Set phasers to "cancel"

Star Trek is over and that fucking bigoted idiot Orson Scott Card couldn't be happier.

As science fiction, the series was trapped in the 1930s — a throwback to spaceship adventure stories with little regard for science or deeper ideas. It was sci-fi as seen by Hollywood: all spectacle, no substance.

Which was a shame, because science fiction writing was incredibly fertile at the time, with writers like Harlan Ellison and Ursula LeGuin, Robert Silverberg and Larry Niven, Brian W. Aldiss and Michael Moorcock, Ray Bradbury and Isaac Asimov, and Robert A. Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke creating so many different kinds of excellent science fiction that no one reader could keep track of it all.

Little of this seeped into the original "Star Trek." The later spinoffs were much better performed, but the content continued to be stuck in Roddenberry's rut. So why did the Trekkies throw themselves into this poorly imagined, weakly written, badly acted television series with such commitment and dedication? Why did it last so long?

Here's what I think: Most people weren't reading all that brilliant science fiction. Most people weren't reading at all. So when they saw "Star Trek," primitive as it was, it was their first glimpse of science fiction. It was grade school for those who had let the whole science fiction revolution pass them by.

Don't get me wrong, I agree with him. It's just that, given his non-Star Trek commentary, I think he's a piece of shit. (From Bookslut)


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Nation's bullies miss chance to tilt gene pool back in their favour...

Star Wars convention draws thousands of like-minded nerds. Fortunately, a concurrent nearby convention of lantern-jawed morons with violent self-esteem issues was kept behind just long enough for the herd-o-nerds to escape to their landspeeders.


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Did you notice how, now that movie people are allowed in, the two movie people on the board had themselves immediately inducted?

The freightening thing is this happens so often now across our culture that everyone thinks it's normal.

Dick inducted

Philip K Dick is being inducted into the Sci-fi Hall of Fame (actually, just a circa 1975 rec-room full of broken Beta VCRs, Pong machines, and empty packets of Tang).


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"The first and greatest mythmaker of the machine age"

Jules Verne, author and likely time traveller.

Verne, the author, was incomparable. His 80 novels, written from 1854 till 1904, foreshadowed space travel (even identifying Florida as the launch-site for moon shots). They predicted, amongst other things, artificial satellites; large submarines; helicopters; television; video-players; and the development of plastics.
...
Above all, Verne, the scientific visionary, understood little about science. He had a weed-like imagination and an inexhaustible capacity to absorb facts. He created a triumphant new genre of "novels of science" by lifting ideas from a voracious daily reading of scores of books, newspapers and scientific journals. As a result, Verne got a few things right and many things absurdly wrong. His moon-rocket is a giant shell implausibly fired from a gun. The rocket is fitted out internally with plush armchairs and cupboards.

See, how did he know I would build and fire that very rocket this very spring?? Coincidence? I think not, you earth-bound saps.



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Edited by author 03-07-2005 02:18 AM
The Internet Review of Science Fiction is pleased to announce the selection of its new editor in chief. Joy Ralph assumed her new position for the March 2005 edition of the internet-only outlet for news, reviews and criticism of speculative fiction.

Ralph's goals for the Review include fostering "the sort of critical discussion that is the hallmark of IROSF among the broader base of readers," and adding "some historical analysis to the mix, or perhaps some discussion of how authors and events influence each other." Ralph envisions IROSF as "a place with interesting, thoughtful...rigorous writing about Science Fiction and the community of its fans."

In November of 2004, John Frost relinquished his editorship of the Internet Review for personal reasons. The interim editions (including January’s 1st anniversary edition) were put out the magazine’s editorial staff under the direction of publisher/webmaster L. Blunt Jackson (bluejack).

Please join the Editors in welcoming Joy aboard. IROSF welcomes submissions on all aspects of SF and fantasy. For information on guidelines, payrate, formatting requirements and related issues, visit www.irosf.com/guidelines.qsml.


The Internet Review of Science Fiction is a forum for the serious exploration of the literature of the fantastic. IROSF publishes intelligent articles, essays, interviews, reviews, and criticism to illuminate the most interesting and important work in the genres of science fiction and fantasy.

There's no Culture in America
Iain Banks talks about the anti-America streak in contemporary UK SF. (Salon link)

It's hard to remind yourself it's not the American people; it's not everybody. It's a difficult thing: You've got to draw a line between the state, the figurehead, the symbols, like the flag or the president. And then it comes down to terms: Is it anti-American to be anti-capitalist? I certainly feel that the stuff I'm writing, the Culture stuff, in its own subtle way is anti-capitalist.

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"Fifty Fantasy & Science Fiction Works That Socialists Should Read"

China Miéville gives us commie pinkos a list. I frightened by two things: how many of the male authors on here I haven't read, and how many of the female authors I have. I swear, I am a lesbian trapped in a man's body. (From BoingBoing, of course)



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How much do SF/F writers make?
Hey, just as little as the rest of us!

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Speaking of Michel...

His new Outer Edge column is up at Maisonneuve. It deals with his love of and correspondence with sci-fi grandmaster Fritz Leiber.



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The boy who owned the Bible

A very funny short story by SF writer Will Shetterly. (From BoingBoing)



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Some down-to-earth SF

The Mundane Manifesto. Do you like your scifi to take place here on earth a few years in the future? I do. And so do these guys. And they have a blog, too. (From Beatrice)



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Didn't get a calendar for Christmas?
You can always print off this sci-fi calendar (PDF link) complete with the birthdays of all the major writers and cover art from the old-school books.

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Twas the night before Christmas...
...William Gibson style.

And while, from somewhere far above, now, came that sound, that persistent clatter, as though gunships disgorged whole platoons of iron-shod mercenaries, I could only wonder: who? Was it my estranged wife, The Lady Betty-Jayne Motel-6 Hyatt, Chief Eco-trustee of the Free Duchy of Wyoming? Or was it Cleatus "Mainframe" Sinyard himself, President of the United States and perpetual co-chairman of the Concerned Smart People's Northern Hemisphere Co-prosperity Sphere?

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Michael Moorcock's Christmas editorial
It's online over at Fantastic Metropolis, which is a very cool SF site.

For me visionary fiction is at its best when it references modernist concerns as well as the more objective concerns with which 'hard' science fiction is most commonly associated and which derives most of its literary machinery from Victorian popular fiction. For this is not exactly a 'post-modernist' form, as we see from the variety of material published here, but more an alternative to modernism. My generation did, to one degree or another, reject the concerns and methods of modernism, but the movement found its inspiration as much in pre-modernist work as post-modernist.

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The Internet Review of Science Fiction
Annie over at Maud points us to this site, which has been around for a year and looks full of sci-fi goodness, including a piece about Mars sci-fi, a look at black sci-fi and an interview with Clive Barker, who has three houses to store his book!. And you have to love a website that lists its copy editors on the masthead. (Log in using shuriken@bookninja.com and waaaaa as the password.)

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