Here is the latest trailer for the new adventure film from Luc Besson (The Fifth Element) coming to theaters July 21, 2017.
In the 28th century, Valerian (Dane DeHaan) and Laureline (Cara Delevingne) are a team of special operatives charged with maintaining order throughout the human territories. Under assignment from the Minister of Defense, the two embark on a mission to the astonishing city of Alpha—an ever-expanding metropolis where species from all over the universe have converged over centuries to share knowledge, intelligence and cultures with each other. There is a mystery at the center of Alpha, a dark force which threatens the peaceful existence of the City of a Thousand Planets, and Valerian and Laureline must race to identify the marauding menace and safeguard not just Alpha, but the future of the universe.
By Carl Slaughter: Mike Resnick, in his latest column for Galaxy’s Edge, reminisces about the 1950s science fiction television series Science Fiction Theater. This is significant since Resnick is famous for giving up on television when he started writing award-winning speculative fiction and hasn’t watched an hour of television in 35 years.
Finally, for her birthday, I got Carol a complete set of bootleg DVDs of the fondly-remembered but never-released two-year, seventy-eight episode run of Science Fiction Theater from 1955 to 1957, a time when most purported science fiction movies were actually anti-science and usually ended with lines such as “There are some things man was not meant to know.”
Science Fiction Theater was like a breath of fresh air, because it was clearly of the opinion that there is nothing man wasn’t meant to know or learn. Each of these shows was introduced by Truman Bradley in a state-of-the-art lab (circa 1955) that I would kill to play in. He’d show a couple of related cutting-edge experiments, and then explain that the episode you were about to see extrapolated from the experiments he’d just demonstrated. No stars at all.
Well, there were a few stars. The second episode of the first season of Science Fiction Theater, “Time Is Just a Place,” starred Warren Stevens of Forbidden Planet fame. It was an adaptation of a short story, “Such Interesting Neighbors,” by Jack Finney of Invasion of the Body Snatchers fame and Of Missing Persons fame.
The main character, played superbly by Stevens, pretends to be an inventor to explain his amazing gadgets. He is from the future and shares with his neighbor a proposed science fiction story. This science fiction story within a science fiction story is the main character’s life story in coded form. The neighbor realizes the implications and plays along, asking questions about the proposed science fiction story to surreptitiously gather information about the future.
I also recall an episode entitled “Operation Flypaper” starring the late great speculative fiction actor Vincent Price.
Most of these episodes are available on YouTube — here’s a playlist.
Anyway, they always have the books to fall back on…
Leviathan Wakes sold ten times as many books last year as it did six years ago when it was brand new and nominated for the Hugo. https://t.co/kNr0Z0mSl6
(2) DON’T BE SHOCKED. Jim C. Hines didn’t expect people to be surprised when he told them “Yes, I Still Get Rejections”.
A while back, I posted something on Facebook about a rejection I’d received on a project. I was a bit taken aback when several people offered to “have a talk” with the editor. Others questioned the editor’s mental health for rejecting a Jim Hines story. It was flattering, in a way — I love that I have fans who are so enthusiastic about reading new stuff from me — but I think it might also reflect a basic misunderstanding.
Rejections are part of the job. They don’t suddenly stop when you become more successful. They’re less frequent, yes. Much less frequent, and my own mental well being is unspeakably grateful for that. But with the possible exception of folks like Rowling and King, we all risk rejection when we write.
Over the past year, I wrote a short story for an anthology that got cancelled. Another editor said they were interested, so I sent the story their way. They read it, said some nice things, and rejected the story. And they were right to do so….
(3) SF MUSEUM EXHIBIT. From June through August 2017, the Barbican Centre museum in London will present the exhibition Into The Unknown: A Journey Through Science Fiction, which is curated by historian and writer Patrick Gyger and will explore science fiction as an experimental genre. The Wire supplies the details in its article “A new Barbican exhibition will explore science fiction from a multidisciplinary angle”.
It’ll include more than 200 books, original manuscripts and typescripts, contemporary and existing art works, 60 film and TV clips, unseen footage, adverts, concept art, film props, comics, video games and robots.
Australian duo Soda_Jerk will present Astro Black, a two-channel video installation with a focus on Sun Ra’s theories of Afrofuturism and featuring footage of Kraftwerk, DJ Kool Herc, Afrika Bambaataa, Grandmaster Flash and Public Enemy. Plus Ben Frost and Daníel Bjarnason’s score inspired by Andrei Tarkovsky’s 1973 film Solaris will be performed with Poland’s Sinfonietta Cracovia, plus video accompaniment by Brian Eno and Nick Robertson.
Dubbed Analemma, the fanciful tower wouldn’t be built on the ground, but suspended in air by cables from an asteroid repositioned into geosynchronous Earth orbit just for the purpose.
Over the course of each day, the floating skyscraper would trace a figure-eight path over our planet’s surface, according to plans posted online by Clouds Architecture Office. It would swing between the northern and southern hemispheres, returning to the same point once every 24 hours.
The speed of the tower relative to the ground would vary depending upon which part of the figure eight it was tracing, with the slowest speeds at the top and bottom of each loop, the plans say. The asteroid’s orbit would be calibrated so that the slowest part of the tower’s path would occur over New York City.
…Analemma would be powered by solar panels and use recycled water. Lower floors would be set aside for business use, while sleeping quarters would be sited about two-thirds of the way up. The plans don’t say exactly how people would get on and off the building, though one illustration seem to show people parachuting from the tower to the ground.
You wrote in the acknowledgments of Binti that your daughter, Anyaugo, essentially came up with the plot of the novella. Was she also involved in plotting Binti: Home?
Anya didn’t come up with the whole plot of Binti. I was stuck on that ship with Binti and the murderous aliens; I knew the ending, but I wasn’t sure what should happen next. I told her about being stuck and she suggested something that went on to become a major part of the plot. The same happened with Binti: Home. When I write, Anya is very often around me or FaceTiming with me. So I’ll look up from writing and talk to her about what I’m writing. She always has something to say, and nine times out of ten, it’s good stuff. The same with part three. There was a major part in part three that we actually argued over because it was disturbing. I wanted one thing; she was like, “Heck no! You can’t do that.”
We live with my characters.
(6) GRRM AND LIBRARIANS.StokerCon is coming up April 27-30 aboard the Queen Mary in Long Beach, CA.
HWA is sponsoring Librarians’ Day at StokerCon 2017 – which is essentially a day pass for Thursday of StokerCon, as I haven’t seen anything requiring proof of being a librarian in the purchase information.
When the first footage of the film was released during CinemaCon, the reason for her ensemble was revealed. The plot involves four high-school students who are forced to clean out the basement of their school while in detention. They find an old video game (rather than a board game like in the version of the movie starring Robin Williams) and each chooses a character to play. The teenagers become the characters they selected, leading a nerdy boy to become The Rock’s character and a popular girl to become Jack Black‘s character.
A more shy, reserved teenage girl ends up becoming Karen Gillan‘s character. The video game is old and dusty, so presumably the reason that she is dressed in tiny clothing is because that’s how female video game characters used to be dressed.
Is that enough of a reason for a movie to dress the character this way? Should the objectification of the female lead in the movie become permissible because Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle’s film creators wanted to be hyper-accurate to old video games? Does the fear of being anachronistic by giving Gillan pants or a fully formed top justify the male gaze? Do the critics who hated Gillan’s outfit feel soothed by this explanation?
…They realize that, because they are in a video game, they each have video game powers. For example, Johnson’s character is super strong and Gillan’s character is a dance fighter, which they joke about. And also, she very quickly acknowledges how ridiculous it is that the game makes her outfit so skimpy. A kind of guide character tells them they have to place a jewel back into a statue to leave—but as they progress, the challenges get greater and greater. Killer animals, evil men on motorcycles, just lots of crazy stuff. And, like a video game, they each have three lives. If they lose those, they die for real.
(9) TODAY IN HISTORY
March 28, 1979 – Phantasm was released. John King Tarpinian adds, “Angus Scrimm, The Tall Man, used to come to Ray Bradbury’s Pandemonium Theater Company‘s plays.”
(10) IN GREAT DEMAND. James A. Owen’s seven-day Kickstarter to publish an Inklings Art Print Set hit 200% of its goal on Day One. These involve the illustrations he produced for Bandersnatch by Diana Pavlac Glyer.
Not only can you see the drawings of the individual Inklings at the Kickstarter site, several are matched with photos of scholars and fans who visited to the English locations and recreated the authors’ poses, which I found highly amusing.
(11)THE TRICORDER HAS ARRIVED. And in more than one version. The Washington Post’s Karen Heller, in “This ‘Star Trek’-inspired gizmo could win its inventors $9 million”, profiles George, Basil, and Gus Harris, who are hoping to win a prize of up to $9 million from the Qualcomm Foundation for producing the first successful “tricorder”–defined as a hand-held medical device that could detect blood pressure, diabetes, anemia, and nine other conditions. The rules are that this device has to weigh less than five pounds and can be mass-produced.
… Harris assembled a seven-member team — himself, three of his siblings and three friends — all of whom were managing full-time jobs. They worked nights and weekends in his home outside Philadelphia, crashed after 72-hour engineering marathons, churned out prototype after prototype on three 3-D printers in Harris’s jumble of an office, each plastic part taking up to 24 hours to fabricate and with his three children, ages 11 to 15, often overseeing sanding and wiring.
The XPrize field began with 312 teams from 38 countries.
Now, improbably, Harris’s group is one of two finalists for the $9 million prize. The winner is scheduled to be announced April 12.
Harris’s competition is Dynamical Biomarkers Group, as formidable as its name: a group of 50 physicians, scientists and programmers, many of them paid for their work, led by Harvard Medical School professor C.K. Peng, a physicist with a 29-page résumé, and backed by the Taiwanese cellphone leviathan HTC and the Taiwanese government.
So, this is basically a Basil and Goliath story….
Brothers George, Basil and Gus Harris examine prop tricorders from the Star Trek series. (Courtesy of XPRIZE)
The George Lucas Family Foundation has donated an additional $10 million to USC’s School of Cinematic Arts, expanding its support of student diversity, announced Dean Elizabeth M. Daley. The new endowment raises the Foundation’s total donation to $20 million.
Established in the fall 2016 semester with an initial $10 million, the George Lucas Family Foundation Endowed Student Support Fund for Diversity was created for students from underrepresented communities who qualify for financial support. African American and Hispanic students in both undergraduate and graduate programs receive priority consideration for support from the Fund. Students are known as George Lucas Scholars or Mellody Hobson Scholars….
Chekhov’s lesbiann. The principle that every reference to a minority in a fictional story must be relevant and irreplaceable. [This is a play on “Chekhov’s gun,” the Russian short-story writer’s famous dictum that memorable story elements should also be necessary and relevant (see this week’s Quote, Words, Unquote).]
Okay, let’s codify it — Chekhov’s Lesbian: if a character in fiction is portrayed as a member of a minority group, that character’s minority status must become a relevant plot point before the end of the story. (Term used sarcastically.) —Darren Garrison, “Pixel Scroll 5/19/16 I Am Not In The Scroll Of Common Men” (comment), File 770, May 20, 2016
(14) SHORT NOTE TO L.D. COLTER. The Michael Glyer who’s on Twitter is not me. I don’t have a Twitter account because occasionally I’d fly off the handle and tweet something dumb and there it would be for the rest of time. The other Michael Glyer doesn’t appear to have that problem. So there could be worse things than me being mistaken for him.
(15) LOVECRAFT IN NEW MEXICO. As the locals say, it’s not new, and it’s not Mexico, H.P. Lovecraft of Ask Lovecraft visited George R.R. Martin in Santa Fe and recorded a couple segments of his vlog, which can be viewed at the link.
Seeing HPL at Meow Wolf was especially fun, since there are a couple of… ahem… decidedly Lovecraftian touches to be found in the House of Eternal Return.
If you ever get a chance to see Leeman Kessler perform as HPL, do catch him. It’s the next best thing to a shuggoth on your doorstep.
(16) MARTIAN ODDITIES. FiveThirtyEight does both a statistical analysis and a historical survey of Mars in the annals of pop culture — “This Is Why We Love Stories About Mars”.
Movies about aliens are getting more popular. Movies about Martians peaked a while ago.
…But multiculturalism was only part of the era’s Mars story. The 1950s and ’60s saw Martians firmly established on television as belligerent invaders. Marvin the Martian was introduced to give Bugs Bunny a worthy foe hell-bent on destroying Earth.3
There is something poetic about Marvin being the referee in “Space Jam” in the game between the Tunes and the Aliens. After all, he’s a creature of both worlds.
A 1960 episode of “The Twilight Zone” called “People Are Alike All Over” featured a Martian society that was just as indifferent and cruel as humans on Earth. The episode “Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up” played into the anyone-could-be-the-enemy-spy fears of the early 1960s, with invaders posing as humans to begin their infiltration.
In comic books, Martians are — with one notable exception — the baddies. Martians who show up in a Marvel comic are sure to be villains. Sometimes they’re Nazis dressed up as Martians to scare New York. Either way, these comics are stories about external threats made real, conquerors, spies, warlords and assorted monsters of the week. In DC Comics, the White Martians are boilerplate invader types, as are Yellow Martians and the original Burning Martians. Only the Green Martians, of which there remains one — the Martian Manhunter — aren’t out for Earthling blood, despite their ridiculous power.
In the contemporary era, humans dealing with Martians are occupiers, not collaborators. It rarely goes well….
[Thanks to Gregory N. Hullender, Rich Lynch, Rob Thornton, Cat Eldridge, Martin Morse Wooster, DMS, rcade, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day ULTRAGOTHA.]
By Steve Vertlieb: William Shatner, the iconic actor who first sailed the Star Ship Enterprise through three intergalactic seasons on NBC Television beginning September 8th, 1966, and starred in six Star Trek feature-length motion pictures, turned eighty-six years young recently. He was the valiant inspiration for millions of young boys and men for decades of thrilling cinematic heroism. I conducted, perhaps, the very first “fan” interview with William Shatner ever published during July, 1969, whilst the series was still being aired over NBC in its final re-runs, for the British magazine, L’Incroyable Cinema. He was both delightfully witty, and warm, sharing a memorable hour of his valuable time with us. Here are Erwin and I together with Captain James Tiberius Kirk outside his dressing room at The Playhouse In The Park where he was starring in a local Philadelphia Summer Stock production of “There’s A Girl In My Soup,” with Exodus star Jill Hayworth.
Together with boyhood hero and cherished friend, Buster Crabbe, here in Philadelphia in 1979. On this particular occasion, Buster and I had dinner together in “Chinatown.” Although Jack Nicholson was nowhere to be found, Buster playfully emptied the remains of some his dinner into my plate, insisting that I “Eat, Eat, Eat.” My Jewish mother would have been proud. Buster, along with Ed Kemmer and William Boyd, was among my earliest childhood heroes. Buster and I were good friends over the last two decades of his life, and I remain honored to think of myself as one of Flash Gordon’s pals. Knowing him personally was a thrill beyond imagining. My affectionate remembrance of Larry “Buster” Crabbe, and “Fantastic” children’s television during the 1950’s, has been nominated as “Best Blog of the Year” under the heading of Better Days, Benner Nights in the annual Rondo Awards.
Steve Vertlieb and Buster Crabbe.
Together with one of my earliest boyhood heroes and role models, Ed Kemmer, who starred as Commander Buzz Corey of the “Space Patrol”, broadcast every Saturday morning on ABC Television in the mid 1950’s. He also co-starred with William Shatner in “Nightmare At 20,000 Feet,” the original classic episode of The Twilight Zone written by Richard Matheson. Shatner’s own Star Trek series was heavily influenced by Ed’s Space Patrol, as well as MGM’s Forbidden Planet. After this initial meeting, Ed and I remained friends through correspondence until his passing. He loved Sinatra, and so I’d periodically record tapes of Francis Albert for him, and send them to his apartment in New York. Ed remained conspicuously among the few stars refusing to accept compensation for posing for pictures or signing autographs. He felt that charging money for his image would be a betrayal of the millions of children who made him so popular during the nineteen fifties. He was not only a tv hero, but a real hero, as well. During the second world war, Ed was a pilot who had been shot down behind enemy lines and imprisoned as a POW. He was quite a remarkable human being, both on screen and off.
Steve Vertlieb with Ed Kemmer, who played Cmdr. Buzz Corey in Space Patrol.
Voting continues as Science Fiction & Fantasy Poetry Association (SFPA) members decide who will be honored as Grand Master this year. Four candidates are under consideration,
Ruth Berman is a long-time (since at least 1983) and award-winning member of the Science Fiction Poetry Association. She is a writer of short science fiction and speculative poetry. In 2003 for “Potherb Gardening” and in 2016 for “Time Travel Vocabulary Problems”, she won the Rhysling Award for Best Short Poem. She was also the winner of the 2006 Dwarf Stars Award for her poem “Knowledge Of.” Her short fiction has appeared in Analog, New Worlds, Star Trek: The New Voyages, Shadows 2,Tales of the Unanticipated, and Asimov’s Science Fiction. Ruth Berman has also been on the faculty of the University of Minnesota. She was one of the founding members of The Rivendell Group in 1973. She was also a founding member of Minn-Stf, the local Minnesota Science Fiction Society, and has been extensively involved with helping the Minnesota speculative literary scene become what it is today. A selection of Ruth’s poems.
Terry A. Garey is a longstanding member of the Science Fiction Poetry Association, providing poetry workshops singularly and with her performance group, the Lady Poetesses From Hell. She is a writer and editor. Her poems have been published in many journals and anthologies going back to at least 1978. She won the Rhysling Award in 1997 for “Spotting UFOs While Canning Tomatoes” and in 2013 for “The Cat Star.” She has edited poetry for Tales of the Unanticipated and speculative poetry anthologies including Time Gum, 1988, ed. Terry A. Garey and Eleanor Arnason, and Time Frames, 1991. Her non-fiction book, The Joy of Home Winemaking, has little to do with poetry, but is fun and instructive if you want to make wine. She lives with a librarian, two cats and many books in Minneapolis. A selection of Terry’s poems.
David C. Kopaska-Merkel’s poems have populated many magazines over two or more decades. He won the Rhysling Long Poem award with Kendall Evans in 2006 for “The Tin Men.” He was a nominee for the 2014 Elgin Award for Luminosity, and his The Edible Zoo placed 2nd and 3rd in 2013 and 2012 respectively. His dedicated work has helped keep the SFPA alive for years, serving first as Star*Line editor and then as President, plus maintaining Dreams & Nightmares, a quality magazine (the longest running print SFP magazine) that publishes spec poetry from one and all—without prejudice, encouraging new artists as well, for prozine pay out of his own pocket—and a poetry blog. He was a featured poet guest at ICFA, 2013. He serves as Chair and editor of the 2017 Rhysling Award and Rhysling Anthology.
Ann K. Schwader is an extraordinarily accomplished member of the SFPA. Her fiction and verse have been published in such magazines as Spectral Realms, Weirdbook, The Lovecraft EZine, Fungi, Weird Fiction Review, Dark Wisdom, Weird Tales, Strange Horizons, Dreams & Nightmares, Mythic Delirium, The Magazine of Speculative Poetry, Tales of the Unanticipated, The Weird Fiction Review, Star*Line, and Space & Time. Her mainstream haiku have recently appeared in countless specialized journals. Her most recent collection of weird verse, Dark Energies, was published by P’rea Press in August 2015 and a finalist for the Bram Stoker Award. An omnibus collection, Twisted In Dream (Hippocampus Press, 2011); Wild Hunt of the Stars (Sam’s Dot Publishing, 2010), a collection of dark science fiction poems was a Bram Stoker Award Finalist for that year; her SF / Lovecraftian sonnet sequence, In the Yaddith Time (Mythos Books, 2007), preceded. She has won the Rhysling Award on two occasions: 2016 Long Form (tie) “Keziah” and 2010 Short Form “To Theia”. Her poetry has been nominated for and garnered 2nd or 3rd in the Rhysling Award at least 3 other times. Her collection Dark Energies received 3rd place in the 2016 Elgin Award.
[Thanks to F.J. Bergmann for assisting with the story.]
Other books making the Crawford shortlist: Maria Turtschaninoff’s novel Maresi (Pushkin/Abrams), Rose Lemberg’s poetry collection Marginalia to Stone Bird (Aqueduct), and Michael Wehunt’s story collection Greener Pastures (Shock Totem).
The International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts (IAFA) Distinguished Scholarship Award is an annual career award, presented annually since 1986, recognizing distinguished contributions to the scholarship and criticism of the fantastic.
The International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts presents an annual award and stipend to the graduate student submitting the most outstanding paper at the Association’s conference.
The Jamie Bishop Memorial Award is a prize for a critical essay on the fantastic written in a language other than English. The IAFA defines the fantastic to include science fiction, folklore, and related genres in literature, drama, film, art and graphic design, and related disciplines.
The Walter James Miller Memorial Award for Student Scholarship in the International Fantastic is given annually to the author of the best ICFA student paper devoted to a work or works of the fantastic originally created in a language other than English. In addition to its scholarly excellence, the winning paper must also demonstrate the author’s command of the relevant linguistic, national, and cultural contexts of the work or works discussed.
The names of the winners were first announced in February.
Apex Publications’ Revive the Drive subscription campaign has begun, and through April 17 they’ll be working to raise $10,000 to fund Apex Magazine this year.
There are new reward tiers to unlock, original fiction to add to the January 2018 issue, and other incentives for you to participate – check out everything they have to offer at the Revive the Drive store.
Apex originally started its 2017 subscription drive last October, but after the election they ended it early despite not achieving their goal; that was not a good time to be pushing a drive. Now they’re starting again: they still need to make ends meet.
During the drive Apex Magazine subscriptions will be marked down to $17 for 12 issues.
As people subscribe and the total on their funding thermometer goes up, the staff will unlock the following reward tiers:
$500 – Polls will open for readers to vote for the cutest/best Apex animal mascot: Pumpkin versus Oz! (Expect loads of adorable pics on social media as the editors try to sway you to vote for their pet!) Also, Jason Sizemore and Lesley Connor will each donate $25 to the Humane Society
$1,000 – Apex will donate two short story critiques (one each from Jason and Lesley) to the ConOrBust auction, as well a membership to Imaginarium this October
$1,500 – Jason and Lesley’s It Follows debate goes live! Join the editors as they watch It Follows and live tweet the entire experience. If you’ve been following their conversations about the movie on Twitter, then you do not want to miss this! Date and time will be announced once this tier has been unlocked.
$2,000 – an original short story by Tade Thompson in the January 2018 issue
$2,500 – a poem to the January 2018 issue
$3,000 – a reprint to the January 2018 issue
$3,500 – Andrea Johnson will conduct a video interview with Jason Sizemore, asking him questions submitted by the readers
$4,000 – a nonfiction essay to the January 2018 issue
$4,500 – a second poem to the January 2018 issue
$5,000 – an original short story by Delilah S. Dawson in the January 2018 issue
$5,500 – podcast a second original story in the January 2018 issue
$6,000 – Apex donates a membership to ConFusion to ConOrBust
$6,500 – raise cover artist rates to $75
$7,000 – original artwork for all original fiction unlocked during the drive for the January 2018 issue
$7,500 – an original short story by Cherie Priest in the January 2018 issue
$8,000 – behind the scenes video with Jason
$8,500 – original artwork for all six stories in the January 2018 issue
$9,000 – a new print issue of Apex Magazine: SFFH #1
$9,500 – raise author rates to 7 cents per word
$10,000 – an original short story by Jacqueline Carey in the January 2018 issue
STRETCH GOAL!!! $15,000 – raise author rates to 8 cents per word and artist rates to $100!
Readers who already have a subscription can renew now for only $17 and add another 12 months to their existing subscription. Or make a donation of at least $5 and get a personalized Thank You! postcard from managing editor Lesley Conner—she has a stack of vintage sci-fi novel cover postcards that she’s just dying to share.
The easiest way to support the drive is to subscribe directly through Apex or by purchasing one of the many donated items offered exclusively during the drive, but anyone who prefers to subscribe through Weightless Books or Amazon can get their subscription counted toward the drive by emailing a copy of the receipt to Lesley at [email protected].
The Corporation Wars: Dissidence by Ken MacLeod (Orbit)
The Corporation Wars: Insurgence, by Ken MacLeod (Orbit)
The Mandibles: A Family, 2029-2047 by Lionel Shriver (HarperCollins)
The Core of the Sun, by Johanna Sinisalo (translated by Lola Rogers) (Grove Press/Black Cat)
Blade of p’Na, by L. Neil Smith (Phoenix Pick)
The 2017 awards will be presented at Worldcon 75 (August 9-13) in Helsinki, Finland. The winner will receive a plaque and one-ounce gold coin.
Sixteen novels published in 2016 were nominated for this year’s award, among the largest slates of nominees in the past two decades.
The other Best Novel nominees: Morning Star: Book III of The Red Rising Trilogy, by Pierce Brown (Del Rey); Speculator, by Doug Casey and John Hunt (HighGround Books); Dark Age, by Felix Hartmann (Hartmann Publishing); Kill Process, by William Hertling (Liquididea Press); Through Fire, by Sarah Hoyt (Baen Books); Too Like the Lightning, by Ada Palmer (TOR Books); Written in Fire, by Marcus Sakey (Thomas & Mercer); Arkwright, by Allen Steele (TOR Books); On to the Asteroid, by Travis S. Taylor and Les Johnson (Baen Books); Necessity, by Jo Walton (TOR Books); and Angeleyes by Michael Z. Williamson (Baen Books)
The finalists were chosen by a 10-member LFS judging committee.
Here is the short description of each finalist from the press release:
The Corporation Wars: Dissidence – Robots attain self-awareness and develop a pro-freedom philosophy while dead humans are revived in digital form to fight an interstellar virtual-reality war against the robot rebellion in the first novel in MacLeod’s projected trilogy, which raises intriguing questions about autonomy and free will.
The Corporation Wars: Insurgence – A ghost soldier and several new characters are introduced in the action-oriented second novel in MacLeod’s trilogy, which dramatizes a more complicated three-sided war between the freedom-fighting robots and two groups of humans.
The Mandibles: A Family, 2029-2047 – Shriver’s cautionary dystopian drama, informed by an understanding of free-market economics and how coercive government can undermine civilization itself, is set in a 2029 debt-driven apocalypse in which a once-rich family and a once-powerful America have gone bust but the family’s least-successful members prove the most resilient in the face of disaster.
The Core of the Sun – This dystopian novel, written by well-known Finnish writer Sinisalo and translated by Rogers, is both libertarian and feminist in depicting an alternate eugenics-dominated Finland where the heroine battles an oppressive, manipulative and male-dominated regime that makes women subservient housewives and mothers and bans alcohol, mind-altering drugs, caffeine and hot peppers.
Blade of p’Na – A wide variety of intelligent alien creatures co-exist in a free and free-wheeling society on an alternative version of Earth – including a sapient dog and his human tracking down a missing bridegroom while investigating mysteries and trying to prevent an interdimensional invasion – in this action-adventure-oriented prequel to Smith’s Prometheus-winning The Forge of the Elders.
The Prometheus Award, sponsored by the Libertarian Futurist Society (LFS), was established in 1979, making it one of the oldest fan-based awards currently being given in the sf field. Since 1982, the annual award has been presented at the Worldcon.
In the words of the Libertarian Futurist Society, the Prometheus Awards “[recognize] outstanding works of science fiction and fantasy that dramatize the perennial conflict between Liberty and Power, expose the abuses and excesses of coercive government, critique or satirize authoritarian ideas, or champion individual rights and freedoms as the mutually respectful foundation for civilization, cooperation, peace, prosperity, progress and justice.”
A full list of past Prometheus Award winners in all categories is available at the LFS website.
Her husband’s birth name was Charles LeGuin. They were married in France, and “when they applied for a marriage license, a ‘triumphant bureaucrat’ told Charles his Breton name was ‘spelled wrong’ without a space, so when they married they both took the name Le Guin.”
(2) JUST MISSPELL MY NAME CORRECTLY. By a vote of the members, the Science Fiction Poetry Association has renamed itself the Science Fiction & Fantasy Poetry Association. Although its name has changed, the organization will keep using the initials SFPA.
And nearly every time the poets talk about SFPA in the hearing of old-time fanzine fans you can depend on someone dropping a heavy hint that they’re at risk being mixed up with a pre-existing fan group that uses the same abbreviation. Today it was Andrew Porter chirping in a comment on the announcement —
Not to be confused with the Southern Fandom Press Association, which has been around for more than 40 years…
Unfortunately it’s Porter who is confused, as he seems to have forgotten the apa’s name is the Southern Fandom Press Alliance.
(3) SAMOVAR LAUNCHES. A new sff magazine, Samovar, launched today, featuring “the best of speculative fiction in translation including original stories, reprints, poetry, reviews and more material, as well as printing translations alongside the stories in their original language.” Samovar will be produced as a quarterly, special imprint of Strange Horizons.
“Stories tell us who we are, and let us see who other people are. We already have access to an enormous wealth of speculative fiction in English, but we want to know more” – The Samovar editorial team.
What wondrous fantastical tales are being conjured in Finnish? Who writes the best Nigerian space odysseys? Is Mongolia hiding an epic fantasy author waiting to be discovered? We want to know, and we aim to find out.
For Samovar, writers and translators are of equal importance, and we do our best to shine a spotlight on the talented individuals who pen both the original and the translated version of a story. We hope that in this way we can boost the profile of speculative fiction in translation so that everyone involved receives the recognition they deserve and so we can all continue to enjoy the strange, mind-bending and fantastical fiction of all cultures.
In issue one: two sisters create an imagined world where things that are lost can be found. A despot is forced to see the truth he’s tried to hide from. An academic finds poetry, science fiction and reality beginning to merge. And the Curiosity Rover turns its own sardonic gaze on Mars.
Extended cliffhangers (cliffstayers? cliffhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaangers?) have animated some of the most narratively powerful works of television of recent years; they have helped to heighten the tension in shows like Breaking Bad (how low will Walt go?) and Serial (did he do it?) and Quantico (did she do it?) and True Detective (who did it?) and Lost (who are they? where are they?) and, in general, pretty much any sitcom that has ever featured, simmering just below its surface, some will-they-or-won’t-they sexual tension.
What’s especially notable about the recent shows that are employing the device, though, is that they’re locating the tension in one (unanswered) question. They’re operating in direct opposition to the way traditional cliffhangers were primarily used: between installments, between episodes, between seasons, in the interstitial spaces that might otherwise find a story’s momentum stalling. Big Little Lies and Riverdale and This Is Us and all the rest are taking the specific narrative logic of “Who shot J.R.?” and flipping it: The tension here exists not necessarily to capture audience interest over a show’s hiatus (although, certainly, there’s a little of that, too), but much more to infuse the content of the show at large with a lurking mystery. Things simmer rather than boil. The cliffhanger is less about one shocking event with one central question, and more about a central mystery that insinuates itself over an entire season (and, sometimes, an entire series).
Tho i found out author was a guy at the end…lol in retrospect only a man would ask his readers to nom his fanfic for the hugo awards lolm
— MCU will never be her (earth-616) (@artingkrusca) March 27, 2017
The appeal for a 2016 Hugo nomination was posted by the author in 2015.
First, the following request: I would like any readers who think that HPMOR deserves it sufficiently, and who are attending or supporting the 2015, 2016, or 2017 Worldcon, to next year, nominate Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality for Best Novel in the 2016 Hugos. Whether you then actually vote for HPMOR as Best Novel is something I won’t request outright, since I don’t know what other novels will be competing in 2016. After all the nominees are announced, look over what’s there and vote for what you think is best.
I don’t know how many votes he ended up getting but it wasn’t enough to rank among the top 15 works reported by MidAmeriCon II.
(6) FINALLY A GOOD WORD ABOUT THE MOVIES. Book View Café’s Diana Pharoah Francis was both nostalgic and thoughtful after hosting a Lord of the Rings marathon at home.
…Among the SF/F communities, it was this extraordinary vision come to life in a way we had never experienced before. It was not cheesy or all about the CGI. It was about strength, honor, choices, and hope. It was real characters in dreadful situations. The watching of heroes being made and broken beneath weights no one should have to bear. And Aragorn — a king in the making. A soul of strength and doubt and humility.
The movies were inspiring on a lot of fronts. I think it’s appropriate to watch it now in a world that is struggling so hard against itself. With so much fear, and worry and such dire enemies. Who are those enemies? Too many are ourselves. Our fears that turn us into monsters or traitors. Denethor, Gollum, Boromir, the Nazgul — absolute power corrupts. There are those who give up. Those who refuse to fight. Those who lose themselves.
The stories, the movies and the books, are a view into ourselves and what we can hope to be and what we may become — good and bad. It’s a reminder that it’s never a good time to quit in the battle against darkness — in whatever shape it takes….
Make your universe two questions deep. By which I mean, make it so when someone asks you a question about why/how you created or portrayed the universe, character etc the way you did, you have a smart, cogent answer for it, consistent with the construction of the book. And then when they have a follow-up question, be able to answer that effectively, too. That will make 95% of your readers happy with your worldbuilding (the other 5% are SUPER nerds. Which is fine! For them, say “Oh, I’m glad you asked that. I’m totally going to address that in the sequel.” Try it! It works!).
Strangely enough, none of his seven tips is “Start a fuss with somebody in social media.”
(10) SECOND FIFTH. But as we just witnessed last week, that is part of the Castalia House playbook – which is evidently followed by Rule #2, “Stalk real bestselling writers on their book tours.”
Here’s a video of a jackass asking John Scalzi to sign Vox Day’s SJWs Always Lie, and posing an insulting question about John’s Tor book deal. You’ll note the book in John’s hand has not been autographed by Vox Day. When is his book tour?
(11) HOT OFF THE PRESS. Liz Colter (writing as L. D. Colter) has a new book out this week – A Borrowed Hell.
Facing a sad, empty life, July always persevered by looking forward. An unhappy childhood, a litany of failed relationships, and even losing his job–none of it could stop him. But then the foreclosure notice arrives, and July is facing losing the one thing that keeps him grounded–his home.
With pain in his past and now in his future, July gives up and starts down the same road of self-destruction that the rest of his family had followed. It is only when he awakens in a hospital after a violent car accident that things change.
He starts to experience blackouts, which leave him in an alternate reality of empty desert and strange residents. It is a nightmarish world that somehow makes the real world seem that much better. Then he meets a woman that becomes a beacon of light, and his life starts to turn around.
But the blackouts continue, sending him to the alternate reality more often and for longer periods of time. Realizing that he may never escape, July asks the question he’d always been afraid to ask: How can he finally be free? The answer is one he’s not sure he can face.
I can’t resist a droll bio:
Due to a varied work background, Liz can boast a modest degree of knowledge about harnessing, hitching, and working draft horses, canoe expeditioning, and medicine. She’s also worked as a rollerskating waitress and knows more about concrete than you might suspect.
Charlaine Harris, whose Sookie Stackhouse books inspired the television series “True Blood,” will release the first book in a new trilogy next year.
Harris’ novel “Texoma” will be published in fall 2018 by Saga Press, a science fiction and fantasy imprint of Simon & Schuster, the publisher announced in a news release.
“Texoma” will be a work of speculative fiction that takes place in “an alternate history of a broken America weakened by the Great Depression and the assassination of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.”
(13) DAMP YANKEES. In New York Magazine’s author interview “Kim Stanley Robinson’s New York 2140: To Save the City, We Had to Drown It”, Robinson discusses why the book is surprisingly optimistic, how his thoughts on the global economy influenced 2140, and how he came up with the time frame for the book.
…[T]here were two goals going on that forced me to choose the date 2140, and those two goals cut against each other. I needed to put it far enough out in the future that I could claim a little bit of physical probability to the height of the sea-level rise of 50 feet, which is quite extreme. A lot of models have it at 15 feet, though some do say 50 feet. So I did have to go out like a 120 years from now.
Cutting against that future scenario, I wanted to talk about the financial situation we’re in, this moment of late capitalism where we can’t afford the changes we need to make in order to survive because it isn’t cost effective. These economic measures need to be revised so that we pay ourselves to do the work to survive as a civilization facing climate change.
I wanted a finance novel that was heavily based on what lessons we learned — or did not learn — from the crash of 2008 and 2009. All science-fiction novels are about the future and about the present at the same time.
(14) WEBCAST. Another Spider-Man trailer will be out tomorrow – here’s a seven-second teaser for it.
[Thanks to Rob Thornton, Cat Eldridge, Martin Morse Wooster, Carl Slaughter, Chip Hitchcock, Chris Gregory, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]
