I guess it’s kind of of odd that I write for a publication that features adventure sword and sorcery type fantasy when that really isn’t my thing. Nothing against it; it’s just that with so much to read, there has to be something to really grab my attention for me to pick up a traditional epic fantasy, particularly if it means a commitment to multiple volumes. Here’s one that has, Robert Redick’s The Red Wolf Conspiracy. To find out why, read more here.
Courtesy of Locus comes this link to, of all places, Penthouse, an article about Geek Love. Don’t get too excited, this is rated PG-13, despite its source.
Who knew being a geek was a way to meet cool chicks? Yet another thing I lived too long past to know existed. Back in my day, geekdom meant girls didn’t want anything to do with you. And, really, scroll down to the picture of the guys dressed up like Ghostbusters…maybe my ideas of sex appeal are just outdated.
Today’s New York Times has a short piece, including an audio clip, on Ray Bradbury. While it is ostensibly about his affection for public libraries and his efforts to keep them open now that funding cutbacks resulting from California’s budget crisis threatens their existence, it also contains two interesting tidbits, one which you probably already know and one which you probably don’t:
1. Bradbury and Bo Derek are buddies.
2. Bradbury hates the Internet.
While the first has nothing to do with libraries, the second does. And, at 89, Bradbury looks very much like the crotchety old man he is in proclaiming the Internet a waste of time.
The spring issue of Conjunctions, the literary magazine of Bard College, is called “Between and Betwixt: Impossible Realism,” described as “postfantasy fictions that begin with the premise that the unfamiliar or liminal really constitutes a solid ground on which to walk.” This is a follow-up to its “New Wave Fabulist” issue back in 2003, which I reviewed for Locus.
I like the title of this new edition (makes more sense to me than new wavey fabulous), though I’m not quite sure what “postfantasy” means, other than that because it is published by academia, “post”-things are kind of popular, as are terms like “liminal.” You can see the table of contents here, with links to some stories available on-line by Elizabeth Hand, Ben Marcus, Jonathan Carroll and Jeff VanderMeer.
Something I’m putting on my reading list.
So a lot of people are on the edge of their seats because Apple is introducing a new iPhone model next week, and some people have fuzzy pictures supposedly leaked from China that purportedly show that the new model will have a matte black case. I can hardly contain my excitement. I’m cynical enough to think that Apple itself might be leaking the sneak peeks as a way to generate buzz about what sounds to me as just some feature improvements so people will want to stand in line for two weeks at the wireless store until the new model is available and they can belong to the technical elite for a couple of days or so.
All of which reminds me of a recent short story by Bruce Sterling, “Black Swan” in the March-April 2009 (Issue 221) of Interzone. The protagonist is an Italian blogger-journalist (sounds a little like Sterling himself in some respects) who gets insider tips on new technologies from a mysterious source who is so secretive he can’t be Googled. There’s a lot of techno-speak and the plot hinges on the notion that the 1980s (when, perhaps not coincidentally, Sterling and his fellow cyberpunks first started making names for themselves) was a critical historical point from which multiple realities branched. The story also features Nicholas Sarkozy (yes, the president of France) and his actress-singer wife (yes, that wife).
Fun stuff and much more interesting than the gloss on the iPhone.
I’m looking forward to China Miéville’s new novel, The City and the City. In the meantime, here’s an interview I did with him just as his star was ascending.
Given all the discussion of late about reboots, I wonder why no one has ever thought to revisit this classic. Forbidden Planet was my Star Wars when I was in fifth grade. In the New York metro area, Channel 9 had a feature called “Million Dollar Movie” that used to play a particular movie ever day throughout the week in the early evening. Forbidden Planet was a regular staple, and whenever it was in rotation, I was there in front of the TV (which, to give you an idea of how old I am, displayed only black and white).
One of the things that was particularly cool about this flick is that it opened up a window to the nomenclature of Freudian repression and Shakespeare, all dressed up in space adventure. My guess is that a reboot would probably ruin it; for every Star Trek or Batman there’s A War of the Worlds starring Tom Cruise…
I’m not saying I want to see a remake, but given the limited imagination of much commercial filmdom, I wonder why no has considered it.
The notion of the female warrior, while rooted somewhat in factual history (e.g., Joan of Arc), is largely an idealized notion of mythology, science fiction and fantasy. I suppose there is doctoral dissertation potential in figuring out why patriarchal societies that at best otherwise relegate women to supportive roles away from the battlefield (and at worst and more typically brutally victimize women as spoils of war) generate these tales of powerful females who can lop off a head or two as well as the next guy. Speaking as a guy whose adolescent sexual fantasies were heavily influenced by Emma Peel, the black leather-clad consort of John Steed in saving the free world from various madmen bent on world domination by delivering a quick blow to the groin, I’m guessing it’s some kind of inversion of castration anxiety.
During science fiction’s New Wave movement in 1960s, a fecund period of feminist fiction in general, the mythos of the female warrior served as an apt metaphor. Joanna Russ’s renowned series of stories collected as The Adventures of Alyx depict the titular heroine as both sensual and tough, a thief and assassin who, in breaking with the stereotype, isn’t Amazonian beauteous. Also breaking the mold is that Alyx is not depicted consistently throughout the series, though the one constant is that she is a “real” person, as opposed to the cliché of the one dimensional fantasy hero, male or female. Alyx was an inspiration for many genre writers, in particular Mary Gentle, whose “realistic fantasies” typically feature a strong, but flawed (as is of course any human) warrior woman, most notably in Ash: A Secret History.
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Okay, so I’m interested in seeing what everyone is calling “the reboot” of Star Trek, though I could be content to wait until the DVD comes out. And, sure, there’s a lot of buzz (as well as some discussion in this forum), if only because the franchise appears to be doing something interesting, for a change. Fine. But all this blather about the “significance” of Star Trek, particularly this article by Dave Itzkoff in The New York Times is really too much.
Itzkoff characterizes Star Trek as “supremely influential,” and I guess in that it has promoted grown-ups dressing in space pajamas and wearing pointy ears and expecting to be taking seriously, I suppose he’s right.
Look, I’m old enough to have watched the original Star Trek when it was first on television. As I recall, I lost interest sometime in the middle of the second season. Because, even then I realized what a lot of commentators such as Itzkoff overlook: for a supposed science fiction series, it was pretty bad science fiction.
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A few posts ago, I asked if, given current economic and political conditions, the next thematic trend in SF and fantasy will be a return to woeful tales of doom and disaster. Sure enough, lately I’m coming across signs that the zeitgeist might be finding a warm place in Cold War era end-of-the-world narratives.
In yesterday’s Wall Street Journal there’s a short review of Genesis by Bernard Beckett. Yeah, I know, the title is cringe-inducing, but it actually fits (both the title and the author’s surname), at least according to writer Jeffrey Trachetenberg’s description:
…survivors in a world destroyed by nuclear and biological weapons are forced to re-think what makes the human species special…the issue of machine self awareness emerges as pivotal.
Not exactly original, but, then again, “nothing is new under the sun” as Ecclesiastes noted back in antiquity and, as Trachetenberg notes, revisiting this time honored trope is in part a result of “deep-rooted international concerns about such issues as global warming and the 9/11 attacks.”