(1) THE UGLY SPACEMAN. Adam Roberts tells New Scientist readers, “If I were a Martian, I’d start running now”.
Exploration has never been neutral, and it’s hard to believe that future exploration of the cosmos will be different. So: doesn’t SF have a duty to flavour its fantasies of boldly going with a smidgen of ideological honesty? “Exploration Fiction” is, after all, better placed than any other kind of literature to explore exploration itself.
(2) IN VINO VERITAS. The Dandelion Wine Fine Arts Festival takes place in Waukegan on June 3. The Chicago Tribune has the story —
Ray Bradbury wrote about the happiness machine in his iconic novel “Dandelion Wine,” published in 1957 and reminiscent of his early boyhood days exploring the ravines of Waukegan.
Sixty years later, the annual Dandelion Wine Fine Arts Festival in Bowen Park offers participants the chance to create pictures of their own “happiness machines” for the community art project….
“The festival is an important way to honor and pay tribute to Ray Bradbury and it’s a great time for everybody to finally get over winter — spring’s here — and it kicks off summer,” Rohrer said.
Bradbury served as the festival’s honorary chairman until his death in 2012. The festival tradition ensures his legacy will live forever in Waukegan. Typically more than 1,000 adults and children come to the festival each year, Rohrer said.
John King Tarpinian says of dandelion wine, “I am told it tastes like grass.”
(3) LITERARY TOURIST. Laura J. Miller’s “Dark Futures” adapts the age-old literature vs. science fiction dichotomy as a vehicle to administer a kick to Donald Trump from a different angle. However, that still forces her to discuss actual writers and books, a discussion she ends with this malediction:
Science fiction has always promised its readers fictional wonders they can’t get in other genres, stories in which the stakes are high and the ideas are heady. What’s surprising is not that literary novelists are increasingly taking up science fiction’s tools, but that more of them didn’t try it sooner. Now, as the present crumbles away into a future that evolves more quickly than most of us can track, it seems impossible to write about contemporary life without writing science fiction. But the secret to doing it well doesn’t lie in suspenseful chase scenes, weighty messages or mind-blowing existential puzzles. That stuff can be fun, but it can also feel pretty thin without something that’s supposed to be a specialty of literary novelists: the fullest appreciation of humanity in its infinite variety and intricacy. Do justice to that, and the wonders will take care of themselves.
The article enraged a whole handful of sf writers, quoted by Jason Sanford in his rebuttal post, “Laura Miller, or what happens when a literary critic loathes genre fiction but knows that’s where the best stories are?”
So. Much. Fail. In. One. Essay. And before you believe I’m biased because I’m one of those lowly SF authors who need step aside for my literary betters, check out the reaction of other authors to Miller’s words:
- English author Joanne Harris, known for many award-winning novels including Chocolat, said she wanted to flip her table at Miller’s comment that the “specialty of literary novelists (is) the fullest appreciation of humanity in its infinite variety and intricacy.”
- Critic and author Damien Walter said “It’s a bad essay, more for not recognising that fantasy, imagination and myth existed as part of literature before the SF genre was born.“
- After reading the essay SF author Alex Acks added “Apparently none of us can write a character to save our lives.“
- Author Felicia C. Sullivan said about the essay that “Lit fiction authors are often the most irritating. SF is hard and brilliant (with a canon) and isn’t something to which a writer panders.“
Part of the problem with the essay, beyond Miller’s actual condescending words, is that she overlooks the ability of SF authors to write at the level of the authors she’s praising. She grudgingly gives William Gibson and Karen Joy Fowler minor props but ignores the stylistic and literary ability of SF masters like Samuel R. Delany, Ursula K. Le Guin, Gene Wolfe, N. K. Jemisin, Connie Willis and so many others.
(4) TRAINING WHEELS. The Telegraph explains “Why Harry Potter fans will like the new Bank of Scotland £10 note”.
An image of the Glenfinnan Viaduct – part of the West Highland Railway Line that was made famous by the Harry Potter movies – will remain on the reverse of the design, but with the addition of a steam locomotive hauling a heritage tourist train.
(5) BINDING PLANS. Provided they don’t let the Doctor himself navigate, “A TARDIS-inspired shared library is coming to Woodbridge” this weekend.
Fans of Doctor Who will have a new destination to check out in Detroit. On Saturday, June 3 at noon, a TARDIS-inspired shared library will be installed at the corner of Vermont and Warren.
Dan Zemke has been a fan of Doctor Who and wanted to build a TARDIS (a Police Box time machine that stands for Time and Relative Dimension in Space). It can transport a person anywhere in time and space, kind of like a great book. Inspired by his brother Jon, who rehabs houses in Woodbridge and had a large mural painted on one prominent home last year, Dan decided to create a practical use for it and build it into a library. With the help of his dad, the time machine/library is now ready to be installed.
It’s big — 10 feet tall and likely weighs a ton — and they’re seeking book donations since it can hold so many. Zemke says he’d like to include a large book where people can write and share their own stories.
The public is invited to the installation at noon on June 3. And if you have some books to contribute, feel free to bring them.
(6) FOURTH STAGE LENSMAN. Joe Vasicek experiences “What it’s like to write after a life interruption”. His post takes readers from Stage Zero through Four.
Stage 0: Procrastination
I guess I should write — but first, I should check my email. Also, there’s a couple of publishing tasks I need to do. I’m also kind of hungry, come to think of it.
Wow, those publishing tasks took a lot longer than I thought they would. I could start writing now, but I’d only have half an hour, and what can I possibly get done in that time? Maybe I should just relax for a bit and play this addictive online game…
Stage 1: BIC HOC
All right, no more excuses. It’s butt in chair, hands on keyboard time!
What’s wrong with my chair? Did someone put a magnet in it? It seems like my butt gets repulsed every time I try to sit down in it. I can knock off a couple of paragraphs, but then I have to get up and pace for a while. Or do some chores. Or–
No! I’ve got to focus. But man, it feels like I’m pulling teeth. The words just aren’t coming. It’s been more than an hour, and how much have I written? Holy crap, that’s pathetic.
Well, it’s the end of the day, and I only managed a few hundred words, but that’s better than nothing I guess.
(7) BACK FROM THE SHADOWS. Carl Slaughter observes:
NBC cancelled the Constantine live action series after only one season. CW’s Arrow series brought the Constantine character in for 2 episodes. Now CW is giving the Alan Moore-created comic book character another crack at a television series through animation. Constantine actor Matt Ryan will return to voice the animated version. Here’s a history of Constantine.
(8) BERKELEY OBIT. Makeup artist Ron Dursley Berkeley (1931-2017) died May 9.
His 50-year career included working on George Pal’s The Time Machine (1960), The Seven Faces of Dr. Lao, and Star Trek. He won one Primetime Emmy, and was nominated four times altogether.
His non-genre work spanned The Manchurian Candidate, Anne of a Thousand Days, and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
(9) COMIC SECTION. John King Tarpinian recommends the librarian humor in today’s Farcus.
(10) ADA PALMER. In May 2017, Ada Palmer came out with Seven Surrenders, the second in her Terra Ignota series. The Will to Battle comes out in December 2017.
In a future of near-instantaneous global travel, of abundant provision for the needs of all, a future in which no one living can remember an actual war — a long era of stability threatens to come to an abrupt end.
For known only to a few, the leaders of the great Hives, nations without fixed locations, have long conspired to keep the world stable, at the cost of just a little blood. A few secret murders, mathematically planned. So that no faction can ever dominate, and the balance holds. And yet the balance is beginning to give way.
Mycroft Canner, convict, sentenced to wander the globe in service to all, knows more about this conspiracy the than he can ever admit. Carlyle Foster, counselor, sensayer, has secrets as well, and they burden Carlyle beyond description. And both Mycroft and Carlyle are privy to the greatest secret of all: Bridger, the child who can bring inanimate objects to life.
(11) MARVEL INVADES GOTHAM. You can find Marvel at BookCon 2017 starting tomorrow:
This weekend, Marvel returns to New York’s Javits Center for BookCon 2017, spotlighting how Marvel continues to branch out and bridge the divide between pop culture and book buyers, librarians, and book fans of all ages.
This Thursday, June 1st, join novelists Jason Reynolds (Miles Morales: Spider-Man), R. L. Stine (Man-Thing), and Margaret Stohl (Mighty Captain Marvel) as they are joined by some of the biggest names from the House of Ideas — as well as some surprise Mighty Marvel Guests! These blockbuster creators will discuss bringing their prose skills to Marvel’s graphic fiction, bringing Marvel characters into the prose world, and the exciting universal appeal of Marvel’s new wave of graphic novels.
Can’t make it to the convention? Follow along on Marvel.com and @Marvel on Twitter.
(12) SINCEREST FORM OF FLATTERY. The passing of actor Roger Moore prompted Dwayne Day to consider the actor’s legacy as the face of the James Bond franchise in an article for The Space Review.
Roger Moore passed away on May 23 at the age of 89. Moore, who was born in London in 1927, was best known for playing James Bond in seven movies between 1973 and 1985, more Bond movies than any other actor. Moore’s Bond appearances included the 1979 film Moonraker, the highest-grossing Bond movie until Daniel Craig rebooted the franchise in the 2000s. Moonraker is one of several Bond movies with a space theme, but the only one where James Bond travels into space.
Moonraker often tops critics’ lists of the worst Bond movie made, although it sometimes ties for that dubious honor. Like most Bond films, it recycled a lot of over-used plot devices: the megalomaniacal billionaire bent on world destruction, lame double-entendres, blatant sexism, dumb quips Bond makes upon dispatching a bad guy, the amazing coincidence that Bond happens to possess exactly the right gizmo he needs at the moment of maximum peril, and the absurdity of a “spy”with brand name recognition whom everybody recognizes the second he walks through the door. But these were the franchise’s fault, not Moore’s…
Moonraker was made because producer Cubby Broccoli saw the box office returns from Star Wars and decided that his next Bond movie should be set in space. Broccoli was shameless, but his decision paid off handsomely, with a worldwide gross of $210 million in then-year dollars. Although Moonraker frequently rates among the worst Bond movies, it made more money than any other Bond film for the next 16 years. Moore reprised the role three more times.
(13) WHEN VENUS WAS A SOGGY MESS. A Bradbury story with sound effects — radio reinvented! “THE LONG RAIN, by Ray Bradbury, sound-designed & narrated by Alexander Rogers”.
THE LONG RAIN is my personal favorite short story from Ray Bradbury’s classic body of tales, The Illustrated Man. Written in 1950, it paints a deadly and seductive image of an interminably rainy planet of Venus. Admittedly, science now shows us Venus is more of a lead oven than a drenched rainscape, but let’s not take Venus literally in this sense. I’ve always felt that planets in sci-fi are more of a mental/spiritual arena in which to place relatable, earthly characters.
Bradbury’s writing here is so poetic and so visual, I just knew a vocal narration wasn’t enough. An audiobook like this deserves a rain soundtrack, complete with soggy footsteps and storms and rivers and shimmering things. May you enjoy the sound design as well as the characters!
(14) THE DOG DAYS. Once I read John Scalzi’s opening tweet I knew it was going to be a slow news day….
Dog produced a fart of such potency that it actually woke me up. Good morning, Twitter.
— John Scalzi (@scalzi) May 30, 2017
(15) REALLY FINICKY. Mashable has a funny video: “Cute kitty devastates the crew of the Nostromo in this recut trailer of ‘Aliens'”.
The spacecraft Nostromo has an unwanted guest wreaking havoc on the crew. No, it’s not a bloodthirsty Alien… but an adorable kitten? Watch what happens in this re-imagined trailer.
[Thanks to John Hertz, JJ, Martin Morse Wooster, John King Tarpinian, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jack Lint.]
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First!
@6: I’m not sure whether it’s more amusing or more painful. But it sounds entirely plausible — not just for writing but for any large project (e.g., programming).
[2nd]
[information tracking sequence activated]
Another cartoon scribble from the shirt pocket notebooks: Indiana Jones, grimly examining an airplane inconveniently full of a particular life form: “Kittens. Why does it always have to be kittens?”
WE ALSO SCROLL PIXELS
(16) The f*#%-ing hilarious aspect of this youtube video is that Gene Roddenberry would have applauded Ashley Judd and had Captain Kirk figure out how to take down the government she was railing against, as he did Patterns of Force, the Return of the Archons, and other episodes in which Kirk found the governments offensive. Roddenberry was an SJW before the term was invented.
Fifth???
Real fifth!
Bruce A: For those who will be wondering, I had a side conversation with JJ about #16 and decided to trim it out of the Scroll.
Feel free to delete my comment if you’d like.
Here’s an article from The New Republic about Amazon’s latest brick and mortar bookshop in New York City. Check out which book the author finally bought.
Good choice, but if only they’d been a filer, they could’ve discovered that book much sooner and without having to brave the Amazon bookstore.
Mike
I feel cheated!
Also, moving tomorrow.
I believe that only a Trump supporter would have found it funny, you’re better off not wasting the time to get to “the funny part”. Good luck with the move!
Lis Carey on May 31, 2017 at 8:45 pm said:
I saw it. You’re not being cheated.
Bravo!
(12) Whether Moore was Bond in the most films depends, I think, on whether you count Never Say Never Again, which was Connery’s seventh time playing someone called James Bond, but which technically wasn’t part of the series proper.
I have a soft spot for Moonraker, terrible though it is — it was the first Bond film I ever saw in the theater. Subsequently, I checked out the Fleming novel from the library and was very confused because I kept waiting for the space shuttles to appear.
Speaking of Adam Roberts, if no one has mentioned this yet he is going through all of H G Wells writings and blogging informatively about them. The Time Machine essay was brilliant in my opinion. The whole blog will be on my Best Related next year unless some stellar stuff comes out in the next half year.
http://wellsattheworldsend.blogspot.ca
(1) I don’t know anything about Adam Roberts, but I hope that the way he came across in that piece was due to bad editing or something; he seems to have read hardly any science fiction from the last 60-70 years, or to be counting on his audience not having read any. A skeptical attitude toward human space colonization, based on the history of colonialism, is in no way a new or overlooked theme in SF. It’s sort of as if he were proposing that SF writers should finally start addressing the problematic labor exploitation aspects of human-robot relations, instead of always writing about how great it is to have cute helpful robots.
And speaking of Best Related, I am actually quite enjoying Traveller of Worlds, and I don’t really enjoy Silverberg’s books all that much, ha. Really nice wide range of topics discussed keeps my brain going for a while. Likely won’t beat Gaiman, Le Guin or Hurley for top spot, but I’ve been surprised before.
@Eli Well I can definitely confirm he is very up to date in his reading. He is a voracious reader and reviewer on nearly every subgenre of sf/f. I haven’t read the article yet, so can’t speak to that
ETA: He also has a history of science fiction from Palgrave that is so up to date that it includes the puppy fiasco, so he’s definitely aware of the current field. (It’s an amazing book)
Lis Carey: I feel cheated!
It was one of those Star Trek video mashups where the editor has skilfully intercut crew dialogue and reactions with a different video. I think this is the first one I’ve seen where it was done quite maliciously, though, with a heaping helping of misogyny, by a YouTuber who, among other things on his channel, presents the John Birch Society as a positive force. 😐
Unless you have a lot of spoons for that sort of thing, I really don’t think you want to see it.
@stuckinhistory: Well, despite my skepticism about Roberts on modern SF, that Wells blog does look pretty interesting, so thanks.
(However, the first post that caught my eye, on In the Days of the Comet, has a rather odd take on the book in my opinion: I found the first, pre-comet section of the book to be by far the least interesting part, while Roberts seems to feel the opposite, and he also focuses almost entirely on the free-love theme while ignoring other interesting aspects of Wells’s attempt to describe an anxiety-free world. It’s still a nicely detailed reading though. My own review is only a tiny sketch by comparison.)
@Eli
Always happy to add to others’ reading plates.
I don’t always agree with Roberts, but I almost always learn something and that keeps me coming back. And his novels are full of an awareness of past genre works that makes it easy for Robert’s to exploit what people think will happen and then subvert it.
(3): I read that Laura Miller piece a few days ago and frankly find Sanford’s reaction (and those of the other writers he quotes) incomprehensible; he seems to have been so determined on taking offense that he almost entirely misread it.
@stuckinhistory: Okay, then how come he’s so far behind in suggesting SF should deal with colonialism? Just one example, “The Word For World Is Forest” was published 43 years ago.
@lurkertype: For that matter, if I had to guess what the most widely read work of space colonization fiction in the 20th century was— certainly the most likely to be mentioned in any mainstream literary context, taught in high schools, etc.— I’d say The Martian Chronicles, 67 years ago. Not exactly a cheerful picture of humans’ benevolent light touch on another world, despite Bradbury being considerably more conservative than Le Guin.
@lurkertype
Oh I won’t defend that article beyond it’s small length, and he did say with “few exceptions”.
But I do know that this calls for more examples of exploration fiction to add to the mountain of future reading! Maybe James Nicoll can make us a list in the future 🙂
I’ll happily have Adam Roberts proved wrong if that’s more book for me to read
ETA Lapham’s Quarterly’s new issue is Discovery. Coincidence?
@stuckinhistory: Not to beat a dead horse here, but if Roberts thinks there are “very few exceptions”, then it’s odd that he can provide absolutely no examples of what he considers to be the rule of purely positive exploration stories, other than Star Trek. And no examples of the supposedly overwhelming preponderance of the “alien invader” theme, other than Doctor Who (which btw has quite a few stories about greedy human beings causing problems for aliens, too). Once you get past the 1950s or early 60s, that’s an absurd picture of the genre.
@Eli
Well it gave me an excuse to email him, so we’ll take the question straight to the horse source! I’ll report back or maybe I can bring him to the comment section 🙂
Even TOS had its commentaries on how boldly going wasn’t such a good idea for the natives: “A Private Little War” ends with Kirk directly comparing himself to Satan!
(3) LITERARY TOURIST
The Ursula le Guin book in BRW has a helpful essay on this very point – Genre: A Word Only a Frenchman Could Love
Her tldr was “There are many bad books. There are no bad genres.”
(Incidentally, I think the le Guin may be my BRW front runner at the moment. I’d never read any of her non-fiction before, which is clearly my loss!)
I happened to be visiting London with my family in summer 1979, and by coincidence we ended up outside the theater where Moonraker was about to have its London premiere; as a result I got to see Richard Kiel (without steel teeth) from about 15 feet away. As far as I know, he’s the only Bond antagonist to appear in two consecutive movies.
I also recall seeing (back in the U.S. soon afterward) a mass-market paperback novelization titled James Bond and Moonraker. Someone must have decided that the movies and Fleming’s novels had diverged so much that commissioning this book was more worthwhile than rereleasing the original Moonraker novel. Was any other such Bond novelization commissioned during the era when Fleming’s original titles hadn’t yet all been used as film titles?
@gottacook
I think there were two or three examples of “welp, the movie plot is nothing to do with the book, better write a new book.”
@Mark: LeGuin’s nonfiction is an absolute joy. She’s so matter-of-fact and insightful at the same time.
16) I was showing the kid some ancient internet memes and picked out a recent remix of one. It was slickly done and I took over a minute to realize it was a pro-Trump remix. It took the kid a little longer. It was an educational experience. We then cleansed our palate with my even older music videos and the kid’s very new Vine compilations.
@gottacook @Mark The first Total Recall diverged from the book so much that the author himself wrote the novelization for the film (as he thought the film was better).
(5) That’s not too far from me – I will have to visit some time.
@ GSLamb: The first Total Recall certainly did diverge from the original story but it was made eight years after Philip Dick died. It was novelized by Piers Anthony.
Now, as the present crumbles away into a future that evolves more quickly than most of us can track, it seems impossible to write about contemporary life without writing science fiction.
Bruce Sterling defined “nowpunk” as contemporary fiction set in the time period in which the fiction is being published.
@GSLamb
The idea of a novelisation of a movie of a novel is a bit odd to say the least! Some googling reveals those aren’t the only examples though. Apparently Jumanji went book-movie-different book, and someone also took the money to write “Bram Stoker’s Dracula”, but the most concerning one might be Great Expectations by Deborah Chiel.
3: they’re getting desperate; many “lit” authors have tried to go the genre/SF route, but if they’re following this essay on how to go about it…
the only reason lit fic is in the ascendancy is through suppression. The lid is coming off, largely I suspect, because of other media. Covered bridges and an illicit affair are weak stuff when compared to infinity stones and budding affairs.
re: novelisation of a movie of a novel.
There’s the odd case of Steven Gould’s Jumper: Griffin’s Story
My understanding, based on reading stuff on the internet*, is that the movie “Jumper” diverged very far from Gould’s novel Jumper. Gould subsequently wrote sequels to his original novel, which are very good IMO, and also a prequel to the movie (Jumper: Griffin’s Story) which is unrelated and apparently incompatible with the other novels.
*disclaimer: I have not seen the movie and haven’t read Jumper: Griffin’s Story. I have read, and enjoyed greatly, Jumper, Reflex, Impulse, and Exo
No cov is complete without its fefe
They could have asked Terry Brooks to do the novelisation of the Lothr movies.
@Nickp:
And then there is Alistair McLain’s Force 10 from Navarone, which confused high school-me by referring to people and incidents that appeared nowhere in The Guns of Navarone. Years and years later I found out about the movie and learned enough about its plot to realize that the book F10fN was a sequel to the movie, and not the book. I’m still a little cross at someone for not putting a warning in the book about this.
Mister Dalliard:
The first Total Recall certainly did diverge from the original story but it was made eight years after Philip Dick died. It was novelized by Piers Anthony.
I recall an angry letter (to SciFiWeekly?) decades ago, from someone who thought that the “Total Recall” movie was based on the Piers Anthony novel (and not the other way around).
One of the things I noticed during my radio drama binge is that there were a fair number of SF stories from the 1950s where the authors were ambivalent or even hostile to what happened to the Native Americans.
David Morrell, who wrote the novel First Blood (on which the Stallone movie was based) wrote the novelization of Rambo: First Blood Part 2, which was a sequel to the events as shown in the movie rather than as portrayed in the book.
Wbua Enzob jnf qrnq: gb ortva jvgu. Gurer vf ab qbhog jungrire nobhg gung.
David Morrell wrote a deeply disturbing book about a rightist militia that targets a man and his family. I read it over thirty years ago under interesting circumstances and now cannot remember the title. Maybe that’s for the best. Oh, crap. It came back like a convenience store burrito: First Blood. Grim, real grim.
No, that was wrong. Testament, about which the author said, “This is my most disturbing novel. That’s not hype. Some readers said it gave them nightmares.” I believe him. And I kind of which I hadn’t thought back enough to pull this into my mind just now, but I did.
Not quite the book of the film of the book, but reading Bernard Cornwell’s Shape books in chronological order rather than publication order can be jarring as you swap between the original small dark Londoner Sharpe and larger fairer Yorkshire Sean Bean.
Then there was the author of a slightly historical (set somewhere between 1930s and 50s, I’ve forgotten who it was) detective series who realised he was now writing the TV adaptation version of his leading character…
I admit I haven’t read First Blood (or Testament, for that matter). I did go through a Morrell phase back in the late 1980s(?), but limited myself to his big conspiracy potboilers — Brotherhood of the Rose, League of Night & Fog, etc.
The James Bond wiki says that there were novelizations of The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker by Christopher Wood. After that we start hitting John Gardner territory.
Blofeld turns up in a string of Bond films, but each time he’s played by someone new. (Much like Felix Leiter, who did get played by the same actor at least once, but not in consecutive movies.)