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Author: Soyka

Max Headroom Re-re-returns

Max Headroom Re-re-returns

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downloadedfile1If you don’t understand the headline, you’re probably too young to remember Max Headroom, originally a British television movie that became a short-lived series for American broadcast (1987-1988) featuring a computer generated talking head–that would be Max–who later became a music video host, a “spokesperson” for New Coke (and if you don’t know what New Coke was, you’re really too young to care about this), and later brought out of retirement in the United Kingdom to explain the switch from analog to digital TV (this, you might remember). Though, today, any 12 year old with a cheap laptop could probably program a character like Max, back in the 1980s this was beyond the technical reach and budget constraints of broadcast television; Max was played by Canadian actor Matt Frewer outfitted in a latex get-up to make him appear pixalated.

I was excited to learn that the series had recently been released for the first time on DVD: I vaguely remembered the program from its initial broadcast (because, yeah, I’m that old) and was eager to revisit something I remember as being very cool.

Alas, as Tom Wolfe used to say, you can’t go home again.

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Not-So Short Fiction Review: Prospero Lost

Not-So Short Fiction Review: Prospero Lost

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prospero-lost2Prospero Lost, by L. Jagi Lamplighter
Tor (448 pages, $7.99, June 2010)

Prospero Lost is the first book of a trilogy and the first published novel by L. Jagi Lamplighter, whose name I assume is not a pseudonym,  though it sounds as if it could be a character in her own book.  As you might gather from the title, the story has something to do with what many critics perceive as Shakespeare’s alter ego in his final play, The Tempest, while also somehow involving hell and rebellious offspring given the  allusion to Milton’s Paradise Lost. What you might not expect is just about every fantasy trope you can think of, including (I kid you not), Santa Claus.

It’s perhaps not surprising that Lamplighter is married to John C. Wright, who also favors the everything-including-the-kitchen sink approach to fantasy and manages to make it work. In many respects, Lamplighter’s book reminds me of Wright’s Chronicles of Chaos series which deals with the foibles of family relationships among seeming humans possessed of fantastical natures. Of course, the root of this is Greek/Roman mythology in which imperfect gods irrationally vie among each other out of jealously, envy, egotism or other petty and irrational motivations.  They are, in other words, normal human beings dressed up in magical togas.

According to Lamplighter, the inspiration for her novel’s fantasy world  stemmed from a roleplaying game.

Somewhere in the early Nineties, John and I were invited to play in a roleplaying game run by a friend. He was a new moderator for us, so I decided to write a short story demonstrating what my character could do, so there would be no misunderstandings. For my character, I picked Miranda, the daughter of the magician Prospero from Shakespeare’s Tempest, only in the game, Prospero would turn out to be one of the magicians in the game background…We only played in that game a few times, but I liked the character and the story I had written.

Miranda is the narrator and focus of the novel (indeed, the overarching title of the trilogy is Prospero’s Daughter) and Prospero remains totally off-stage.  He is lost, and Miranda is trying to find out what happened to him.

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Birthdays and Funerals

Birthdays and Funerals

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sh_headStrange Horizons not only pioneered the notion of an on-line “magazine” devoted to speculative fiction, but is still around today to talk about it.  In fact, Strange Horizons is celebrating its tenth anniversary, which also happens to coincide to its annual fund drive. The magazine is somewhat unique in that it operates on a “PBS-like” donation model (without the nature and cooking shows coupled with pop concerts from performers whose better days date back to the 1970s that  your financial support of  somehow makes you a last bastion of “high culture”).  It seems to have worked.  Take a look at its very first issue.

On a more somber note, this just in on the continuing decline of the physical bookstore, albeit the big box model that a few years ago everyone was lamenting was killing off neighborhood independent bookstores.

Whatever the fate of the physical book, the future looks like it might be in the hands of the little guy who can figure out a niche to, if not thrive in, at least be comfortable in. Not such a bad thing,

Short Fiction Roundup: And the winners are…

Short Fiction Roundup: And the winners are…

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The 2010 Hugo Award winners for various short fiction categories:6a00d8341ce22f53ef0105365ac432970c-200wi1

Best Novella: “Palimpsest” by Charles Stross (Wireless)

Best Novellette: “The Island” by Peter Watts (The New Space Opera 2)

Best Short Story: “Bridesicle” by Will McIntosh (Asimov’s 1/09)

And the best semiprozine goes to an online pub: Clarkesworld, edited by Neil Clarke, Sean Wallace, & Cheryl Morgan, the current issue of which features stories by Robert Reed and Stephen Gaskell.

Short Fiction Review #32: Bull Spec #2 Summer 2010

Short Fiction Review #32: Bull Spec #2 Summer 2010

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bullspec2a-1The unfortunately named Bull Spec (I’m assuming this is a reference to Bull Durham tobacco and/or the Kevin Costner movie that takes place in Durham, N.C. where the magazine is based and its intent to feature local writers of “speculative fiction”) has published its second issue as part of an ambitious plan in an age when print is on the decline to put out two more in 2010 and qualify as a quarterly magazine.  Editor Samuel Montgomery-Blinn responded to my complaint that the website looks like something from the 1990s that it was in fact built using software tools of that era because, for now, he’s more concerned about the look and quality of the print publication (also available as a pdf download).

In that, he’s succeeded in producing a full-size, glossy, thick stock, some color magazine that has a look and feel comparable to Interzone, featuring interviews, a serial graphic story, reviews. poetry and short fiction. While the magazine looks fresh and contemporary, like the website the short fiction is from another era, i.e., a pulp magazine of the 1940s. All five stories hinge on the main character coming to some realization about his/her plight in life due to some science fictional contrivance or fantastical occurrence. In every case, you see the O’Henry twist  long before it is supposed to surprise you.

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Short Fiction Roundup: World Fantasy Nominees

Short Fiction Roundup: World Fantasy Nominees

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readerLocus reports the ballot of nominees for the World Fantasy Awards.  It’s a little confusing.  I can’t seem to find the ballot on the World Fantasy site, which does references the “2009” nominees and winners for last year (meaning these were for works published in 2008 that won at the 2009 convention). Locus refers the “2009 Nominees,” by which it means works published in 2009 that will be awarded at the 2010 WF convention in October. Why this isn’t on the WF site I couldn’t say.  Now that I’ve cleared that up, here are the nominees in the novella and short story categories:

(Haven’t read any of these.  In fact, for the entire ballot, the only thing I’ve read is The City & The City by China Miéville.  Maybe I get extra credit for reading some of James Enge’s Morlock stories; his Blood of Ambrose is also a novel nominee.)

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Whither the Bookstore?

Whither the Bookstore?

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bn_logo2Following up on John’s post (and subsequent discussion) concerning the predicament of Barnes and Noble, which seems to be getting a taste of its own medicine as e-books and online book buying may relegate the superstore concept as nostalgic as the local independent book dealer, is this article from The New York Times. What’s interesting is the prediction that despite the growing acceptance of reading on handheld screens and website ordering, surviving independent stores may still flourish because of their personalized service to niche customers.

thin21Makes sense. Every time I go into an independent bookstore, I feel compelled to buy something even if I already have to many books I haven’t read yet, much less that I could get the book cheaper online (or even at Barnes and Noble). One reason I like to support these guys is that there’s something very attractive about “non-chain store” shopping, where owners have put their own individual stamp on the presentation and perusal of their wares.

True, they may not be as deep stocked as B&N (or at least used to be).  But, funny how the books they do carry in the fiction section are almost exactly the kinds of things I’m interested in.

To give B&N its due, though, I always thought it conveyed more a sense of a traditional bookshop than its much more troubled competitor, Borders. (Gone into one lately?  It’s like Waldenbooks on steroids, meaning appealing to the lowest common denominator is even more depressing when it’s bloated with stationary and puzzles).  And the people who worked there do seem to be knowledgeable and enthusiastic about books, unlike some of the clueless clerks you might find in a mall record store (do they still have those?).

As for what will happen to the physical book once we’re all reading on our Kindles or iPads or inner eyelid digital display inlays, check out this article by Rob Walker, also from theTimes.  I particularly like the idea of using an old discarded book to house your Kindle. And that someone could actually sell it for $25.

See, all those books bending your bookshelves do have some future value.  Get ’em while you can.

Short Fiction Review #31: Interzone Issue #229 July-August 2010

Short Fiction Review #31: Interzone Issue #229 July-August 2010

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225The lead story for the July/August issue of Interzone (the cover of which has nothing to do with its contents, serving instead as a panel for a226 complete artwork comprising all the issues in 2010) is “Mannikin” by Paul Evanby.  The story opens in July 1776, the date  of American declared independence from British colonial rule (sidenote:  the writer is Dutch and the magazine is published in the U.K.).  But this isn’t about Ben Franklin or Thomas Jefferson, and doesn’t even take place in the colonies, but rather signifies the irony of a revolution that resulted in freedom for  white Protestant male landowners who relied on the exploitation of  African-American slaves to maintain economic autonomy.

The title refers to artificial creatures  fashioned using 18th century pseudo-scientific notions of “animalcula” blowing about in the atmosphere that contain the essence of life; the male reproductive system somehow absorbs these animalcula (beware windy days!) to power sperm production.  Consequently, the “man”-nikins are entirely male, produced like fermented spirits out of barrels.

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Short Fiction Roundup: The Year’s Best

Short Fiction Roundup: The Year’s Best

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ed-al906_bkrvsc_dv_20100722175927Over at The Wall Street Journal, Martin Wooster has reviewed this year’s annual of Gardner Dozois picks so I don’t have to. What’s particularly interesting about this review is the contention that while most short fiction today is the output of navel gazing MFA candidates (and could not be possibly of interest to normal folks, like those who read The Wall Street Journal), genre magazines still publish quality traditional plot-driven stories once characteristic of mass circulation magazines that have long ago succumbed to short-attention reader spans and market vicissitudes.

As it happens, I stopped reading Asimov’s, which Dozois formerly edited, because I was coming across too many traditional plot-driven hard SF tales that are okay once in awhile, but, for my tastes, make for a kind of bland diet.  For largely the same reason, as well as for lack of time, I’ve become less obsessed with studying every iteration of The Year’s Best Science Fiction, though Wooster’s review may make me reconsider (even the ones he doesn’t like sound intriguing too me).  But as for whether genre magazines are the only home of short fiction that isn’t willfully obtuse in focusing on obsessions that matter only to a self-conscious elite (a charge frequently made of genre’s pulp forebears, funnily enough), I don’t know.

It’s been awhile since I’ve read much from the so-called literary magazines, and I probably haven’t read enough of them to know if this is more canard than truism.  I did use to get Glimmer Magazine, which, if I recall correctly, was the first place where I read anything by Junot Diaz, who wrote The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.

Depending on what you thought of that book may either prove or disprove Wooster’s point.