SF Signal: October 2005 Archives

Monday October 31, 2005

Baen to Publish Online SF Magazine

Baen Books, home of the famous Baen Free Library, will be publishing an online science fiction magazine in 2006. The magazine's editor is SF author Eric Flint, who makes no bones about trying to revive an economically stagnant short fiction market. He hopes to increase the amount of "popular" science fiction being written, by which (I think) he means sf/f adventure stories written by popular writers.

I'm not sure I agree with this seemingly controversial implication that science fiction has been steadily producing ever-increasingly "unpopular" (or does he mean low quality?) science fiction. There have been many outstanding stories just last year alone. But, hey, any new venue for short fiction is a good thing. I suspect, given the increasing popularity of online fiction, especially over the last couple of years, that the online magazine will see the birth of many great pieces of short fiction.

SF Tidbits Part XXIV

According to AintItCool, Fox has released a pre-special-FX buzz trailer for Eragon, the adaptation of Christopher Paolini's best-selling novel. Oddly, the trailer is not available at the movie's official website. In fact, as Cinematical points out, the release of the trailer was a mistake. Not that it matters in this day and age - see the trailer while it lasts.
Jeff at The Disembodied Brain talks about the TV sci-fi slump.
Film noir website Out of the Past does a 24 minute podcast examination of Blade Runner.
A remake of Jules Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth is in the planning stages - and it's to be shot in 3D! [via Cinematical via Empire]
Holy marketing machine! Batman heads to Lego!

POLL RESULTS: Star Wars Episode III on DVD

Here are the results of the latest SF Signal poll.

QUESTION
Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith will be released on DVD on November 1st. Do you plan on buying it?

RESULTS

(37 total votes)

Looks like our readership is about equally divided on getting the DVD. Even more encouraging to me is that nobody is holding out for the inevitable mashup re-re-re-release. That's right, people, send a message to The Man (that would be the movie studio Marketing Man) that we're not going to stand for multiple versions of these movies! Give us our original versions! Han shot first, dammit!

Ahem. Sorry, I was momentarily possessed by JP for a second.

Sunday October 30, 2005

Do Writers Bug You?

CoolSciFi links to an article at Holt Uncensored that lists Ten Mistakes Writers Don't See (But Can Easily Fix When They Do). Without reiterating it here, I do notice when writers make some of these mistakes and sometimes it just bugs me.

Asimov had the crutch prase "to be sure" which, as much as I love his work, used to annoy the heck out of me. Some writers (I cannot recall which ones) occasionally have their characters spew phony dialogue purely for the sake of the reader's benefit (obvious handholding). A better example of the "Lists" offense than cited in the article comes from Pel Toro. It's worth repeating here - it's so darned funny.

"The things were odd, weird, grotesque. There was something horribly uncustomary and unwonted about them. There were completely unfamiliar. Their appearance was outlandish and extraordinary. There was something quite phenomenal about them. They were supernormal; they were unparalleled; they were unexampled. The shape of the aliens was singular in every sense. They were curious, odd, queer, peculiar and fantastic, and yet when every adjective had been used on them, when every preternatural epithet had been applied to their aberrant and freakish appearance, when everything that could be said about such eccentric, exceptional, anomalous creatures had been said, they still remained indescribable in any concrete terms."

Somebody call the Thesaurus Police!

SF Tidbits Part XXIII

SF author Jeff Vandermeer is having a Halloween Haiku Contest. (In an attempt to face my fear of poetry, I submitted an entry! Yay me.)
The Dark Echo site has a new look and a minor rant about Tor Essentials.
Designs are being sought for the base of the Hugo Award.
PH-UK has an interview with M. John Harrison.
Stephen King will be writing a comic book version of The Dark Tower.

[All links via Locus Online]

How Do You Decide What Book to Read?

A recent Book Standard article Anatomy of a Buzz: Does Getting Your Book on TV for a Few Seconds Boost Sales (If It's on 'Lost')? asks whether TV advertising for books works. When a copy of Flann O'Brien's The Third Policeman appeared on an episode of Lost (season 2, episode 3 which had 22 million viewers according to Nielson), there was a sales surge. This may be a little misleading, though, as the appearance of the book was foretold in a Chicago Tribune article (and syndicated in other papers). The article had a Lost writer saying that reading The Third Policeman would be invaluable to fans seeking to unravel the island's mystery. So, factor in the obsessive fan effect.

Still, it got me wondering, not so much about how to sell books but about what makes people decide to read one book over another. (And by "people" I mean "me" because, as we all know, it's all about me!) I'm pretty firmly entrenched in the science fiction genre but even within that niche, how is it I decide what to read?

I'm just talking about choosing what to read not necessarily what to buy. Given my backlog of books (Hello, my name is John and I'm a biblioholic.) it's a pretty good bet that I already own something I want to read. So, what makes me pick one book over another from my abnormally large pile of biblio goodness? Setting aside book suggestion sites for a moment, how do I pick?

Several things might influence my decision:

Recommendations
Having a book recommended by someone I know is always a good method - that is, if the person has similar reading tastes as I do or is otherwise a good indicator of what I'd like. Years ago we tried a group reading project with Fred Saberhagen's The Dracula Tape. Can't say I liked it but then again I didn't pick it as the group read. [Looks at Scott] To be fair, it was a book I already owned, so I thought I would like it. JP seems to be good at picking books I like even though our tastes diverge somewhat.

Award wins and/or good reviews
Public acclaim is a way a book gets my attention whether through award wins, award nomination or reviews. My luck with award winning books is hit or miss, so maybe my tastes are a bit different than the mass populace, or at least the voting populace. (Oddly, I find that comforting.) Reviews are a tricky thing. Like recommendations, it helps to find a reviewer who shares similar tastes. Free review sites like Amazon are easily cluttered with phony, love-fest reviews but don't get me started.

Looking for material from specific author
Sometimes I'm looking to try a new writer and sometimes I'm a-jonesin' for a particular one. Especially after a bad read, I always wonder why more writers can't be like, say, Theodore Sturgeon, an author from whom I have yet to read anything bad. It's the writing style that makes him stand out above others. Robert Silverberg is another standout in the area of storytelling.

Looking for material from a specific era
Science fiction of a particular era is sometimes my goal. Every now and then I get a hankerin' (did I just say "hankerin'"?) for some Golden Age science fiction. It has a flavor that is just not present in most sf today.

Pressure to continue/avoid a series
With so many sf books being part of a series, it's no wonder that book series might affect my decision. If a book is a part 1 of a series it's a bigger commitment I have to make. I can't go too long between reading successive installments without the overall story losing some of its impact. This year I read two books in a series by Leo Frankowski only two months apart because if I waited any longer, I thought I might forget something of the first book. It helps if the author recaps the events, but not all do. (Here's where my own reviews come in very handy.) So, yes, being part of a series impacts my decision. Silly, I know, but there it is.

Book length
File another one under "afraid of commitment". Some books are just too daunting. I like them; they sound interesting - but do I have the time in my life right now to devote to a 1,000 page quest fantasy? Sometimes I do. And sometimes I pick a book because it's short and life is soon to be too busy to spend much time reading. I picked Sturgeon's Some of Your Blood for that reason. (Plus it's Theodore Sturgeon! A two-fer bonus!) When I was doing the short-story-a-day thing last year, I would sneak in a short story whenever there were some otherwise idle moments in life. Size does matter. (Ahem.)

In the mood for subgenre
Gotta have it! Sometimes I'm just in the mood for space opera or military sf or literary sf or adventure or sf mystery or...

Assignment/Project
School book assignments were always lame. It wasn't so much the material as it was that I had to read it. What could have been fun became a chore. I read William Golding's Lord of the Flies in high school and didn't like it very much. Several years ago I re-read of my own free will and loved it. Earlier this year, we had a reading project that essentially amounted to a reading assignment. This also dictated what I read next, but only a little as I mixed in other books.

A great opening scene
Sometimes a book gets chosen because you just pick it up randomly and discover a great opening scene and a story that draws you in. Leaping to the Stars by David Gerrold and Four and Twenty Blackbirds by Cherie Priest come to mind.

An upcoming adaptation
It is generally accepted that films adapted from books are usually of lesser quality that the source material. So whenever I hear that a book is being made into a movie, I feel an uncontrollable desire to read the book before the movie hits the screens lest the book be ruined by a bad adaptation. If I've already read the book then there's no problem, otherwise the book moves up on my reading list. One current book that falls in this category: A Scanner Darkly by Philip K. Dick.

Whew! I'm glad I sorted all that out.

Now excuse me while I go find something to read.

Saturday October 29, 2005

One must understand...

how they work for you really to put a zombie in its place. Lets face it, zombies are darned terrifying critters, and if you get one of them time travelling nazi ones, you may as well scoop out your own brain matter for them. But just in time for Halloween, our friends at How Stuff Works have come to our rescue with a crash course in How Zombies work. And now you know.

REVIEW: Eldest by Christopher Paolini

REVIEW SUMMARY: A much weaker book than Eragon.

MY RATING:

BRIEF SYNOPSIS: An inexperienced dragon-rider must train to become the warrior who will save all the land from an Evil Emperor.

MY REVIEW:
PROS: The thread involving Eragon's cousin was entertaining. The last 10% of the book was the best part.
CONS: The other 90% was slow-moving, boring and lacked many qualities which would have otherwise immersed the reader.
BOTTOM LINE: Maybe this is a classic case of middle book syndrome?

Having really enjoyed Eragon, the first book in Chritopher Paolini's epic fantasy Inheritance trilogy, I was very much looking forward to the sequel, Eldest. Sadly, I was very disappointed.

Eldest, which picks up immediately following the conclusion of Book 1, continues the story of young Eragon, first of a new generation of the heroic dragon riders. Eragon is still a noob though, so he and his dragon, Spahira, need to undergo some training. They head off to the distant and magical elf city to get that training, hopefully in time to help defend the land of Alagaësia from the evil forces of the still-unseen Emperor Galbatorix. Meanwhile, Eragon's cousin Roran is wanted by Galbatorix's cronies who threaten his small hometown unless they give him up.

A simple story, to be sure, but I kind of expected that. Eragon was that way too but I though the story was garnished with enough embellishments to make it a very fun and quick-moving read. Eragon also had a certain amount of charm. Unfortunately this was not the case with Eldest.

The story is told in two threads - the main one following Eragon and a minor storyline follows Roran. Unexpectedly, I found Roran's tale much more entertaining. His predicament with the monstrous Ra'zac was an interesting exercise in choosing the lesser of two evils - surrender to the enemy or put his town in danger. The side story with his hidden love for Katrina added some much-appreciated drama to the book. Roran's evolution from victim to hero was well done and believable. He's not a very likable character, but he is an entertaining one.

Eragon's tale, however, was way too long considering the amount that happened. Basically, there's a brief skirmish, a journey to a faraway elf city, warrior/magic training and a big battle. Does that really take nearly 800 pages to tell? (It shouldn't.) Is this supposed to make it feel "epic"? (It didn't.) This story would have been much, much stronger had it been pared down to about one quarter of its size. There was also much political maneuvering done by the cast in the beginning chapters, the inclusion of which I found to be odd. This is a book aimed at younger readers who are bound to find those parts even more unbearable than I did. Also, instead of having the "hero falls for Elf" subplot, it might have helped the book to throw a few scenes in there showing the enemy (Galbatorix) who, despite being the strongest and most feared villain, remains fully offstage throughout two door-stopping books.

The last ten percent of the book (when the storylines of Eragon and Roran merge - the aforementioned "big battle") was the best part. That's where Eldest really started to live up to the promise of the previous book. It had action, drama, plot twists and it moved quickly. Unfortunately, the high quality of this last ten percent only drew attention to the fact that the first ninety percent of the book was sub-par.

Is this middle book syndrome? Perhaps. As it stands now, the final book in the Inheritance trilogy will have to have to work extra hard to attract my attention.

Wednesday October 26, 2005

In Your Face, Blade Runner!

From Yahoo:

Sci-fi buffs from around the world have voted cult TV series, "Firefly," the world's best space science fiction work ever in an international poll conducted by NewScientistSpace.com, the space news website from New Scientist magazine.

Serenity, the successful movie spin-off from the "Firefly" TV series, finished second with 17 percent of the votes. It marks a clean sweep for Joss Whedon, the creator of both stories who is best known as the man behind "Buffy the Vampire Slayer."

You'll note that Blade Runner is not listed at all as it was on another list by...old scientists, I suppose. I'm just sayin'...

Complete survey results are available at New Scientist, but here's the skinny:

WORLDWIDE TOP 10

Firefly (TV)

Serenity (movie)

Farscape

Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (book)

Babylon 5

Battlestar Gallactica

Dune (book)

Ender’s Game (book)

The Empire Strikes Back

Doctor Who (TV)

TOP 10 BOOKS

Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)

Dune (Frank Herbert)

Ender’s Game (Orson Scott Card)

Foundation Series (Isaac Asimov)

Stranger in a Strange Land (Robert A. Heinlein)

Rendezvous with Rama (Arthur C. Clarke)

Contact (Carl Sagan)

Mars Trilogy (Kim Stanley Robinson)

War of the Worlds (H.G. Wells)

Hyperion (Dan Simmons)

TOP 10 FILMS

Serenity

The Empire Strikes Back

Star Wars: A New Hope

2001: A Space Odyssey

Alien

Dune

The Day the Earth Stood Still

The Forbidden Planet

Return of the Jedi

Revenge of the Sith

TOP 8 TV SHOWS

Firefly

Farscape

Babylon 5

Battlestar Galactica

Doctor Who

Star Trek: The Next Generation

Stargate: SG1

Star Trek

Tell Us Where You're From...or...Frappr? I Hardly Know Her!

I'm still abuzz with the proliferation of web applications based on Google Maps.

One such application, Frappr, tracks the geographic location of things. So I thought it would be fun to track where our readers reside. I created a Frappr page for SF Signal. I've also added a "Show us where you are!" link on the main page in the Meta-Signal widget.

Head on over and tell us where you're from!

A Long Time Ago in a Museum Far, Far Away

George Lucas is opening the doors to Star Wars paraphernalia by providing sets, costumes and props from all six Star Wars movies to Boston's Museum of Science. Pieces include Luke's speeder, the cockpit of the Millennium Falcon, androids, and Anakin's prosthetic hand. (No mention was made as to the whereabouts of Anakin's acting skills. Ba-dum crash!)

Star Wars: Where Science Meets Imagination opens Thursday to "give some scientific basis to the fantasy of the films." There is apparently an emphasis on education and technology, the article says:

The museum's president and director, Ioannis Miaoulis, said he feared that U.S. schools are failing to produce enough future engineers to meet competition from Asia, putting pressure on museums like his to play a more influential role. "We are producing generations of people that have no understanding about how most of the things they interact with in their day-to-day life work," he said.

Tuesday October 25, 2005

Film's Most Shocking Moments

Premiere Magazine has posted their 25 Most Shocking Moments in Movie History. Moments of note include the movies:

25. Jaws
22. The Sixth Sense - "I see dead people."
18. Planet of the Apes (original...sorry Tim B.) - "You maniacs!"
17. Star Wars Episode IV - "Luke, I am Your Father!"
12. Texas Chainsaw Massacre
9. The Exorcist - Pea soup, anyone?
8. Carrie
3. Alien - with a scene that has lost all of its charm since Mel Brooks ruined it for me with Spaceballs.

[Link via ClubJade]

As the Ghibli Turns

Turner Classic Movies will be airing nine anime films from Hayao Miyazaki in January 2006. The Studio Ghibli productions include Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, My Neighbor Totoro, Nausicaa: Valley of the Wind, Castle in the Sky, Porco Rosso and Whisper of the Heart.

[via ELN]

Steam Wars

No, not another Star Wars parody. Steam Wars is a site that showcases some artwork depicting steam-driven robots. And who doesn't like steam-driven robots? Seeing this makes me want to watch Sky Captain and Iron Giant again.

[via Planet Magazine]

Monday October 24, 2005

Yet Another Bohemian Rhapsody Mashup

This time telling the story of Zero Wing sung to the tune of Queen's ubiquitous hit.

Zig! For great justice!

SF Tidbits Part XXI

H.P. Lovecraft is not just Cthulhu! So says Robert Silverberg.
Ideomancer has an interview with Stephen Baxter.
The Alien Online has an update on Battlestar Galactica's Richard Hatch.
EscapePod is a podcast site specializing in short fiction. [via BoingBoing]
Neil Gaiman rediscovers his love of Charles Addams. [Link via 14theditch]

I Just Don't Get Poetry

Will someone please tell me what the deal is with poetry? I just don't get it. It always seems like poets just take a long sentence, write the words on different lines and call it poetry. And the more vague the sentences are , the "better" the poem. At least rhyming poets make an effort.

Take, for example, this poem written by Kurt Vonnegut about Isaac Asimov, or any sf poetry for that matter. Vonnegut is a good author but a lousy poet.

POLL RESULTS: The Best Pixar Movie

Here are the results of the latest SF Signal poll.

QUESTION
Which is the best Pixar movie?

RESULTS

(49 total votes)

This was a hard question for me. I think all the movies are equally strong. However, in the end, I voted for A Bug's Life because it's the one that sees the most replay at our house.