Pantechnicon 9 out now

Pantechnicon 9, containing my story 'The Amber Room' is now available. Read it here.

At present, the contents have been posted to the web site, but the PDF version is not yet available.

I'll post links to reviews, as and when and if they appear....

Doing the Hugos, Part 2

Now it's the turn of the novelettes. The Hugo Award for Best Novelette is "awarded for a science fiction or fantasy story of between seven thousand five hundred (7,500) and seventeen thousand five hundred (17,500) words". This year's shortlist looks like this:

'Alastair Baffle's Emporium of Wonders' by Mike Resnick (Asimov's Jan 2008)
Sigh. Another Resnick. He's one of those authors who regularly appears on the Hugo and Nebula shortlists, but I can't for the life of me understand why. Clearly he's popular, but when an award is given for the "best" of a category that's what I expect it to be. This is a tired old Crumbly Fantasy - two old codgers reminisce about a magic shop they used to frequent as kids. They go looking for it and - big surprise - they find it and.... I think people have been writing variations on this deal-with-the-devil / youth-regained story since Poe. Its appearance on this shortlist is, well, baffling....

'The Gambler' by Paolo Bacigalupi (Fast Forward 2)
At least this is 21st Century science fiction. It's also very good, with a clever extrapolation of some aspects of current technology. But, more than that, it's relevant. It's about our world and our future. It's not some rosy-tinted reminiscence about the dead past. Science fiction is neither predictive nor didactic, but it should certainly look forward. This novelette does exactly that. And it's very well-written. It belongs on the shortlist.

'Pride and Prometheus' by John Kessel (F&SF Jan 2008)
This one is very good, this one I like. Austen meets Shelley; one of the Bennetts meets Victor Frankenstein. The Pride and Prejudice pastiche is not pitch-perfect (ugh, too much alliteration), although the modern cadences do make it a more contemporary read. And the ending is rushed. But the writing is very good, and Kessel captures the flavour of Regency England quite well. (I'm not so convinced Mary Bennett would have been quite so willing to meet privately with the various men, but that's a minor quibble.) Frankenstein is a bit wet, but the monster is handled well. Perhaps the story's impact has been a little spoiled by the recent publicity for Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, but never mind.

'The Ray-Gun: A Love Story' by James Alan Gardner (Asimov's Feb 2008)
There's something a little old-fashioned about this novelette too - its style rather than its subject. A boy finds a ray-gun, it changes his life; but not in the way you'd expect a ray-gun to do so. He could have found a leprechaun's hat or a magic dog turd, it would not have substantially changed this story. Which does make you wonder what the point is. It's well-written and very engaging, but it's a little worrying to have so many stories driven by nostalgia on the shortlist this year.

'Shoggoths in Bloom' by Elizabeth Bear (Asimov's Mar 2008)
I wanted to dislike this story. There seemed to be too much in it - 1930s race relations, Nazi persecution of Jews, WWI, and a sudden swerve towards slavery at the end - and I couldn't decide if the central conceit, the shoggoths, was cleverly done or mishandled. I'm still not sure. But the story grew on me, and by the end of it I did think it was quite good. Not as good as the Kessel or the Bacigalupi, but better than the Gardner.

Definitely a stronger category than short stories. While I prefer stories with a more literary treatment of science fiction tropes, I'd sooner there had been such treatments of tropes closer to the heartland of the genre. You know, like spaceships, or aliens, or AIs, etc. Perhaps that's because three of the five are from Asimov's. More variety - in subject, style and source - would have been better, but this is a (mostly) not embarrassing shortlist.

Novellas to follow soon.

Doing the Hugos, Part 1

First, I have to confess I won't be attending the Worldcon in Montreal, nor am I a supporting member. So I didn't nominate the shortlisted titles, nor will I be voting on them. Nonetheless, I have decided to read the shortlisted novellas, novelettes and short stories, and give my thoughts on them.

So. Short stories first....

'26 Monkeys, Also the Abyss' by Kij Johnson (Asimov’s Jul 2008)
While this is clearly a good story, it's not the sort of genre fiction I normally enjoy. The premise is whimsical, the treatment is whimsical, and I'm not a big fan of whimsy. Nevertheless, it's one of the stronger stories on the shortlist.

'Article of Faith' by Mike Resnick (Baen’s Universe Oct 2008)
I thought this was appalling: dated, dull, and wholly predictable. A new robot joins the staff of a small-town church and ends up wanting to worship. Cue arguments on whether robots have souls. Yawn. And who writes stories featuring these sorts of silly pulp sf robots - because, let's face it, if the robot is a stand-in for a foreigner, i.e., not-one-of-us, then why not actually use a foreigner and give the story more impact?

'Evil Robot Monkey' by Mary Robinette Kowal (The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction 2)
What is this? The Year of the Monkey? Er no, it's actually the Year of the Ox. But the story. The title is a silly joke - the monkey in the story is a live Chimpanzee. A "smart" chimp, in fact. Who makes pots out of clay. The story is around four pages long in the mass market paperback Solaris anthology. It is mildly amusing and mostly inconsequential. It's not even the best story in The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction 2.

'Exhalation' by Ted Chiang (Eclipse 2)
It is a truth universally acknowledged that Chiang is one of the best writers of short science fiction currently being published. Which means every Chiang story is not only judged against all others published around the same time but against every other Chiang story. Which does him no favours. Especially in this case. 'Exhalation' is pretty much a thought experiment, with very little in the way of plot. It's well-written, but it failed for me in several aspects. It lectures the reader... and the explanation for this doesn't quite justify the up-front info-dumping. Further, the central premise isn't actually that interesting, and all the story does is provide a slow and cumbersome vehicle for the narrator to figure out that entropy exists.

'From Babel's Fall'n Glory We Fled' by Michael Swanwick (Asimov’s Feb 2008)
This story is not yet available online, and I don't subscribe to Asimov's.

It is, overall, quite a poor selection of short stories, and I find it hard to believe they were the best last year had to offer. While I wouldn't have nominated Kij Johnson's, it's clearly the strongest of the bunch. Having said that, I've yet to read the Swanwick, so perhaps I should reserve judgment until I have done. All the same, the Chiang is a bit dull, the Kowal is inconsequential, and the Resnick is embarrassingly bad.

Now to read the novelettes....

Consequences

I've just heard that Spandau Ballet are reforming, and I have to wonder if there is a side-effect of the credit crunch no one has considered....

All those terrible bands and celebrities of the last twenty-five years we'd happily thought had retired have also been hit by the credit crunch. So they're relaunching their careers to bolster their dwindling incomes.

So yes, things are going to get worse. Much worse.

Recent Reading Roundup

Or, A Desperate Search for Something to Write About.... If a book really impresses me, I'll write about it on this blog. Which means those I don't mention are mostly, well, meh. Which in turn makes me wonder why I'm bothering to mention them. But never mind.

I have in the past few weeks read:

Viator, Lucius Shepard (2004), reads like Shepard is channelling Ballard, who is in turn channelling Borges. The title is the name of a ship which has run aground on the Alaska coast near the small town of Kaliaska. Tom Wilander is one of five men of Scandinavian ancestry living aboard the ship and ostensibly preparing it for salvage. The novella's central premise is one Shepard used again in the Hugo and Nebula nominated 'Stars Seen Through Stone'. Like that novella, Viator's story is carried by its main character and his relationships with others; unlike that novella, in Viator Shepard attempts a rational explanation for the events of the story.

The Enemy Stars, Poul Anderson (1958), was shortlisted for the Hugo in 1959 under its serialised version's title, 'We Have Fed Our Sea'. It's fairly typical of the time. Sf writers in those days used to just make shit up, and the lack of rigour or plausibility, or even logical consistency, seems weird nowadays. No wonder sf has ended up with the reputation it has. There are various mentions of "computational machines" and "databanks"... and yet a character pulls out a sliderule to calculate a starship's orbit. Did Golden Age authors actually bother to think about what they were writing?

Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury (1953). Truffaut's film adaptation is one of my favourite genre films, so I thought it was about time I read the book. It is after all a sf classic. But, oh dear. It's terrible. Lots of whinging and moaning by Montag. Lots of lectures by Clarissa, Beatty, Faber and assorted others. Dull, dull, dull. And none of it makes any sense - books banned for generations, but people can still read? There goes the logical consistency again. (And yes, the same criticism can be levelled at the film, but still....)

Seeds of Earth, Mike Cobley (2009). See here.

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, CS Lewis (1950), is a beloved classic. Allegedly. I have vague memories of the Narnia books, although whether I read them as a kid or just picked up the story by cultural osmosis I've no idea. Unfortunately, the book's somewhat patronising hectoring style grated, the talking animals were juvenile, and the one-note characterisation made for an uninvolving read. Don't know if I'll bother reading the rest of the series.

A Fire Upon The Deep, Vernor Vinge (1992), I read for a LT group read. I remember being really impressed by this novel when I read it shortly after publication. It's aged more gracefully than many books of that period, but not even "fruit micro-oils" or "pentapeptides" can hide the wrinkles. The novel makes much of a galactic USENET, and that now reads as somewhat quaint. It doesn't help that USENET embodied a pretty much heterogeneous culture but in the book it's supposed to be used by millions of alien races. So not much about it seems especially alien. Still, the Zones of Thought is a neat idea, the Tines are cleverly done, and it's an entertaining read.

The Six Directions of Space, Alastair Reynolds (2009), is a new novella from Subterranean Press. It's set in an alternate future in which the Mongols have an interstellar empire, a result of their discovery of a mysterious alien interstellar network. The Mongol future adds an interesting spin to an idea that's been done before - Andrew M Stephenson's Nightwatch, William Barton & Michael Capobianco's White Light, and Sean Williams' Geodesica duology, all leap to mind. Having said that, The Six Directions of Space then takes off in an unexpected direction. So-called classics of the Golden Age just can't compare to sf such as this, and I fail to understand why anyone would sooner recommend some graceless and simplistic piece of crap by Asimov.

Millennium, John Varley (1983), is the novelisation of an early screenplay for a film adapted from one of my favourite sf short stories, Varley's 'Air Raid'. The film which was eventually made is unfortunately rubbish. But the novel is much better. On reread, the novel struck me as far more Heinlein-esque than I'd remembered. Perhaps that's something you grow out of - Heinlein works for teenagers, but like all childish things should be put away in adulthood. But it's only the character Bill Smith who especially reminds me of Heinlein's works, and he's soon completely out of his depth and the likeness no longer holds true. (A Heinlein hero would never be anything except completely in control, of course.)

Star King, Jack Vance (1964). See here.

Moon Shot, Alan Shepard & Deke Slayton (1994). See here.

I also watched a few films during the same period. They were:

La Grande Illusion, dir. Jean Renoir (1937), is a World War I prisoner-of-war film. It was entertaining and the dialogue was nicely witty, but it also felt like a string of POW movie clichés knitted together into a story. Time can do that to films....

Fando y Lis, dir. Alejandro Jodorowsky (1968). Jodorowsky is a singular genius. In other words, he's barking mad. Fando y Lis was his first feature film, and its premiere in Mexico City apparently caused a riot. It's not as bizarre a film as his later El Topo or The Holy Mountain, but neither is it entirely sane. Some elements worked really well - I was, for example, much taken by the jazz cocktail party in the ruins, during which an upright piano is set on fire.

Rollerball, Norman Jewison (1975). There's something about 1970s visions of the future I find strangely appealing. All those Brutalist buildings with interiors which appear as though they ought to be offended by the mere presence of people. If there's one image which sums up the period for me, it's the mainframe data centre - antiseptic décor, whirring tape reels, chunky moulded terminals and monochrome CRTs.... It promised so much and yet delivered so little. As for Rollerball: well, the eponymous sport isn't the best bit about the film - in fact that looks a bit silly and nowhere near as lethal as is implied. No, the best bits are James Caan lolling about his mansion with a succession of paid "companions", the "executive" cocktail party, and Sir Ralph Richardson as the librarian. And all that Brutalist architecture, of course. All it needed for a win of epic proportions was some Apollo Programme technology.

Sky Captain & the World Of Tomorrow, Kerry Conran (2004), was a rewatch. I've always felt this film received short shrift on its release. It failed to do well because it was too true to the pulp serials which inspired it - it not only aped their look and feel, but also borrowed their narrative mechanism. And that didn't go down to well with modern audiences. This viewing of the film didn't cause me to change my mind, although I thought perhaps it was also too consciously arty for a modern multiscreen audience. It's all very well blowing shit up, but not in a palette of washed out blues. I still think it's an under-rated film, though.

Lady Chatterley, Pascale Ferran (2006), was a rental, and I don't remember why I stuck this on my list. But I'm glad I did. It's an adaptation of DH Lawrence's John Thomas and Lady Jane, an earlier alternative version of Lady Chatterley's Lover. In French. It was a little odd to watch a French film adapted from such a well-known English novel. But, despite that "cognitive dissonance", I thought Lady Chatterley an excellent film, with the sort of languid and elegiac pace, and detailed eye, of a Tarkovsky film. I fully expect the film to make my top five films at the end of the year.

Avalon, Mamorus Oshii (2001), was another rewatch. This film really impressed me when I first saw it. The special effects struck me at the time as jaw-dropping and, happily, still seemed impressive this time around. The story is, perhaps, none too original, but it's handled well. And it looks gorgeous.

Watchmen, dir. Zack Snyder (2009) - no, I didn't think it was as good as many others did. Although it was a great deal better than the execrable 300. I felt Watchmen was too faithful to the comic, and what works on the page doesn't necessarily work on the screen. Some of the monologues were cringe-worthy. And why were all the Watchmen superheroes? In the comic, they're just costumed vigilantes; only Dr Manhattan has real superpowers. The story flagged badly in the middle, and comic-book introspection sounds pretentious in a film. Also, Rohrschach appeared to be channelling Clint Eastwood, and The Comedian looked way too much like Robert Downey Jr to be taken seriously (should you take a man called The Comedian seriously? Just how much irony can you shoehorn into a superhero film?). All the same, I'll be getting the DVD.

Hellboy 2: The Golden Army, Guillermo del Toro (2008). I liked the first Hellboy film, but I'd heard this one wasn't as good. It wasn't. Despite the excellent visuals, and some impressive set-pieces, it felt flat throughout. The characters just didn't seem to do much. Abe was pushed centre-stage through his love affair with Princess Nuala, but still felt less of a character than he had in the first film. The ectoplasmic Johann Krauss, however, just struck an entirely wrong comedic note. Disappointing.

Signs of the Times

Back in the 1980s and 1990s, newspapers used "monster" people - i.e., make some poor sod out to be a combination of Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot and Gary Glitter. It didn't matter if they deserved such treatment. It sold newspapers.

It seems the 21st century spin on this is to take some nobody who bludgeoned their way into the public eye, and pretend they're Princess Diana come again. It doesn't matter if they deserve such treatment. It sells newspapers.

Monumental

I've not blogged about sculpture before. Mostly because it's not something I think about a great deal. If at all. And while I have enjoyed scultpures, and sculpture gardens, in the past, it's not a subject I can discourse knowledgeably on (not that lack of knowledge has ever stopped me before...).

But.

I saw photos of the sculptures below on the excellent Dark Roasted Blend blog, and was immediately taken with them. The photos are part of a series, "Spomenik: The End of History", by Belgian photograper Jan Kempenaers. See them all here.

The sculptures are monuments in the former Yugoslavia. They're very science-fictional. They remind me of the DEFA films Der Schweigende Stern, Im Staub der Sterne and Eolomea. They embody a peculiarly Communist monumental aesthetic. And we'll never see its like again. Which is a shame.

Clarke Award Shortlist Posted

Oh well. It doesn't much resemble the shortlist I predicted in this post - I guessed The Quiet War and Anathem, but not the others. The shortlist goes like this:

The Quiet War, Paul J McAuley
Anathem, Neal Stephenson
Song of Time, Ian R MacLeod
House of Suns, Alastair Reynolds
The Margarets, Sherri S Tepper
Martin Martin's on the Other Side, Mark Wernham

It's not a list that makes me want to dash out and read the books. I've already read - and enjoyed - House of Suns, but I didn't think it was good enough for the shortlist. (But then, I predicted Nick Harkaway's The Gone-away World would be on the shortlist, but I'm currently reading it and not enjoying it at all....) I've only read MacLeod's short fiction. Perhaps I should rectify that. I've read a few of Tepper's novels, and they were all very much of a muchness - solid mid-list fare with a slight undercurrent of umbrage.

I'm not going to try and predict the winner. I think most expect Anathem to take the prize. I've yet to read it - I probably never will, since I disliked Stephenson's Baroque Cycle so much.