SF Signal

Don’t get me wrong, I really like Heroes, and what I am about to outline doesn’t diminish my enjoyment of the show one bit. In fact, its really just me ranting a bit about the show and NBC.

1. This one really bugs me to no end and I don’t know whose fault it is. Time Warner’s for having crappy time servers feeding time to the set-top boxes, or NBC for running Heroes long, but the last three episodes I’ve recorded have all ended with at least one minute left, if not more. As it is, not only do I miss the ending monologue by Mohinder, I also miss the teaser trailer for next week. WTF? And no, watching it live is not an option. There is no way I will have Heroes on TV when there is any possibility my kids will be around. As it stands now, it looks like I’ll have to go and bittorrent the show over-night just so I can watch the last couple of minutes the next day. Insane. The other thought is that I record the show in HD, and I’ve noticed that the HD feeds tend to lag the regular feeds by a second or so for no discernible reason. But its only a second lag, not a minute or more. As I don’t know who to blame, I will place it equally on the media whore corporations of NBC and AOL/Time Warner. A pox on you!
2. And now the non-serious one. I realize they are probably shooting the different ‘settings’ in close proximity to one another, but the Odessa setting really bugs me, cause, well, it isn’t really Odessa. For one thing, there are too many trees, way too much grass and not to mention the existence of large hills. There is no hint of the car-eating tumbleweeds, bone dry environment, or vast fields of oil wells. Yes, yes, its just a show, but it still bugs me. And being out in the middle of BFWest Texas, Odessa isn’t the most connected of places. I have to assume that Claire’s dad is using the company jet to galavant around the country, because he sure isn’t flying in and out of the Midland/Odessa airport in a timely fashion. But then again, the fairly remote location, yet within easy reach of most of modern life’s amenities, is a selling point if your going to be running a secret government facility masquerading as a paper products manufacturer.

Again, nothing Earth shattering here, just a couple of annoyances and I’m really curious to see if others have the same issue recording the show that I do, especially other Time Warner customers in Houston (looks at John and/or Trent). Now I’m off to bittorrent land so I can see the last couple of minutes of last night’s episode. Oh, and for those of you who still have it recorded, go back and look at Charlie’s birthday pictures. Notice something different in the second one?

Filed under: Heroes

Science fiction is often said to be best when the story is character-driven. That must mean there are some pretty cool characters in sf/f. So, who are your favorites?

Maybe it’s Rick Deckard from Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick. Or maybe you prefer the hardboiled attitude of Marîd Audran from George Alec Effinger’s When Gravity Fails. Maybe you like the heroic nature of John Carter from Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Mars books or the time traveler from H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine?

Your favorite character could be alien, like Pip the minidrag from Alan Dean Foster’s Humanx Commonwealth books or the Kzin Speaker-to-Animals from Larry Niven’s Ringworld.

The character doesn’t even have to be biological! How about HAL 9000 (from 2001: A Space Odyssey), Marvin the Paranoid Android (The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams) or R. Daneel Olivaw (Isaac Asimov’s Caves of Steel and other robot novels)?

Don’t forget, bad Guys make great characters too! Maybe Baron Vladimir Harkonnen from Frank Herbert’s Dune or Quinn Dexter from Peter F. Hamilton’s Night’s Dawn trilogy?

Some rules:

1. You must name characters originating from a book or short story. No media tie-ins, please. And no comics/graphic novels – that’s a whole other ball of wax. A follow on post will address TV/film.
2. Cite the character and the source, including author.
3. Must be a single character, no groups or species. Sorry, you cannot pick the sandworms from Dune.)
4. Name as many single characters as you’d like.

If you need help, wikipedia has a handy inventory of characters from written science fiction as well as a list of sf/f detectives.

Your turn! Who are your favorite literary science fiction characters?

Filed under: Books

Subterranean Press has made the John Scalzi guest-edited issue of Subterranean available as a free PDF download. Here’s what’s in it:

Subterranean #4

• “Scene from a Dystopia” by Rachel Swirsky
• “The Third Brain” by Charles Coleman Finlay and James Allison
• “It Came from the Slush Pile” by John Joseph Adams
• “A Finite Number of Typewriters” by Stuart MacBride
• “Cliche Haiku” by Scott Westerfeld
• “Horrible Historians” by Gillian Polack
• “Hesperia and Glory” by Ann Leckie
• “What a Piece of Work” by Jo Walton
• “Remarks on Some Cliches I Have (By Definition) Known Too Well” by Teresa Nielsen Hayden
• “The Last Science Fiction Writer” by Allen M. Steele
• “Shoah Sry” by Tobias S. Buckell and Ilsa J. Bick
• “Labyrinth’s Heart” by Bruce Arthurs
• “The NOMAD Gambit” by Dean Cochrane
• “In Search Of…Eileen Siriosa” by Ron Hogan
• “Tees and Sympathy” by Nick Sagan
• “Last” by Chris Roberson
• “Refuge” by David Klecha
• “The Inevitable Heat Death of the Universe” by Elizabeth Bear
• “Editor’s Afterword” by John Scalzi

[UPDATED with new link]

Filed under: Books

• Henry Jenkins profiles Joe Haldeman (The Forever War, Camouflage) who will be appearing at the MIT Media Lab’s Bartos Theatre this Thursday for the “The Craft of Science Fiction” event. [via VCTB]
• SFF Audio wants YOU to make audiobooks…and so they are putting a call out for people to record audio version of public domain science fiction stories.
• FantasyBookSpot interviews E.E. Knight author of the Vampire Earth dark fantasy series.
• George R.R. Martin reads an excerpt from A Feast for Crows.
• YouTube has a Battlestar Galactica promo gag reel, not to be confused with the slightly funnier BG classic bloopers (See Adama in bed with Moffit!)
• ABC is looking for “families who are Extreme Star Wars Enthusiasts” to appear on Wife Swap. Now, if only I knew someone who gets mail addressed to “Star Wars Enthusiast”… (H) [via Club Jade]

Filed under: Tidbits

New York Magazine says the solution to the problem with never-ending shows like Lost is to craft the TV equivalent of a novella: the limited-run show.

Now let’s imagine an alternate reality in which, say, Lost was designed to run for only two seasons. Rather than getting an increasingly tedious shaggy-dog story, we’d get 48 episodes of tightly plotted, expertly interwoven suspense. Viewers would be both more willing to sign on at the beginning (knowing their investment will pay off) and more inclined to buy DVDs later (either as catch-up for newbies or as a satisfying boxed set). Sure, the show won’t syndicate well, but shows like Lost don’t syndicate well anyway. And the series finale would be huge–the kind of event TV network executives drool over.

I think this is a great idea. I also think that this will never happen for the reasons the article states. Too bad.

[via Backwards City]

Filed under: TV

Here are the results of the latest SF Signal poll.

QUESTION
Which of the following characters from Heroes is your favorite?

RESULTS

As could have been predicted, everyone loves Hiro. But poor Nathan, eh? Does the lonely “other” voter care to name names?

There was one noteworthy comment on this week’s poll:

“While Hiro is the best character, Claire is the hottest.” – Kev

Be sure to vote in this week’s poll on the re-mastered Star Trek!

Filed under: Polls

There’s a new email list in town and it’s called Fantastic Fiction. Here is the info sent to me from the list’s creator:

I’ve started a new mailing list, dedicated to fantasy and science fiction. Rather than being exclusive, I’m trying to be inclusive. Discussions will range, I hope, all over. From (Clark Ashton) Smith to (E.E.

“Doc”) Smith. From Heinlein to Howard. From Leiber to Lovecraft and beyond.

This list is a spinoff of another list I’ve been a member of for a few years now, ERB-List, dedicated to the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs. Oftentimes we’ll wander off from the subject matter (the works of

Burroughs) and have to be gently moved back on course.

I suggested this list because many of these authors are interconnected due to friendships and associations, so why not discuss them in a similar fashion.

This list is not connected with Yahoo or Yahoo Groups. In fact, I am putting up my own funds to help run the list, a measure of my dedication and interest. So, I hope you will consider joining.

I hope to see this as an extension of my blogging, and my site (The Eternal Golden Braid). I often write about science fiction there, and I’m hoping to have a discussion on this list that helps inspire me to write more for the blog.

To join the list, Fantastic Fiction, send an e-mail (no subject line needed) to:

MAJORDOMO AT ERBLIST DOT COM [Replace the "AT" with @ and the "DOT" with "."]

…and have the body of the message be…

subscribe fantasticfiction (YOUR MAILING ADDRESS) end

The second line should be “end” because some mailers, like Yahoo, add advertising and the like at the end.

Having “end” on the second line tells Majordomo to ignore anything after that and only execute the command “subscribe fantasticfiction yourmailingaddress”.

Hope to see you there.

- Fred Kiesche

Filed under: Web Sites

REVIEW SUMMARY: Interesting action-packed book that explores the collapse of a technological society.

MY RATING:

BRIEF SYNOPSIS: Jak is a delivery man (or runner in this time) who is asked to deliver a very interesting package – a boy believed to be the reincarnated spiritual leader of the predominant religion. In addition to dodging a rival sect who wants to eliminate the boy, he also runs into a woman capable of reading thoughts who is occasionally possessed by the spirit of the former ruler of the 1000 planet empire.

MY REVIEW:

PROS: Excellent action sequences, the exploration of a space-faring society dealing with technological collapse is well done, most characters are complex.

CONS: Ending seems very rushed, and the plot stalls out right near the climax.

BOTTOM LINE: This is a fun book that offers a decent read, if not much to savor afterwards.

Read the rest of this entry

Filed under: Book Review

REVIEW SUMMARY: A sure-fire way to get teenage readers hooked on science fiction.

MY RATING:

BRIEF SYNOPSIS: Anthology of seven original young-adult novellas designed to get kids hooked on science fiction.

MY REVIEW:

PROS: Filled with sense of wonder; strong, positive role-models.

CONS: One story less effective than the others.

BOTTOM LINE: This is simply a very good collection of science fiction stories, for teenagers and adults alike.

This week my daughter’s elementary school had a book fair and I was once again amazed at how many more fantasy titles there are for kids than there are science fiction titles. I could count the number of sf books they offered on one hand and still have enough fingers left over to poke Scholastic in the eyes. To be fair, there is a much higher demand for fantasy these days thanks to books and films like Harry Potter. And, of course, we are happy that kids are reading anything! But that doesn’t stop us here at SF Signal from opining about the lack of science fiction for kids. (Not for the least of reasons which include being able to use a form of the word “opine”.)

Imagine, then, how high my hopes were when I heard about the new young adult sf anthology Escape From Earth edited by well-respected and capable editors Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois. The book is designed to be a gateway to science fiction for younger readers.

It succeeds in a big way…with one caveat. Parents may feel that some of the language (s**t, b***h,) and situations (talk of sex) presented herein might be unsuitable for younger readers but they may decide it’s OK for teenagers. This exemplifies the difference I see between “young adult” and “juvenile” books. The good news is that all the stories have positive messages for young readers, something that, as a parent, I find particularly encouraging and commendable.

While all the stories are good (with one borderline case), the standout ones for me were “Derelict” by Geoffrey A. Landis, “Combat Shopping” by Elizabeth Moon and “The Mars Girl” by Joe Haldeman. Each one of these not only provided the requisite sense of wonder that drew me to the genre in my formative years, but they also contain characters who exhibit positive qualities without being phony.

Reviewlettes of the stories follow.

Read the rest of this entry

Filed under: Book Review

Borderlands Bookstore wants you to suggest stuff to put on their mascot, Ripley the hairless cat. From this month’s newsletter:

Help us put stuff on Ripley! Thanks to Susan Tunis for telling us about this contest. Chronicle Books is sponsoring a “Stuff on My Bookstore Cat” contest, as a tie-in to the release of the book Stuff on My Cat. Please email office AT borderlands-books DOT com with your suggestions for stuff we might put on Ripley! And, yeah, we already thought of a toupee, you wisecrackers.

When we interviewed Alan Beatts, proprietor of Borderlands Books, he gave us Ripley’s back story. I would think Ripley deserves something more spectacular than, say, John Scalzi’s bacon-laden cat.

Filed under: Web Sites

• Wired interviews Orson Scott Card whose latest book, Empire, is part of a multiformat franchise that was conceived from the ground up for video games, comic books, novels and films.
• Hero Spy has a preview of a new Star Trek comic debuting in January 2007: Star Trek The Next Generation: The Space Between.
• Saturday YouTube: South Park riffs on the opening sequence to Buck Rogers in the 25th Century.
• Brian Aldiss (The Helliconia trilogy, The Dark Light Years, Non-Stop), who just turned 80, wrote his Guide to Old Age in the Guardian. [via SFBC Blog]
• An original list based on the Wired piece: The Top 10 Funniest Six-Word SF Stories.

Filed under: Tidbits

From Locus Online:

SF Grand Master Jack Williamson, born 1908, died this afternoon at his home in Portales, New Mexico, at the age of 98. His first published story was “The Metal Man” in Amazing Stories in 1928, the beginning of a writing career that spanned nine decades. His work ranged from early space opera series The Legion of Space (beginning 1934), werewolf SF/fantasy Darker Than You Think (1940), thoughtful SF classic The Humanoids (1948), Golden Age antimatter tale Seetee Ship (1951 as by Will Stewart), and time travel series Legion of Time (1952). Later works included Hugo and Nebula Award winning novella “The Ultimate Earth” (2000) and its novel expansion Terraforming Earth (2001), winner of the John W. Campbell Memorial Award. He won a Hugo Award in 1985 for autobiography Wonder’s Child, and his career honors included a Pilgrim Award for his nonfiction work including H.G. Wells: Critic of Progress (1973), Life Achievement World Fantasy and Bram Stoker awards, SFWA’s 2nd Grand Master Award in 1976, induction in the SF Hall of Fame in 1996, and Grandmaster of the World Horror Convention in 2004. The Jack Williamson Science Fiction Library was established in 1982 at Eastern New Mexico University, which for 30 years has hosted an annual Lectureship in honor of the writer. Williamson’s last novel was The Stonehenge Gate (2005).

See also:

• Wikipedia Entry
• ISFDB Bibliography
• Awards
• Sciece Fiction Museum entry

Filed under: Books

Editor Jonathan Strahan has posted the table of contents for next year’s anthology The Best Science Fiction And Fantasy Of The Year Volume 1 (the year being 2006), published by Night Shade.

1. “How To Talk To Girls At Parties” by Neil Gaiman
2. “El Regalo” by Peter S. Beagle
3. “I, Row-Boat” by Cory Doctorow
4. “In The House Of The Seven Librarians” by Ellen Klages
5. “Another Word For Map Is Faith” by Christopher Rowe
6. “Under Hell, Over Heaven” by Margo Lanagan
7. “Incarnation Day” by Walter Jon Williams
8. “The Night Whiskey” by Jeffrey Ford
9. “A Siege Of Cranes” by Benjamin Rosenbaum
10. “Halfway House” by Frances Hardinge
11. “The Bible Repairman” by Tim Powers
12. “Yellow Card Man” by Paolo Bacigalupi
13. “Pol Pot’s Beautiful Daughter (Fantasy)” by Geoff Ryman
14. “The American Dead” by Jay Lake
15. “The Cartesian Theater” by Robert Charles Wilson
16. “Journey Into The Kingdom” by M Rickert
17. “Eight Episodes” by Robert Reed
18. “The Wizards Of Perfil” by Kelly Link
19. “The Saffron Gatherers” by Elizabeth Hand
20. “D.A.” by Connie Willis
21. “Femaville 29″ by Paul Di Filippo
22. “Sob In The Silence” by Gene Wolfe
23. “The House Beyond Your Sky” by Benjamin Rosenbaum
24. “The Djinn’s Wife” by Ian McDonald

Tagged with: Year's Best

Filed under: Books

• Zombie Astronaut, aside from having a cool domain name, has a two part MP3-audio production of Frederik Pohl and C.M. Kornbluth’s classic satire The Space Merchants. (See SF Signal review) [via SFF Audio]
• Jeremy Bulloch (Boba Fett) has a blog. [via Big Dumb Object]
• The back cover of the comic Wormwood: Gentleman Corpse #4 features Harlan Ellison as a corpse.
• Adventures in Scifi Publishing podcast-interviews R.A. Salvatore.
• Useless gadget: The Evil Robotic USB Snowbot
• Battlestar Galactica Politics-on-a-T-shirt: “Don’t blame me, I voted for Roslin”.
• Friday YouTube: The opening to Battlestar Galactica classic. I still love that theme music.
• Torque Control has collected a butt-load of James Tiptree, Jr. links.
• Mal on MySpace: Nathan Fillion (Mal from Firefly) has a MySpace page. [via Whedonesque]
• Lou Anders (author and Pyr editor — see SF Signal interview) lists Top 10 Books I’d Be Reading Now If I Weren’t Reading Other Books.

Filed under: Tidbits

Next Tuesday will see the 50th anniversary re-release of the 1956 sc-fi classic Forbidden Planet.

The Two-Disc 50th Anniversary Special Edition features additional scenes, lost footage, three documentaries and two follow-up vehicles starring Robby the Robot (The Invisible Boy and The Thin Man TV series episode “Robot Client”).

Hardcore fans can also opt for the Ultimate Collector’s Edition, which additionally includes vintage memorabilia (looks like postcards), a tin DVD package (“collectible packaging” in market-speak), a mail-in offer for a reproduction of an original Forbidden Planet theatrical poster and, best of all, a Robby the Robot replica!

Filed under: Movies

In what has to be one of the most hyped premieres for a movie trailer, the Spider-Man movie blog announced that the newest (not even the first) “full-length, two-and-a-half minute trailer” for Spider-Man 3 will premiere tonight at 10 PM (ET) on TV and online at several outlets (CBS, Comedy Central, MTV, BET, Logo, MTV2, Spike TV and VH1).

Check back later for the link…

UPDATE: iFilm has the trailer.

Filed under: Movies

• The blog On Our TV collects a bunch of Heroes links.
• Chapter Feeds offers Chapter 1 of Conflagration by Mick Farren
• From Twitch Guru: Harlan Ellison Interviews Ronald D. Moore, the man behind the new Battlestar Galactica.
• The Sci Phi Show podcast-interviews sf author Vernor Vinge. [via SFF Audio]
• Quiz: Your Literary Personality (I’m an electronics user’s manual) [via Books, Words, Writing]
• John C. Wright is on a blog roll…Some recent posts:
  • You oughta be in Pictures – on which SF books would make good films (a response to this NewsVine post)
  • What is Hard SF?
  • Is there such a thing as Hard Fantasy?

Filed under: Tidbits

Ah, November. The welcome chill in the air, the picturesque landscapes…and the Best Books of 2006 lists.

Publishers Weekly has posted their Best Books of 2006. Here are the titles in SF/Fantasy/Horror category:

• The Armies of Memory by John Barnes (Tor)
• Pretender by C.J. Cherryh (DAW)
• The Empire of Ice Cream by Jeffrey Ford (Golden Gryphon)
• Dark Harvest by Norman Partridge (Cemetery Dance)
• No Present Like Time by Steph Swainston (Eos)

Filed under: Books

David Drake created an Amazon list of Jim Baen’s Top 10 Science Fiction Books which Jim discussed with David shortly before Jim’s death. [via Isegoria]

1. Foundation by Isaac Asimov
2. Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein
3. A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller
4. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne
5. Dune by Frank Herbert
6. Lest Darkness Fall by L. Sprague deCamp
7. Against the Fall of Night by Arthur C. Clarke
8. Citizen of the Galaxy by Robert A. Heinlein
9. The Time Machine by H.G. Wells
10. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court by Mark Twain

Filed under: Books

The latest Time Traveler Show features Isaac Asimov giving a fascinating and fun 1974 talk titled “Utopian Change” in which he discusses science fiction, technological change and the birth of sf.

Some choice quotes:

On sf: “The only relevant literature of our time is science fiction.”

On critics: “They can observe, study and analyze but they can’t do it themselves.”

On sf: “This is the importance of science fiction — that it considers possible futures by taking into account possible changes in technology and their consequences and gives some thought to how to meet the consequences.”

On futurists: “It seems to me that all futurists are either science fiction writers, science fiction readers, ex-science fiction writers and ex-science fiction readers. You show me a futurist who’s never read any science fiction and I’ll show you a person who’s so uninterested in the future that he [couldn't] really decide anything about it.”

Filed under: Web Sites