Bowing to the Future

Greasemonkeying with Reality

Lou Anders — Thu, 10 Aug 2006 14:19:00 +0000

David Louis Edelman, author of Infoquake, has just posted "Greasemonkeying with Reality" to his blog, a very interesting post about the self-censorship we are rapidly rushing into. Earlier this month, I had a conversation with a friend and noted critic about the dangers of our Long Tail / total freedom of choice society, in that it becomes increasingly easy to self-select yourself into what Robert Anton Wilson called a "reality tunnel." Essentially, "I hear only what I want to hear" (as Supertramp sang so long ago in "Soapbox Opera.")

As David writes, "The Greasemonkeying of information won't just stop with the web. It's not going to end with the editing of digital bits on your computer screen. It's going to move onto your telephone and your television and eventually, inside that thick skull of yours."

I'm a big believer that the Long Tail is allowing us to drill deeper into niche content, discovering and rediscovering content we'd never encounter in traditional retail, but it's also true that the amount of time I spent with my head buried in the future - editing Pyr, corresponding with writers and artists, keeping up with the SFnal side of the bloggosphere and blogging about it myself - is making me feel like I've got my head in the sand when it comes to the real world. I wouldn't know jack about the foiled transatlantic bombing if a friend hadn't just emailed me about it. And while I'm pretty fond of my particular reality tunnel, the last thing I need is the ability to Greasemonkey myself even deeper into the future.

The State of Science Fiction, Part III

Lou Anders — Mon, 07 Aug 2006 19:25:00 +0000

Charles Stross is once again lamenting the state of American science fiction again, in his post Genre Neuroses 101. This is reminiscent of thoughts he expressed last year in which he speculated that the collective American consciousness simply can't see much of a positive way forward from current political events and that the loss of Empire, etc... was forcing a retreat into fantasy and alternate history.

This time out, Charlie writes, "Science fiction is almost always a projection of todays hopes and fears onto the silver screen of tomorrow, and so you get such excesses as the cosy catastrophe genre in British SF, 1947-79 (in which all those annoying Other People get put away in their box — six feet under — while the protagonists have post-fall-of-civilization adventures, all with a bone china tea-set: John Wyndham was of course the master) or the sixties counterculture and lysergide fueled paranoia trips of Philip K. Dick and William Burroughs — and the deafening silence about the future that is radiating from the United States today."

Particularly, I find it interesting that Charlie laments the state of horror before turning his gaze to the state of SF. Especially in light of that recent USA Today article, "Science Fiction Gets Real," in which Hollywood types like Russell Schwartz, president of domestic marketing for New Line Cinema, says things like "The big boon we had in the '40s and '50s came from war and Cold War tensions. When times are tense, it causes us to look forward and imagine what it's all going to mean." Schwartz says this in the context of predicting a resurgence of serious, socially-relevant SF film in direct response to (not retreat from) current political unrest. That the article also suggests quite a few in Hollywood are looking to serious SF as a replacement for the now-flagging boom in recent horror is also interesting. Moreover, I think it's telling that Hollywood, who chases the almightly dollar in all things, sees SF as a way to address our contemporary problems, not run from them into the "mad collective ostrich-head-burying exercise" that Charlie sees contemporary American publishing engaged in "rather than engaging with the world as it is."(My own athology, FutureShocks, was more sci-horror in original concept than it proved to be in execution, but still, I think, does a good job at coming to grips with these aforementioned tense times. See stories by American authors Caitlin R. Kiernan, Alex Irvine, and Louise Marley in particular.)

I suspect that, as has been pointed out, now that Bush's approval rating is falling even among his own camp, we'll see more American writers willing (or able) to engage the times in ways Charlie would like to see. As the ever-thoughtful John Scalzi opinions on Whatever, "I don't think Americans largely care if other people don't like our political leaders, so I don't think building a theory on that notion is useful. We knew the rest of the world despised Ronald Reagan, for example; we didn't give a crap what anyone else thought (well, some did; they were just ignored). Right now, we're aware the rest of the world despises Dubya, but it's rather more important to us that we don't like him; everyone else not liking him really is an afterthought in the American psyche." Certainly, to take another example from Hollywood, the Wackoski's V for Vendetta was able to present discussions of terrorism and rebellion against a corrupt government in a way that the latter Matrix films were unable to do so in the immediately-post 911 enviroment in which they were released because the number of Americans who would be shocked and outraged at such a film dropped as opposition to the war grew (or was perceived by Hollywood to have dropped). So if we were stunned into (ahem) futureshocked silence for a few years immediately following 911, we're certainly coming out of it now in our most conservative media (big budget Hollywood filmmaking), and Charlie's statement that "This turning away from the near future is going to be remembered as one of the hallmarks of the post-9/11 decade in American science fiction, as the chill wind of change blows through the hitherto cosy drawing room of the American century" seems overly melodramatic and a bit premature.

Also interesting is a comment from writer Walter Jon Williams, who says, "Please don't blame the US'ian authors for the dearth of exciting, cutting-edge skiffy. Blame the editors who won't buy it-- who in fact run screaming from it. They know how to sell military SF, they know how to sell space opera, they know how to sell alternate history (at least if it's got a Confederate or Nazi flag on it), they know how to sell Furry Fantasy S&M, but try going to a sales conference with a book that screams 'near-future social critique!,' and see them all hit the deck like someone's told them Osama is in the room with a vest packed with Semtex. That's why the Brits get to have an Invasion right now-- their editors are braver. Or better. Or something."

Which raises a question about the degree to which editors must cater to tastes vs. the degree in which we can lead by example, helping to define tastes. I'm always amused by statements (sometimes reflected in panel topics at conventions) that make editors sound like little more than couriers passing material between writer and reader, with no understanding of the very real gatekeeping that determines exactly what gets read in which editor's engage. (Or of the very large amount of drek one must wade through to find each gem.) But Williams' statement needs to recognize that an editor's primary responsibility is not to a writer's unsigned manuscript - no matter how brilliant said writer thinks it is - but is a split between reader and publisher, one of whom votes with his dollars and the other of whom expects to see said dollar. William's won't have us blame the USian authors, pointing instead to the editors, but this buck can continue right on to the readers (and isn't passing the buck the real legacy of our post-911 times?) Still, I hope readers of this blog and followers of my work know that it's been a personal mission to present SF&F "dialed to eleven," with a real effort - hopefully realized more often than not - to publish books and short stories of better than average quality. Critically, this goal seems born out. Recently, I tallied all the reviews of Pyr books I have archived, and while I am sure that I missed one or two, of the 309 reviews I've logged, only 12 were negative.

Now, certainly, one look at the Pyr catalog and you know I've got a strong predilection for British and Australian speculative fiction, though at least in the case of UK fiction, this is a life-long anglophilia more to do with a certain quality of prose than trends in contemporary narratives. And while Charlie does single out Vernor Vinge for boldly looking at the near-future, I'm grateful to Jetse de Vries for pointing out our own David Louis Edelman's Infoquake, called incidentally, "the love child of Donald Trump and Vernor Vinge" by Paul Goat Allen of B&N. While Infoquake does take place a millenia or so from now, David's future history works out all the points from now to then in impressive detail, enough I think to qualify for what Charlie is talking about. And though the book in question isn't spoken for yet, Chris Roberson's just completed space opera - excerpts are online at his blog - also includes a quite detailed near-future history that connects the dots from here to there. Then there's the aforementioned John Scalzi and Paolo Bacigalupi, both of whom write very well in futures right around the corner from today.

Mind you, I'm not in complete disagreement with Charlie's points, but I see this retreat from mundane futures as a temporary phenomenon, one which will recede in the wake of the general rise in science fiction I predicted in my initial "State of Science Fiction" post. Finally, I find the aforementioned David Louis Edelman's comment quite interesting: "One could very well argue that near-future SF has been co-opted by the literary novelists. Witness: John Updike, T.C. Boyle, Paul Auster, Margaret Atwood, Philip Roth, Walter Mosley, Kurt Vonnegut, Jonathan Lethem, all authors of near-future SF in the past decade, all members of the Respectable School." With Hollywood on one side and contemporary mainstream "literature"on the other, how can the future really be over? All I've got say is, stay tuned.

You Go Away for the Weekend...

Lou Anders — Mon, 07 Aug 2006 16:04:00 +0000

...and look what happens. Wow. Congrats to Graham, Hal, Caitlin, Susan, Ginger, Chris, Allison, Jess and everbody else. Quite a list of nominees this year. I am deeply priviledged to be among such company.

The New Lou Review

Lou Anders — Fri, 04 Aug 2006 18:30:00 +0000

As hard as it is for me to see over my own slush pile, and with apologies to all my friends who are also writers and wonder why I haven't read their own books yet, I think that it's vital that an editor read outside the job, to keep his tastes honed and his sense of the industry up to date. It kills me all the incredible books that I don't have time to read when they debut (current thorn-in-flesh: David Marusek's Counting Heads, which I will get to.) And thank God for River of Gods, because given the glacial speed at which I read I've determined that the only chance I stand of reading the talked-about books as they come out is if I publish them myself. But I've managed to read the following four titles over the last six months or so, and thus, here we go:

Michael Moorcock's Multiverse

Mike and I are talking about a new project (details soon, I promise) in which a number of his famous characters feature. I've read a lot of his books, but he's written a lot more, and he suggested I pick up a copy of Multiverse to bring me up to speed. I remember when this came out originally, but I hadn't bothered with it then because I thought it was merely a novelization of some of his more famous tales in comic form. (Not that that isn't worthwhile, but I don't pick up too many comics these days.)

I had no idea. No novelization this, but the codex to the whole damn multiverse. This is essential Eternal Champion reading, the multiverse laid bare. I am astounded that Mike chose to pull back the curtain so far on the multiverse of his many famous novels in other than novel form. It's so interesting to me that he chose the comic book / graphic novel to be, not an introduction to his other works, but practically the last word on them. Even now I'm not sure how I feel about it - other than astounded it took me so long to read it and grateful that I did. I still sort of feel that someone should convince him to novelize this as the big, fat final book of the Eternal Champion series. (Then Mike can retire and go to sleep under the hill until such time as England faces its greatest need, when surely, he and his mightier-than-a-black-sword pen will return.)

But the other thing that struck me (aside from realizing how much Grant Morrison really pinches from Moorcock) is how similar two of the seminal influences from my youth actually are - at least thematically. I read tons of Moorcock as a teen, but as an early 20s something, I was heavy into Robert Anton Wilson. Seeing it all laid out in Multiverse, the parallel between Moorcock's Law vs. Chaos and Wilson's Illuminati vs. Discordians is so obvious. If it had been a snake, and all that. Especially with all those wacky Second Aether ships buzzing around (which reminded me a little of the ending of Schrodinger's Cat), and the games within games, people stepping in and out of their narratives, etc... Not to say that either was pinching from the other - (though maybe drinking the same koolaid around the 1960s) - only that there are striking similarities I'd never noticed until now.

Anyway, any Moorcock fan who hasn't read Multiverse needs to rush out and get a copy now.

Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan

Yes, I know, I am way behind the curve on this one. And like Multiverse, my initial impression was off. I didn't realize how speculative Altered Carbon was. I knew about the sleeves and the noir, and my uninformed impression was that it ended there. The reviews I'd skimmed seemed to be focused on the violence and the grit, and I didn't grok how firmly SFNal this work was. I didn't realize that - apart from being just a plot contrivance - he took sleeving to the Nth degree (I love "dipping," for example; Morgan does for being resleeved what Sean Williams' does for teleportation in The Resurrected Man, in terms of looking into every single ramification), but I really didn't expect all the stuff with the Martians, etc... I found this book less gritty than promised but a good deal richer, more nuanced and layered. I can see why it was such a hit, and while it will take me years at the pace I read and the amount of spare time I don't have, I'm in for the whole series. Kovachs, you're the man.

The Long Tail by Chris Anderson

I managed to snag an Advance Reader Copy of this at BEA and thought I'd be all clever and blog about it in advance of publication, but the best laid plans and all that. The short of it is that I finally found a book that really is, as the hype promises, the new Tipping Point. If you recall, I was dissatisfied with Freakonomics on that scale, though I owe Freakonomics an apology in that it has given me more than one item of dinner party conversation since, but it was by no means as meaty a work as the Gladwell. The Long Tail, by contrast, should be required reading for anyone in sales, publicity or marketing, as well as content producers (whether musicians, artists or writers) everywhere. There's enough written on the Long Tail all over the net that I really don't have to go into it here beyond saying the book lives up and the ideas are fascinating. But I am gratified that Anderson's future - which I was afraid was only good for content aggregators not content creators - does seem to have an upside for the artists and producers after all.

I'm also indepbted to Anderson for this great quote from David Foster Wallace:

“TV is not vulgar and prurient and dumb because the people who compose the audience are vulgar and dumb. Television is the way it is simply because people tend to be extremely similar in their vulgar and prurient and dumb interests and wildly different in their refined and aesthetic and noble interests.”

Proven Guilty by Jim Butcher

One of the problems with a customizable Internet environment is that it's very easy to self-select yourself into a bubble, where the only news you get confirms your preset opinions and the only media you enjoy is guaranteed to be like all your other media. Anderson makes a good case that the sort of user-generated filtering the Long Tail is bringing about actually acts like stepping stones to drive consumers deeper into niche, but sometimes it still takes effort to step farther afeild of your comfort zone. The Dresden Files are a pretty big departure from my usual reading habits, as I'm sure anyone who follows this blog knows. But, apropo of our recent cover art discussion, I've been staring at that gorgeous Chris McGrath illustration on the cover at the local B&N for some weeks now. So when a copy fell into my lap on a recent visit to NY, a trip on which I had over-estimated how much time it would take me to finish the aforementioned Altered Carbon, I found myself with nothing to read on the plane home. And I was curious to see what all the fuss is about.

Now, if I'd known ahead of time that a portion of this novel actually involves the old horror movie monsters coming to life ploy - a contrivance so worn one would think that it would be afraid to rear its clichéd head outside a Scooby Doo cartoon - I would never have picked this book up. And, it must be said, I was irritated by his K.I.S.S. descriptions - as when someone arrives wearing a "Greek style tunic." Greek style? Do you mean Minoan, Mycenaean, Hellenic? Are we talking Roman Greece? Surely not modern? Nope, just "Greek style." But, hey, we all know what that means. One of those nondescript white costumes they pull out of wardrobe whenever they have a visiting goddess or demigod on Buffy or Angel or Xena or Charmed. So instead of grumbling that no one who writes the books I normally read would have penned that, I decided to get with the program. And guess what?

I had a blast. An absolute blast. The horror movie cliché is the smallest part of the plot, which is quite convoluted, and, despite the enormous backstory (seven previous novels I've not read) and the huge ensemble of characters, gave me no trouble when it came to diving in. And there is a real lesson to be learned in the way Butcher handles all this, because while I never felt left out, neither did I notice any horrendous infodumps or "for those who came in late" expository pages. This is very firmly post-Buffy storytelling (even if it wasn't inspired by Buffy, it's riding a Buffy-wave), but I found that I liked it for all the same reasons I liked that - likeable characters, secret cabals, ancient orders that are ostensibly good but are a bit high & mighty to be trusted to have the protagonist's best interest at heart, a superimposition of supernatural on a contemporary setting, colloquial/naturalistic dialogue. There's an RPG feel to the combat that probably sits better with RPGers, and some of the protagonist's "manly" character is a bit reminiscent of the gender-biases I left at the threshold of my fraternity when I graduated college in the 80s (a "guys don't hug each other" mentality that I don't relate to, but that's just me). But what Butcher does, he does VERY well. This is a fast, fun, suprisingly engaging read and by no means simple in the crafting of its extended universe. So while I've got no immediate plans to stop bemoaning the deluge of vampire-slayers flooding our shelves, nor hoping for an end in sight to paranormal romance, I wouldn't mind checking in on Harry Dresden again next time I find myself on a long plane flight looking for something fun to pass the time. Or buying Butcher a beer at a con and thanking him for the pleasure he's afforded this commuter.

Superman Reruns

Lou Anders — Thu, 03 Aug 2006 21:53:00 +0000

Finally saw it, and, before the Spoiler Warning goes up and anyone left who hasn't seen it takes off, I have to say that - while I thought Brandon Routh was amazing (particularly as Kent) and I would love to see him in the tights again - I was very and sadly disappointed.

And now the requisite

*** SPOILER WARNING ****

Little touches like the bullet impacting his open eye, that breaking-the-sound-barrier ring and the way heat vision was rendered were great, but story-wise,I was very surprised to find myself bored. Moreover, I realized as we were catching guys falling off buildings and saving airplanes that those kind of stunts are now humdrum. Over and done for me. The Spider-man films and even Singer's own two X-Men movies show how much more interesting, layered and rich superhero movies can be. Remember when Superhero stories on TV used to always omit the interesting rogues galleries and just pit the hero (whether George Reeves or Nicolas Hammond) against a few bankrobbers, kidnappers, and an occassional mad scientist or clunky robot? I thought we were done with that, and that, as the wave of continuity-rich recent films has shown, we were able to make super hero movies as nuanced and complex as their source material. There is nothing interesting anymore about catching damaged aircraft or people falling off buildings. We need to see Superman matched with worthwhile opponents - lots of them. I really thought this film dragged and was slow.

And rather silly. I hated Lex Luthor - the melodramatic villian is so dated. Luthor has become so wonderfully complex in the animated Superman and Justice League cartoons and in works like Brian Azzarello's Lex Luthor: Man of Steel. And while this film hinted at a better motivation (his Prometheus speach was one of the few bits of the film I approved of), in the end, he just likes to kill people, as camp as he ever was when Gene Hackman gloated about "causing the death of millions of people." Just a warped brain getting his kicks. That's so one-dimensionally Saturday morning melodramatic. It just doesn't play anymore.

And to think, Luthor has all the knowledge of "1,000 words spanning 28 galaxies" and all that he can think to do is grow some land - which is the first thing we've been shown the crystals can do? He just grabbed the first thing out of the box (as did the screenwriters). The problem here - particularly evident with the inclusion of Parker Posey's innane Kity Kowalski - is that Singer is slavishly immitating a 28 year old film, and so he is carrying the outdated plot contrivances of that work forward, their flawed trajectory ever more apparent in view of the sophistication of the intervening decades. You've got to carry the ball forward, not write a love letter to a four-decades old film. I was so annoyed when Wired magazine ran the tagline on their cover "Brian Singer Reinvents Superman." Reinvention is the very last thing he should be accused of. And the first thing he sound have done. (It's very telling that it's Batman Begins, but Superman Returns.)

I also found the ending extremely unfulfilling. Not only is there NO RESOLUTION for Luthor - a scene that his gruesome execution of the Man of Steel begs for - but the whole movie is like a showcase of irresponsible parenthood. We see Lois ignore her child, show up tardy for picking him up, bring him into a dangerous situation for the sake of a story. And there's not a real mother in the world that would say "My child has just been saved from drowning. Let's take the child back to the heart of the danger again." Especially since she has no firm idea if the Kryptonite she knows the villain possesses will kill her offspring. Jesus, where is social services when you need them?

And what a horrible situation between father and son - Superman, absentee father? You mean after dealing with the loss of Jor-El, he isn't going to reveal himself as this child's father or be an active part in his life for the sake of a loveless marriage? The best he's going to do is whisper at him in his sleep and then conveniently get out of the way. "I'll be around???" Thanks for nothing, dead-beat dad. Come on. How long before that kid figures out who dad really is, and how much harder on poor Richard White is it going to be then. How screwed up is Jason going to be when the penny drops. Great, here comes one maladjusted super teen. I don't buy this - not at all. These are the most "super irresponsible" parents I've ever seen.

On the small scale, I things like the dog eating the other dog was tasteless in a kid's movie. But more importantly - having Jason's first use of his superpowers result in a person's death is an utter travesty totally out of step with the entire Superman mythos. Oh, and Superman doesn't kill either, does he? Well, now he does, since his action directly resulted in smashing two of Luthor's henchmen. The problem here is that while Singer has memorized every detail of the first two films, he's probably never opened the first comic book.

Overall, I just think that there is so much potential to this character - I don't need to see him catch another downed plane or retread the first two films. I want to see the kind of rich, multilayered tale that Batman Begins, Spiderman II, and XMen II offered. This dragged, retread the past unnecessarily, and was really very story-light. I really hated this film, and I'm very sorry to have to say that.

I would love to see Brandon Routh in a sequel, preferably written/directed by Paul Dini & Bruce Timm. Or even Christopher Nolan & David Goyer, if it didn't drag them away from more important projects. This was not worth Singer's abandonment of Xmen III and the travesty that resulted in. Not at all.

For Your Viewing Pleasure

Lou Anders — Thu, 03 Aug 2006 18:03:00 +0000

I've already mentioned this in the comments section of another post, but I wanted to say "up front" that we've uploaded a number of new cover illustrations to the Pyr blog. You can see the full cover spread for Alan Dean Foster's Sagramanda and Justina Robson's Mappa Mundi, as well as the front cover to Ian McDonald's Brasyl.

Artwork for Mappa Mundi and Brasyl is by Stephan Martiniere. Sagramanda is courtesy of John Picacio. Design on all three are by Jacqueline Cooke. Nice, no?

World Con Schedule

Lou Anders — Wed, 02 Aug 2006 14:39:00 +0000

I am on a whoppin' 8 program items this year:

Panel 1: Wed 8/23 4:00 PM, 60-90 minutes.
Title: FUTURE TRENDS IN SCIENCE FICTION
Participants:
Lou Anders
John-Henri Holmberg
James Patrick Kelly(M)
Mark von Schlegell
Gary K. Wolfe

Precis: Not long ago, we were awash in Splatterpunks, Cyberpunks, and even Steampunks. What happened to those SF literarymovements? What's the next trend?

Panel 2: Thu 8/24 12 Noon, 60 minutes.
Title: AUTOGRAPHING: Lou Anders
Participants:
Lou Anders

Panel 3: Thu 8/24 3:00 PM, 60 minutes.
Title: KAFFEKLATSCH: Lou Anders
Participants:
Lou Anders

Panel 4: Thu 8/24 5:30 PM, 60-90 minutes.
Title: PUBLISHING SCIENCE FICTION
Participants:
Lou Anders
Jaime Levine
Anthony R. Lewis
Alan Rodgers
Michael J. Walsh(M)

Precis: From small press to major publishing houses, science fiction is a popular place to be. What's it take to know the field and to get your books into the stores?

Panel 5: Fri 8/25 2:30 PM, 60-90 minutes.
Title: PYR: A LOOK FORWARD
Participants:
Lou Anders
David Louis Edelman
Kay Kenyon
Ian McDonald
John Picacio
Mike Resnick
Chris Roberson
Dave Seeley
Joel Shepherd
Sean Williams

Precis: One of science fiction's newest major publishers give a look at their future publications.

----------------------------------------
Panel 6: Sat 8/26 1:00 PM, 60-90 minutes.
Title: OMNIBUS PUBLISHING PANEL
Participants:
Lou Anders
Robert Meyer Burnett
Lydia C. Marano
Richard Pini
Evo Terra(M)
Gordon Van Gelder

Precis: Publishers from different areas of publishing -- a major imprint, a small press, an on-line magazine, a prozine --compare the similarities and differences in their tasks.

Panel 7: Sun 8/27 10:00 AM, 60-90 minutes.
Title: THE INFLUENCE OF EDITORS ON THE SF FIELD
Participants:
Lou Anders
Ellen Datlow(M)
David Hartwell
Stanley Schmidt
Sheila Williams

Precis: Do editors publish what the readers want to buy or does the field reflect the editors' tastes?

Panel 8: Sun 8/27 11:30 AM, 60-90 minutes.
Title: IN DEFENSE OF ESCAPIST LITERATURE
Participants:
Lou Anders
Pat Cadigan
Stephen Eley
Kelly L. Perry
Brandon Sanderson(M)

Precis: Science fiction has had a moniker of being junk food for the mind; escapist fare only. Is that true? Not all of it is literature but surely some of it must be? Mustn't it? What literary trends can be found? What will withstand the test of time? And does it matter?

I really hate these things...

Lou Anders — Mon, 31 Jul 2006 20:48:00 +0000

....but I love Meme Therapy, so here goes:

1. One book that changed your life?

The Illuminatus! Trilogy by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson. I started the book a lapsed Christian and ended it an atheist (now an agnostic, which was more in keeping with the point of the book, I think). Really changed my life and helped me deprogram from 12 years of fundamentalist Christian education. That I was 23 when I read it will make sense to those in the know.

2. One book you have read more than once?

My favorite book of all time, The World According to Garp by John Irving. One of the few books I’ve read twice, and the book that made me want to get into this whole writing/publishing life to begin with (though I saw the movie first). Incidentally, either book in question 1 & 2 could be substituted for the other.

3. One book you would want on a desert island?

The complete Time Life Do-It-Yourself series. Don't own that now, but could see how it could have come in handy on Gilligan's Ilsand. Failing that, the Baroque Cycle, since it would take me years to get through.

4. One book that made you laugh?

Hitchhiker's Guide.

5. One book that made you cry?

The Child Garden, by Geoff Ryman.

6. One book you wish had been written?

Babylon 5. Really, a five-book series. As it was meant to be, without network interference or absentee actors necessitating plot changes.

7. One book you wish had never had been written?

Revelations.

8. One book you are currently reading?

Jim Butcher's Proven Guilty.

9. One book you have been meaning to read?

Greg Keyes' The Charnel Prince. Or John Scalzi's The Ghost Brigades.

10. Now tag five people.

David Louis Edelman
Chris Roberson
Joel Shepherd
Eric Spitznagel
Sean Williams

The State of Science Fiction, Part II

Lou Anders — Sat, 29 Jul 2006 15:20:00 +0000

Comments on my previous post "The State of Science Fiction" inspired enough of a response on my part to warrant spinning off a second blog entry out of the burgeoning comment thread.

Specifically, in response to Paul Cornell's comment that "movie producers don't mind being 'science fiction', while TV producers do. That's because: movie audience, lots of young men. TV audience: lots of old women," Ian McDonald offered the following:

"Paul's right about the difference between TV and Film production, in that film is very much a medium of genres whereas TV always has it's eye on overall network viewership (there's an immediate 'defect' mechanism on every remote control: there's always an immediate alternative, and increasingly TV is splintering into a long tail of niche digital channels) and network demographics. Asimov's hasn't put Kirstin KatherineRusch's article on where she sees the future of SF going --she sees the salvation of the genre in YA-style 'Star Wars-esque' space opera with cheerable heroes and booable villains (OK, I'm not being whiolly objective here). Me, I see the very thing you're talking about in your post as the future for SF: the genre I feel is going through a period of uncertainty --fantasy is kicking its butt all over the bookstores-- where core question are being asked: what is SF? What makes it SF? What is it for? What is it for now, in July 2006? What is a 21st century SF like --and I, for one, don't think it's necesarily back-to-basics space opera (though there must always be some of that, because it's fun) because that has been so well colonised by the visual media. Things are moving, I think, when you can quote something like JJ Abram's comment. There is a mainstream audienceout there who will enjoy SF minus the geek factor --how do we write books for them?"

Which prompted my long-winded response:

Ian, you are speaking at the heart of my primary concerns these days. The disparity between SF cinema and SF literature has been one of my chief obsessions for years, enough so that I edited a nonfiction anthology on the subject. But I think that - do in part to the Long Tail economics that you reference, in part do to the decreased cost of filmmaking, and in part to the increased importance of secondary markets like the DVD boxes set (see Steven Johnson's Everything Bad is Good for You, we're seeing the rise of the niche and an increase in "narrative complexity" - as well as a general increase of everything, which means that quality SF&F is beginning to emerge - whether we're talking about accurate blockbuster renderings of The Lord of the Rings on one end of the scale, or low budget "low-fi, sci-fi" like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind or Primer on the opposite side.

There's a great quote from David Foster Wallace which I encountered in Chris Anderson's The Long Tail which says:“TV is not vulgar and prurient and dumb because the people who compose the audience are vulgar and dumb. Television is the way it is simply because people tend to be extremely similar in their vulgar and prurient and dumb interests and wildly different in their refined and aesthetic and noble interests.”

And I think we're seeing, if not the end of that - Fear Factor isn't going anywhere - the end of the era where that is everything and all. In the same way, perhaps the macro-category of science fiction will survive by migrating into niche categories - I haven't seen Rusch's article (when is it out?), but the Space Opera which she endorses (and which John Ordover claimed was the future in his Campbell conference talk) may be one end, mainstream appropriate of SF into works like Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go and Niffenegger's The Time Traveler's Wife may be another, and rigorously extrapolated, 21st century relevant SF such as your latest represents may be a third. I think that, in edition to the Star Wars style space opera that Rusch mentions, writers like John Scalzi and Chris Roberson also represent the future of the genre. I see both writers as good "gateway" authors, stepping stones between Star Wars and more rigorous fare. Roberson, in particular, always underpins extremely rigorous physics to his adventure tales, while the upfront narrative is grounded in accessible prose and engaging characters.

Star Wars will, of course, take care of itself, but the million dollar question is how do we drive consumers who enjoy films like Gattacca, Primer, Eternal Sunshine etc and readers of Time Traveler's Wife, Never Let Me Go etc. to writers like yourself, Paul McCauley, Jon Courtenay Grimwood, Michael Swanwick, China Mieville, et al.

I'm personally feeling very vindicated by the new Batman Begins, because this is the Batman I've been insisting I've been reading about on and off since I was six, but it's taken decades and decades for the rest of the larger world to see the Caped Crusader as anything more than Adam West, Super Friends, and Michael Keaton. There are, of course, two Batmen - the Dark Knight that 30 plus year olds read about, and the kid-friendly cartoon character used to sell a buttload of plastic toys.

In the same way, there are at least two SFs, conflated in a good deal of the minds of the wider world with the lesser SF. But, as I said in the post, I think the tides are turning. It hasn't been that long - merely a few decades - since rock stars appropriated the titles and themes of SF novels for their music and SF writers were respected authorities in news shows and documentaries. The perception that it is purely escapism is a recent phenomena, one end of a pendulum that probably swings back and forth, back and forth, beginning with HG Wells on one end and Plan 9 from Outer Space on the other. I see the pendulum swinging back our way now, coupled with a rise in interest in the space program (re: the recent Titan probe), the dot com billionaire's with their own rockets (Virgin Galactic, et al), the aforementioned USA today article, the increased "gadgetization" of 21st century life, and the growing political/environmental awareness of the bloggosphere. All of which leads me to conclude that science fiction shall rise again, yee-haw.

Update: The amazing group blog Meme Therapy, which is fast becoming my favorite blog on the web, weighs in on the debate retro-preemptively, with a Brain Parade question, "Science Fiction often gets a bad rap. Do you agree with this statement? And if so, who or what is to blame?"

As always, the brilliant John Scalzi demonstrates that rather than going to all the trouble to formulate my own opinions, I can shortcut the labor by just appropriating his: "What I would love to see is SF lit make a play for mainstream readers, by any means necessary. Put the books in covers the mundanes can grok; give them some stories they don't feel like they're missing the joke on; fight to get stories where people are instead of where we wish they would go. Of course, it's easy to say this and more difficult to do. But the fact is: SF has a fine image. It's up to SF literature to get a piece of it."

Excellent opinions also from Paul Levinson, Jeff Patterson, and Suan Marie Groppi.

Judging Books by their Covers, Part II

Lou Anders — Sat, 29 Jul 2006 18:44:00 +0000

In a recent blog post entitled “Judging Books by their Covers,” I expressed the need for a regular column that would discuss the individual merits of contemporary SF&F cover illustrations, talking candidly about what works and what doesn’t, new trends and directions in illustration and design, etc… After all, cover art is the front line of bookselling —you never get a second chance to make a first impression and all that —and as much concern as there is these days for growing the genre, combating the graying of the field, yada yada yada, more discussion of what works and what doesn’t in promoting the books themselves right off the shelves would be of benefit to readers, publishers, art directors, artists, and wanna be artists everywhere. Finally, more acknowledgment for the wonderful illustrators in our field, the genre where illustrated art plays a larger role than any other, seems long overdue.

Now, as the editorial director of a book line, and one who takes a very heavy hand in the selection of cover illustrators and the overall art direction (Prometheus’ art department is wonderful to put up with me), I am limited in my ability to be critical. I can’t come forward and say “this cover put out this month by this rival house didn’t work” lest it look as though I am trying to unfairly disparage a competitor. It would be impossible for me to talk about the difficiencies of the cover without it being conflated with the book itself. I do think some independent party should be doing this however, for the benefit of all. If not damning, at least discussing whether an individual cover achieves its aims, why, how or how not.

Filmmaker Terry Gilliam said some years back that Hollywood was responsible for training audiences in how to watch films and that their pursuit of LCD filmmaking and the broadest possible appeal had effectively killed the smart, literate filmmaking era of the 70s. Now, I have opinioned elsewhere that I think this tide is turning, but the point that the producers and aggregators of content have a responsibility to their audience in terms of raising or lowering the bar of what they offer is well-made. In the same way, I think that some education on the principals and importance of cover illustration is called for and thus, am thrilled with Irene Gallo’s new blog. But Irene, as art director at Tor, is also limited in what she can say as well. (Though perhaps less so, by having such experience as well as having overseen so many talented artists).

Now and so, while I won’t use this forum to be critical of poor work, I have no problems praising the good stuff produced at competing houses. In part, because I don’t believe that we are competing houses. I may be naïve, but I maintain that our competition is not with each other, but with other media, with DVDs, TV, cinema, videogames, and a general apathy to books, and that – just as a rising tide lifts all boats – every single book of quality published contains the potential to grow and expand the readership, just as it contains the potential to (a la Gilliam’s statement above) educated the existing readership in a further appreciation and understanding of quality. The more good books that are published, the more good books are read, the greater the audience for good books, natch.

All of which is a long way of saying that, in the spirit of the sentiments above, I was mightily impressed with the covers of Jonathan Strahan’s two upcoming Best of volumes. These are both reuses of images originally commishioned for other works, but glacing at them on Jonathan's blog yesterday, I was struck instantly at how well both art and design came together to effectively communicate what I think should be the goal of good SF&F illustration and design - that of managing to intrigue a wider audience without sacrificing the genre-elements of the piece. (No surprise that both images are from the uber-talented John Picacio either.) Both of these books look like they promise mature, intelligent, sophisticated reading material, while at the same time being boldly unashamed of their science fiction and fantasy content. Bravo!

The State of Science Fiction

Lou Anders — Thu, 27 Jul 2006 16:19:00 +0000

I've given two talks in three weeks on the "state of science fiction," one at the aforementioned Campbell Conference and one in New York this past Tuesday at a private luncheon hosted by a new literary agency, South Seas Solutions. This, coupled with the fact that I'm working up my thoughts for what I hope will be a witty, erudite, and thoughtful introduction to Fast Forward 1: Future Fiction from the Cutting Edge, means I've been thinking a lot about current trends and directions.

One thing that I've said repeatedly over the last few weeks is that all these denials of SF in the media, these Judas Iscariot's of cinema who proclaim "yes my film is about robots and cyborgs and big space battles and genetically engineered moon cows, but it's actually a drama about people and relationships and the hazards of dairy products" are actually a last gasp of a dying perspective. In this introduction to The Year's Best Science Fiction: 23rd Annual Collection, Gardner Dozois notes that 8 of the top highest grossing films of 2005 were genre-themed, 13 of the top 20. Which means that at its broadest spectrum, the public has no problem with science fiction. TV Guide will certainly tell you that a popular SF show on the cover moves serious copies. And the San Diego Comic Con just had a record attendance of 140,000 people. It's almost as though we are becoming a society of SF&F fans all worried what the other guy thinks and apologizing to each other for our tastes when the other guy is a fan too.

I've been thinking for some time now that this knee-jerk reaction to being labeled "sci-fi" was on the way out and that we would start to see some mainstream re-embracing of the category. Now, USA Today has just given me the first positive proof of this. Look at this list of Hollywood types who aren't denying that what they do is SF, in an article in a major paper that doesn't use the word "geek" or "nerd."

And look at this quote from Lost producer JJ Abrams, who says that science fiction "is an extrapolated version of the present. If you're at war, or you find out the government is spying on you, or if you feel your civil rights are being abrogated, it can provoke you as a writer. Science fiction is never about paradise found. It stems from trouble in our own world. The best kind of storytelling is when writers turn a mirror on ourselves, and that mirror shows us a lot of conflict."

Most interesting, the article equates the fiction of HG Wells & Ray Bradbury with Star Trek, while being clear that by "science fiction" what isn't meant is "science-fiction-cum-fantasy" work like Star Wars. Obviously, this is just one journalist's opinion, and Hollywood can turn on a dime when the almighty dollar decrees differently, but for today I am most gratified.

2006 Campbell Conference

Lou Anders — Thu, 20 Jul 2006 15:18:00 +0000

Okay, I am way late on blogging about the Campbell conference. And now my new/old friend Robert J Sawyer has beat me to it, and most elegantly too. But here goes...

The conference was held July 5-9, 2006, at the J. Wayne and Elsie M. Gunn Center for the Study of Science Fiction at the University of Kansas. I came in on Wednesday night, to sit in on the writing workshop held in advance of the awards weekend, and in good ol' workshop tradition, was taken out by a group of students for too many beers on my first night. But I had a wonderful time - thanks guys. You are all wonderful, and I hope I didn't talk your ear off too much about Robyn Hitchcock. Not my fault they had him on the jukebox.

As Rob reports, one of the best aspects of the week was the ability to have ongoing, weekend-long discussions with a few interesting people, as opposed to the chaos of conventions where you have a hundred five-minute discussions. Rob, Paolo Bacigalupi, and I really hit it off, and the conference wouldn't have been the same without them there. As Rob writes on his blog, "Indeed, Lou, Paolo, and I were so simpatico about what's right and wrong with SF, and about how the art form should be practiced, that it was like I'd found two brothers I didn't know I'd had." Rob, I am both deeply honored by and in complete agreement with your sentiments. And congratulations to you both on your respective awards. (Btw, Paolo has a new blog, Windup Stories. Stop by and say hello.)

It was also wonderful to meet in the flesh Pyr author George Zebrowski, along with Pamela Sargent. George and I have had many long telephone conversations, but this was the first time we'd met in person. George is an extremely good man, and his keynote address (we each delivered a speech on Thursday night) was a stirring talk on the importance of integrity in writing and publishing. George is a fierce defender of SF as art for art's sake. As he says you "tighten your belt" and shoot for excellence without compromise or surrender. Counterbalancing this, was Saturday's talk by John Ordover, who argued that science fiction couldn't achieve commercial success comparable to that enjoyed by fantasy novels unless it was willing to forgo innovation in favor of tried and true tropes. Ordover felt that fantasy was accessible because it was instantly familiar and that SF's greatest strength - its commitment to the new and unknown - was its greatest handicap. He argued for a return to Star Wars style space opera, though his "balanced porfolio" analogy made more sense to me that the rest of his talk.

Which, obviously, generated some controversy. Personally, I'm closer to George (and Rob, Jim Gunn, et al.) than John, though I still maintain that a work can be both commercially successful and artistically meaningful. I cite our own River of Gods as an example, as well as Richard Morgan's Altered Carbon and most anything by Charles Stross. I would also suggest that the previous age of lowest common denominator entertainment reaching the widest audience is fading, as online commerce drives more and more consumer eyeballs away from the short selection available in traditional retail and promoted by traditional marketing to the near-infinite and user driven choice offered on the internet (a la Chris Anderson's The Long Tail) and that just as the growing importance of the DVD boxed set has raised the overall narrative complexity of television, so to will quality in writing out in the minds of the consumer in publishing as well. But I digress...

Suffice to say it was a fantastic time. I hope what I had to say held meaning. Certainly, I learned a lot myself from all the discussions. Thank you to Jim Gunn and Chris McKitterick for having me, and to all the students, guests and participants. I would come back in a heartbeat.

Judging Books by their Covers

Lou Anders — Thu, 13 Jul 2006 19:59:00 +0000

Personally, I judge books by their covers all the time. I'll be picking up Liz Wiliams' The Demon and the City, which I have absolutely no time to read anytime soon (not that I wouldn't love to) specifically for the extraordinary Jon Foster artwork. Whereas there is a collection out from a golden age writer that I've always wanted to read that I simply will not buy because I cannot get passed the God-awful packaging. I know, I know. But I just can't do it.

I'd like to see more reviews take the art into question. Or else, I'd like to see more reviews of art, some thoughtful discussion of what works and what doesn't. Maybe a monthly column that discusses the merits of new works (and trends) as they emerge. There is a move, for instance, away from illustration towards design afoot in publishing right now, though I tend to side with the thoughts expressed in John Scalzi's post which praised John Picacio for producing cover illustrations which don't "hide the science fiction or fantasy elements of the work, but they do present them in a way that includes (and entices) non-readers of SF/F rather than excludes them." This is what we've tried for with most of our Pyr covers, and which I think works beautifully with a cover like River of Gods (by the brilliant Stephan Martiniere, currently a Hugo nominee).

So I am thrilled to see two new voices join the bloggosphere. One is artist John Picacio, whose blog On the Front, debuted last week. The other is Tor art director Irene Gallo. Not only does it feature a profusion of pretty pictures, but The Art Department contains some sound advice that every beginning illustrator should follow. Only a few days old and already I'm hooked.

Lou vs. the Media Tie-In

Lou Anders — Mon, 10 Jul 2006 21:50:00 +0000

I just got my contributor's copies today to BenBella's Star Wars on Trial, the latest in their "Smart Pop" series, and it's given me an excuse to address something that's been worrying at me for a bit.

I'm quite fond of BenBella's Smart Pop books, and quite honored to have been asked to contribute to four of them, their The Man From Krypton, Star Wars on Trial, the forthcoming So Say We All (about Battlestar Galactica), and an upcoming Spider-Man title. I enjoy writing these essays, and I hope to write many more. I also think that Star Wars on Trial is a very good book, possibly one of the most fun books they've put together so far.

So why the worry? The nature of the book is that writers are split into "witnesses" for the defense or the prosecution, themselves represented by Matthew Stover and David Brin. The book is divided into eight sections, looking at the politics of Star Wars, its portrayal of women, its lack of real science, its impact on the field, etc... The back and forth effectively encapsulates the heated emotion all Star Wars debates stir up and has all the juicy fun of a good flame war.

Now, I've got a lot to say about Star Wars, pro and con, a lot of which can be summed up with a not-uncommon deep affection for the original trilogy and an utter disgust with the new one (though I'm less thrilled with Return and quite enjoyed Revenge). And I've got a lot of real problems with some of Lucas' choices in the latter films - something I share with, oh, most of the English speakng world. But the topic I drew was the media tie-in and whether it was good or bad for the genre.

Probably because my head was up my butt and I wasn't paying attention, I didn't quite grok the us vs. them nature of the book and what I set out to write was a much more balanced look at the issue, an attempt to ask the question "are media tie-ins harmful?," rather than answer it outright. To that end, I included quotes from a number of different writers in the field. Realizing into the process that I was supposed to be more emphaticly one-sided in my opinion, my essay was steered towards a more forceful attack on the media tie-in (and even paired back eventually from what you see in print). Now, when I say "steered" I am not saying editorial involvement from above altered my words. I altered them to give BenBella more of what they were looking for and what I had agreed to do. But the result is that I feel I have taken (or will seem to have taken) a strong Lou vs. Media stance that is not entirely how I feel.

Lest you think I'm backtracking, I am not wild about media tie-ins. I don't believe they draw readers into the rest of the field, nor appreciably affect the number of readers a writer gets for his non-media tie-in work. My own sense from working in media as a journalist is that readers of media tie-in works are there for the media, not the writer. There are superstars of the tie-in (R.A. Salvatore for Forgotten Realms of course), but these are different readerships and I don't think if all the Star Wars books disappeared tomorrow that those readers would rush out and pour their dollars into purchases of Accelerando or Starship:Mutiny. And maybe this doesn't matter.

I've bought the occassional Doctor Who book in the past, don't fault my friend Sean Williams for his successful Star Wars trilogy, and am happy for Chris Roberson's upcoming X-Men novel (the cover of which, by John Picacio, will undoubtably blow us all away). I don't fault anyone for writing or reading a media tie-in. Sure, I wish we lived in a world where the cinema of science fiction more closely resembled its literature and where popularity followed quality more closely than it does. Yes, I am aware that there are books of quality written as media tie-ins, and, ironically, I suspect that a lot of Star Wars novels are better than Star Wars itself.

And I think that railing against Star Wars is raging into a wind.

But a few months ago, I gave a young man who only reads Forgotten Realms novels a copy of Sean Williams' fantasy, The Crooked Letter. The next time I saw him, he said he finished the book in a rush, that he couldn't put it down, and that it was "the smartest fantasy he ever read." He said that he "didn't know that fantasy could be this good," and that he was telling all his friends about it and was anxious for the next book in the series.

As I try to say in my essay, I don't object that the media tie-in exists, but that it is so often conflated in the minds of the general public with the rest of the science fiction and fantasy genre. I do not fault you if you read them or write them, and perhaps you write them well, but for my part, it is the rest of the genre that I will strive to proselytize and uphold. Star Wars, after all, doesn't need my help, but there is a lot of smart pop out there which does.

Mundane Me

Lou Anders — Mon, 10 Jul 2006 21:41:00 +0000

The keynote address I gave at the Campbell conference has apparently been dehydrated and reduced to an easily-compressed powder, uploaded on Mundane-SF. If you add water to these notes, perhaps my full speech will re-emerge. Hi Trent!