reason that sci-fi so rarely makes it onto the stage. As well as being regarded with a certain warmth, there’s also a sense of mistrust around the genre. Writers fear that it’s somehow a bit uncool - a bit 70s - and so we get interminable plays about Urgent Contemporary Issues rather than coolly speculative projections. It’s a shame. After all, some of the 20th century’s greatest literature was set in the future - consider 1984, Brave New World and A Clockwork Orange.

Then again, there is some hope for theatre and SF. Maybe sometime I should post a description of my undergraduate theatre prof’s grad school stage adaptation of Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns.

Battlestar Galactica is being advertised on the NYT’s Web site. Can’t wait for the premiere tomorrow. (Yes, this is becoming a science fiction blog.)

Disraelia: A Counterfactual History, 1848-2008 →

Long but interesting overview of an alt-history Middle Eastern state that wasn’t.

"But in the very best novels the animals want to talk, or the humans wish the animals could talk, or both."

Jonathan Lethem, via The Mumpsimus

The Ridiculousness of Riddick, or, How Not to Make a SciFi Sequel →

John Scalzi examines the failures of The Chronicles of Riddick. This reminds me — I need to add Pitch Black to my Amazon wish list.

They're Made Out of Meat by Terry Bisson →

I was reminded of this brief, funny SF story by an io9 article this morning. At one point in college we put on a stage version of several of Bisson’s stories, including this one. It’s hilarious, but sad.

“They’re made out of meat.”

“Meat?”

“Meat. They’re made out of meat.”

“Meat?”

"The video and telecom-addled civilization that bustles outside [the secular monastery in Neal Stephenson’s Anathem] is full of shallow and incorrect knowledge. People who’ve never taken time to study anything feel they know everything. Constantly distracted by their jangling electronic gizmos, they can’t comprehend the powerful ideas and complex systems wrought by thousands of years of civilization. Their smart machines make them dumb. Inevitably, they look to the cloistered nerds to save them."

Neal Stephenson’s new novel makes me want to kill the Internet. Now that sounds like a book I’ll enjoy. (via nickdouglas)

Sci Fi Saves Shakespeare, For Real This Time →

The Royal Shakespeare Company’s Hamlet production stars Doctor Who’s David Tennant as the brooding prince and Star Trek: TNG’s Patrick Stewart (who’s had some pretty impressive Shakespeare roles over his career) as Claudius. Casting two high-profile science fiction stars means that audiences contain a lot more geeks than usual — the type of people more likely to stand in line for Star Wars tickets than Two Gentlemen of Verona.

io9 Seeks Two Fall Interns →

Oh man, this would be the coolest internship ever.

HarperCollins launches a new sci-fi imprint called Angry Robot →

"It was my private little joke. I never discussed this angle with Blaustein or Wise because I didn’t want it expressed. I had originally hoped that the Christ comparison would be subliminal."

Screenwriter Edmund Nort discussing his take on the original Day the Earth Stood Still’s Klaatu. Even after 50+ years the film still stands up. (That Christ comparison, by the way, is pretty apparent even on casual viewing.)

Regarding Anathem and the dreaded science fiction infodump

I received Neal Stephenson’s new opus Anathem for Christmas. It’s a big, beautiful, absolutely glorious SF book. Maybe I should qualify that with a “so far,” since the book is nearly 900 pages long and I’m only about 150 in. Regardless, it’s a wonderful and I am thoroughly enjoying it.¹

But what’s curious about the book is its approach to the dreaded SF convention of the infodump. You’ve seen them before — the few paragraphs of text (often in italics) that quickly bring readers up to speed, telling them about the robots/hyperdrive/fractious interstellar politics that will drive the story. SF movies are particularly bad about this. Take the famous opening crawl of Star Wars, for example, or the beginning of Alien or Blade Runner. Terminator 2 features a bit of opening narration.

Anathem, on the other hand, doesn’t use this crutch. Well, sort of. It’s set on a fictional world that, unlike most in SF, has a long history of several thousand years. In order to bring the reader up to speed with the strange politics, religions, and history, the book has:

• An author’s note, complete with a four-page, 6,000-year timeline
• Dictionary definitions of made-up words spaced liberally throughout the text
• A glossary of terms
• Three appendices

That’s quite a lot! But all this information is more helpful to the reader, in the end, than doing it any other way. It helps preserve the integrity of the narrative and — here’s the best part — gives readers options. Those who want to forgo the timeline and endnotes and blah blah blah can just dive in and let the story reveal itself to them. Others² can take the big picture approach. This isn’t as elegant as a solution as Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell’s footnotes, but then again Neal Stephenson’s world is quite a bit more complex than the alternate history dreamed up by Susanna Clarke.

In a way, Anathem reminds me of The Name of the Rose — the monastery-like setting, the world poised on the edge of disaster, the young and naïve (and overeducated) narrator. I hope that the end satisfies just as much.

Robin writes a book (and you get a copy) →

Robin Sloan is writing a novella. Rather than try to find a publisher for it — a difficult proposition for most writers, since few publishing houses will touch a novella from all but the most established authors — he’s turning to the Internet. Using Kickstarter, a crowd-sourcing web site for funding projects and endeavors, he’s hoping to raise enough money to self-publish the finished book.

Sloan has already published two short stories to his blog, accompanied by gorgeous cover art: Mr. Penumbra’s Twenty-Four-Hour Book Store and The Writer & the Witch. They’re both available on Amazon for the Kindle, each for 99¢.

This definitely sounds like the coming new model of publishing. Sloan quickly surpassed his $3,500 goal and is (right now) approaching $6,000 with 214 backers. That’s quite a bit more than the average advance for a first novel, let alone 30,000-word novella.