Weekend Update!

My Christmas break wasn't entirely unproductive.  I've got two new short stories and the first chapter and outline of a new fantasy novel.  I spent a lot of time with family and friends, and I read a tremendous amount of economic history.  I also read at least one novel, and I'm still trying desperately to finish Game of Thrones before I start watching the HBO television show.  I've gotten really interested in the economy of magical worlds, so I've been spending some time looking at how the economy actually works in the real world.

In the meantime, I haven't seen anything new in the theaters.  I'm really looking forward to seeing Les Miserables, Django Unchained, Jack Reacher and Zero Dark Thirty (which I've been informed hasn't been released nationwide, yet).  The Hobbit, while enjoyable, was underwhelming.  On a somewhat related note, George Lucas is engaged to DreamWorks Animation Chairperson Mellody Hobson.

Speaking of Zero Dark Thirty, it's been getting a lot of attention from lawmakers on Capitol Hill, who are questioning the narrative it advances, and wondering whether CIA operatives purposefully misled the filmmakers about the importance of torture in finding Osama bin Laden.  The debate centers around the films portrayal of "advanced interrogation techniques" producing timely intelligence in the manhunt of the terrorist leader.  Members of the Senate Intelligence Committee want to know if it's true.  And if it's not, they want to know why the CIA gave the filmmakers false information. 

January looks like a pretty good month for genre releases.  First of all, the behemoth against which all fantasy epics are compared comes to a conclusion this month.  A Memory of Light concludes the Wheel of Time.  Since the tragic loss of Robert Jordan, the series has been helmed ably by Brandon Sanderson.  The final book is set to be released Tuesday, January 8th.  Jay Lake's third installment of the Green Trilogy, Kalimpura is set for a January 29th release.  Peter Hamilton's new book, The Great North Road was released this last Tuesday, January 1st.  I'm kind of interested in The Explorer by James Smythe.  Here's the publisher's synopsis:

When journalist Cormac Easton is selected to document the first manned mission into deep space, he dreams of securing his place in history as one of humanity’s great explorers. But in space, nothing goes according to plan. The crew wake from hypersleep to discover their captain dead in his allegedly fail-proof safety pod. They mourn, and Cormac sends a beautifully written eulogy back to Earth. The word from ground control is unequivocal: no matter what happens, the mission must continue. But as the body count begins to rise, Cormac finds himself alone and spiraling towards his own inevitable death, unless he can do something to stop it.

 Tor.com is offering, for free, an ebook collection of the best short stories offered from their site in 2012.  You can read them all on the site, or you can download the collection.  Either way, it seems like a pretty good deal.

 

Weekend Update!

Welcome to the end of the world!  Now.  Everyone back to their lives.

I've recently been hearing a lot about the unexpected success of Kickstarter projects.  It's a remarkable phenomenon, and strikes me as more of a paradigm shift within the publishing industry than e-books; it represents capitalism in its truest, simplest form.  As such, it allows creators the opportunity to assess the market before they've committed capital to create it.  It's a game-changer.


Tobias Buckell created a Kickstarter recently to publish the fourth book in a five-book series.  Even though Buckell found fame with Crystal Rain, the first in a proposed five-part series, I first heard of his eco-science fiction book Arctic Rising, which I reviewed early in my blog history.  The first three books of his Xenowealth Universe were published by Tor, but when sales weren't as strong as either party hoped, Buckell opted to head in a different direction.

But he always wanted to finish the series, and this is his chance.  The project is completed, and you can purchase the book at either his website or amazon.  But he took the time to do a post-project debrief, and like his collection of short stories Nascence, he contemplates what succeeded, what failed, and what he might do differently in the future.  

Macmillan Publishing is continuing its suit against the DOJ for price-fixing.  John Sergeant explains in a letter to authors, agents and illustrators why Macmillan is sticking it out when the giants have already settled.  The crux of the issue is that Macmillan believes it creates an unfair marketplace and that settling ultimately harms authors and customers.  I'm not sure I entirely agree, but I'm proud of him for sticking to his guns.  It all boils down to the basic fact that he doesn't think its right to settle when they haven't done anything wrong, and you have to applaud him for that.

It's been 22 years, and The Wheel of Time is set to wrap up in January 2013.  I'm excited and can't wait to see how everything ends.  Brandon Sanderson, Harriet McDougal and Tom Doherty reminisce:

A new photo of the interior of the TARDIS was recently released.  In addition to a new companion, new outfit for the Doctor and a brand new direction, the TARDIS has been fully re-designed.  It looks a little depressed, but that might just reflect the Doctor's feelings about losing the Ponds.  Also, it has the weird steampunk vibe that's been popular recently.  Let me know what you think.

The best and the worst at io9.com

A lot of really good sci-fi and fantasy movies came out this year.  A lot of really bad sci-fi and fantasy movies came out this year.  io9.com broke it all down and announced the top ten best and worst of 2012.  Not surprising, Prometheus made #9 on the the "worst" list.  Surprisingly, Cloud Atlas made both the best and worst list.  While the best movies seemed to follow an indie trend (markedly interrupted by The Avengers), the sequels and continuations of franchises comprised the worst sci-fi and fantasy movies of 2012.

In movie news, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey continues to pull in huge numbers, after an opening weekend of $84 million in the United States and has since grossed $222 million worldwide.  Despite generally milquetoast reviews, it continues to elicit a positive response from movie-goers.  Zero Dark Thirty and Jack Reacher are both opening this week and Lincoln, Skyfall, and Life of Pi are still pulling in respectable box-office revenues.

I'll leave you with two trailers this week.  The first is for John Dies at the End, a gory, vicious movie based on the novel by the same name; the second is Storage 24, what seems like a paint-by-numbers get-out-alive monster horror.  But some of the premise and setting looked interesting; let me know what you think.

Weekend Roundup!

First of all, there's a new Star Trek: Into Darkness poster up.  You know the drill: Let's get excited!  There's not a lot to go on; I've heard speculation that it's the Borg (please, God, no!), and if you zoom in on the poster you can see the devastated city is clearly London.  How that ties in is anyone's guess, but after they destroyed San Francisco in the last one anything goes. 

It also seems pretty clear that the central figure isn't Kirk.  Chris Pine is many things, but brunette he certainly is not.  So that leads me to suspect Cummerbatch; if that's the case, and we know he's set to play the villain, that makes me pretty sure the devastation has been wrought by Gary Mitchell, the rumored bad guy in this go-round.  From the Original Series, we know that Gary Mitchell gained near-Q powers and would certainly make sense to see someone unsettled by the sudden acquisition of power go berserk on a major Earth city.  So that's my speculation, what do you think?

This is pretty cool: Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell is set to be made into a BBC mini-series.  The book, written by Susanna Clarke, still ranks in my Top 10 Fantasy Books List.  It's up there with Name of the Wind, and The Farseer Trilogy (I know, trilogies shouldn't count as one entry, but in the genre of fantasy if I didn't include series as single entries there'd only be two [maybe three] on there.)  That being said, I'm really excited about the mini-series.  Tor.com has an interesting article on who should play each character; even though he's been just about everywhere, Benedict Cummerbatch would make a great Jonathan Strange, and Ian Holm would excel as Mr. Norrell. 

The interwebs have been abuzz recently with an ongoing controversy surrounding sexism in the comic industry and nerdom in general.  The basic argument is that women are under-represented and that rampant sexism denies their agency and objectifies them.  Over at The Hawkeye Initiative, artists have recast Hawkeye in many of the provocative poses of female superheroes.  io9 has a great article detailing some of the better entries.

Meanwhile, in movie news, Terminator is being remade, that creepy kid from Chronicle is playing Harry Osborn in the new Spiderman movie, and NASA is building a warp drive (okay, not really movie news, but hella awesome anyway.)

In book news, Dean Koontz signed onto a six-book deal with Random House, the self-publishing phenomenon Wool by Hugh Howey was picked up by 20th Century Fox, and Kenneth Calhoun's novel Black Moon was scooped from William Morris Endeavor by Crown's Hogarth imprint. 

And here's the trailer for the forthcoming Les Miserables, this Christmas, which I'm really excited for:

A Memory of Light . . . Or, Has It Really Been 22 Years?

The final installment of the Wheel of Time is set to be released early January 2013.  I'm astonished it's been so long.  Wheel of Time has been a part of my life literally as long as I can remember.  I remember seeing it on shelves as a child and marveling at it's length, and remember picking it up for the first time fresh off the high from Tad William's "Memory, Sorrow and Thorn" series.  It is astonishing to see the series come to an end.

Here's a perspective from Brandon Sanderson, Harriet McDougal, Patrick Rothfuss and Tom Dougherty.  With special guest appearance from Jason Denzel or Dragonmount.com.

Weekend Update . . . Or, Lincoln's Revenge!

It's Friday again, and once more I'll recap the week and let you in on what's happening this weekend. 

First, Lincoln is being released today.  Based on the Pulitzer prize-winning Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin, Lincoln is the story of the eponymous president struggling with the carnage of the Civil War while pushing for emancipation.  Originally slated to star Liam Neeson, who dropped out because he felt he was too old for the role, the movie stars Daniel Day-Lewis as President Lincoln, and Sally Fields as Mary Todd Lincoln.  It looks interesting from a historical bent and I was pleased that Daniel Day-Lewis was able to capture the tone and timbre of the thirteenth president.  I'll be seeing this and it seems like a pretty good bet.

Other than that, there's Wreck It Ralph, from Disney, which has been getting a lot of word-of-mouth publicity.  Everything I've heard so far is good--good voice acting, good story, good CGI.  The only complaint so far is that its many pop culture references are directed toward an audience older than the usual cartoon demographic.  Bring your kids, or go see it on your own, seems to be the general consensus.  Either way you'll probably like it.

Also, if you haven't seen it yet, go see Skyfall.  I've already reviewed it here, but suffice to say, it was very good and definitely worth your time.

I just finished Between Two Fires, by Christopher Buehlman and I'll have the review up probably around Tuesday.  Quick snapshot: It's good.  Not as accessible as Those Across the River, and with a heavy dose of Barbara Tuchman's A Distant Mirror, but otherwise a fun read.  That means that I've started The Twelve by Justin Cronin. 

Also, I've just started reading a new collection of Lovecraft inspired short stories/novellas.  Space Eldritch is a collection of science fiction stories with a Lovecraftian bent; I heard about it from Howard Tayler (Hugo award-nominated for his web comic Schlock Mercenary, and co-hosting of the writing advice podcast, Writing Excuses) whose long short story "Flight of the Runewright" holds pride-of-place as the capstone story. 

In publishing/book news, Sir Terry Pratchett has decided to turn over control of his Discworld franchise to his daughter, author and game writer, Rhianna Pratchett.  Diagnosed with Alzheimer's in 2007, Terry Pratchett has nevertheless remained active, and Rhianna is already working on the Discworld television show The Watch.  Head on over to tor.com for the rest of the details.

TV news: Elizabeth Henstridge and Ian De Caesstecker have joined the cast of Joss Whedon's S.H.I.E.L.D TV show.  You can get the full story at The Hollywood Reporter.

Hey, check this out.  James Franco as the Wizard of Oz?  You better believe it.  Directed by Sam Raimi and set to be released in 2013.

And here's the new Hobbit TV Spot:

That's my weekend, what about yours?  Let me know in the comments.

His Grimm Materials . . . Or, Philip Pullman Retells The Bros Grimm

By Steven McLain

On November 8th, the 200th anniversary of the first publication of the Brothers Grimm Fairy Tales, Viking Adults released a retelling of Grimm's Fairy Tales, as retold by Philip Pullman.

While publishers, and readers, are constantly vying for new editions of beloved tales, what's worrying about Pullman's retelling is the dearth of stories it contains.  With only fifty stories retold (and offered commentary and introduction) this is about a third of the stories contained in the two volumes of the original.  Pullman has decided to omit many of the more obscure stories, possibly because of their worrisome content or the historical distance of hundreds of years and several revolutions, political as well as social and technological.

The point, basically, is that the world has changed, and children--and their parents--are not the same receivers of stories as they once were.  We expect morals in our stories, or at least an orientation toward good that reinforces the triumph of good over evil.  But Grimms' fair tales offer no such consolation.  Instead, they present a weird, capricious world where evil may win, where vengeance is lauded, and where nature is both unknown and unknowable. 

While I understand the position from both Pullman and the publisher's perspective, I think we do a disservice to ourselves by omitting the strangest and most disturbing of these stories.  This is a different world, and we ought to remind ourselves of those differences; what better way than through story?  We are gripped less by plague, violence, hunger and social injustice--we live in a world fundamentally different than the world in which German housewives cautioned their children with fairy tales.

And for that we ought to reflect deeply, and often, on the changes which wrought our world.  The only way to do that is through the rich world of Grimms' Fair Tales, unexpurgated. 

How To Be Awesome and Have Fun Doing It . . . Or, Weekend Round-out

I've decided that Fridays are going to be devoted to a brief synopsis of cool things that happened in the last week, or cool things to do over the weekend.  These could be up-coming, or recently released movies, or movies you just plain need to see; these could be upcoming author signings; these could be books I'm currently reading and excited about . . . the list continues!  But regardless, it's a quick and easy way for me to let you know what happening in the wider world of awesome.

First.  Go see Argo.  You can read my review here, but suffice to say it's my favorite movie out at the moment.

Then, go see Skyfall.  It's the 27th James Bond movie and it's been getting incredible reviews.  It's on my agenda this weekend.

I'm in the middle of Christopher Buehlman's Between Two Fires and so far it's great.  It's the story of an excommunicate knight, a priest and a young girl who sees angels trying to make their way in fourteenth-century France.  Set during the Hundred Years War and not far on the heels of the disaster at Crécy, it has everything you could want in a historical fiction, but it's not entirely historical fiction.  It's also horror, fantasy and that weird blend of Gothic that Buehlman did so well in Those Across the River.

I also have The Twelve by Justin Cronin on my shelf.  The sequel to The Passage, it continues the story of the end of the world after a viral plague has turned most of the population into vampires.  The Passage, with its sudden and inexplicable conclusion distressed me enough to recommend no one read that book, but I've mellowed in the meantime, and now I recognize just how awesome (most) of the book actually is.  Now that the second in a planned trilogy has been released, I think you should give it a look.

Also, since the buyout of Lucasfilm to Disney has sent shock waves through the geek community, I thought I'd temper that with news of the merger of Random House (who publish Christopher Paolini, Dan Brown, and Jean Auel, among others), and Penguin Group (who publish titles by Patricia Cornwell, Tom Clancy, Laurel K. Hamilton among others, and who recently published No Easy Day), two of the largest book publishers in the world.  They're hoping to use their combined powers for good, offering brick-and-mortar stores a new vitality.  While they're not the juggernaut either Disney is, or Lucasfilm was, they nevertheless come in at a whopping $4 billion in yearly profit; that's some clout to throw around, and the resources a publisher needs to make some innovated but risky decisions.  I'm looking forward to seeing what they come out with.

And since I seem to be on a zombie kick this week, the new trailer for "World War Z" has been released to the internet.  World War Z is the documentary-style book written by Max Brooks (of The Zombie Survival Guide fame) that details the last days of humanity, and the reconquest of the planet by small pockets of human beings.  Based on the trailer, it seems like that documentary style has been completely abandoned; instead we're treated to the usual paint-by-numbers action flick starring Brad Pitt.  The movie does, nonetheless, depict some truly terrifying zombies.  Still excited to see the movie, but not quite as excited as I was two years when I heard about this being made into a movie.  Take a look:

Banned Book Week . . . At 30

abffe.org

Banned Books Week and I are the same age.  That means that as long as I've been alive someone has been fighting censorship and the promoting the right to spread ideas through tax-funded venues.  Censorship, we can agree, is probably bad in a democratic environment.  It's inimical to the idea that the best will win out.  It's based on the assumption that most people in a democracy are free-thinking, reasonable human beings just looking out for their own well-being.  It's the same kind of assumption that most economists made (and largely still make). 


While I disagree with the assumption, I do agree with Banned Books Week that censorship is (mostly) bad.  Ideas have a way  of getting out regardless, and it doesn't matter how hard you try to stop them.  To paraphrase Princess Leia: The more you tighten your grip, the more ideas will slip through your fingers. 

But libraries (especially school libraries whose primary target are children) are tax-funded venues.  And tax-payers have the right to restrict what they feel might be offensive or dangerous materials from their shelves.  They are, after all, the community for which the library is intended.  What Banned Books Week is trying to avoid, however, is the tyranny of an individual dictating which books ought and ought not to be read.  In a democratic forum, anything is up for grabs, and if a committee of community leaders get together to decide they don't want The Anarchist's Cookbook floating around, that's all well and good.

So, go support books.  Head on over to the library and check out Brave New World, Catcher in the Rye, or To Kill a Mockingbird. 

J.K. Rowling . . . A Casual Vacancy

J.K. Rowling's new book A Casual Vacancy, billed as her first novel for adults, is out this week.  I was caught a little off-guard when I saw it at the local bookstore, as I hadn't heard anything about it in the last couple weeks.  Usually I keep my ear to the ground but this one just sort of snuck up on me.  Maybe the marketing department over at Little Brown figured she was big enough to pull in sales all by her lonesome. 

With legions of fans just about now hitting early adulthood, this seems like a perfect opportunity for Rowling to make her foray into the world of adult literature.  But without Harry and the gang driving the story, and a depressing unfun story at that, I wonder how quickly those fans will jump on this new book. 

From the bookflap, it sounds like a depressing story.  Set in the small English town of Pagford, it paints an idyllic scene of English country life.  But there's tension lurking under the surface; it seems like everyone hates just about everyone else, and with a recent vacancy on the Pagford Parish council, passions are revved up over who's going to fill it.  It sounds like the kind of grueling fare we'd expect from literary works, and Rowling has demonstrated a remarkable facility for bettering herself as an author.  This is the obvious direction for her to go, and I wish her well, but I'm not terribly interested in reading about small-town English machinations. 

You can find the full review here. 

YA Books . . . And The Grownups Who Love Them

Publisher's Weekly just posted an article that describes a recently reported phenomenon in the Young Adult market.  Namely, that kids aren't the ones reading them.  Adults comprise 55% of buyers of YA titles, and when asked, a resounding majority admitted they were the intended reader.  While this isn't inherently surprising--the staggering success of Harry Potter, the Twilight series, and The Hunger Games was driven in large part by adults participating in them--the variety of involvement in this literary crossing of the aisles is.

Certainly, the YA distinction has only recently been invented.  A market niche intended strictly for people in their early teens and not much older was filled by authors whose primary target was adults.  Ender's Game, perhaps one of the most well-loved science-fiction novels was intended by Orson Scott Card for adults.  But the subjects of the novel--children--have since convinced marketers and publishers that it belongs in both the YA and Middle Grade niches.  As far as I'm aware, it indeed sells well there.

Readers willing to cross the artificial line doesn't strike me as odd.  Many of the books are as morally nuanced as their "adult" counterparts, without relying on the conventions of more grownup fare--sex and violence, namely.  The popularity of books like The Hunger Games, which itself is a deeply nuanced approach toward the examination of violence--and its glorification--in our society, does not rely heavily on depictions of violence that many readers would find offensive.  Twilight, purportedly inspired by Shakespeare's tale of star-crossed lovers, suggests love without resorting to lurid sex scenes--though Fifty Shades of Grey, a fan-fic spin-off, suggests that the soccer moms indulging in Bella and Edward were rife for something a bit more steamy.

Perhaps what this report really suggests is that the artificial demarcation of YA and adult literature is even more ephemeral than we'd suspected, and that good storytelling crosses all boundaries.

Libricide! . . . Or, Warm Your Hands In Fifty Shades of Abuse

If you haven't heard about Fifty Shades of Grey yet you're either living under a rock, or you're illiterate.  If its the former, you should probably come on out, I hear it's cold out there.  If it's the latter then I'm really impressed you're reading my blog.  Regardless, Fifty Shades has sparked heated controversy.  You know what I'm talking about, you either love it, or you hate it.  But as The Independent, an Irish newspaper reports, a UK-based women's shelter, Wearside Women in Need, has decided they hate it enough to destroy it. 

They've organized a book burning, scheduled for November 5.  They claim the book glorifies abuse, the objectification of women and normalizes such behavior.  They even liken the behavior of sadist Christopher Grey to British serial killer Fred West.  In response, they feel their only course of action is to burn what copies they can of E.L. James's Fifty Shades of Grey. 

Random House, the book's publisher, is quick to point out that all depictions of behaviors are carried out by consenting adults.

The usual suspects have been trotted out to condemn the book burning.  Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, the book burnings of Alexandria, of the Qin Dynasty, and more recently, of the Nazis.  These are powerful indictments against the Wearside Women in Need, and I think there's a legitimate usage of powerful figures to oppose book burning, or, as the article points out, biblioclasm.

The free market of ideas only works as long as every idea has its day in court.  Everyone is allowed to express themselves and, if the system really works, the best ideas rise to the top, are adopted and the weaker ideas simply die out.  This is one of the fundamentals of democracy, and justly, any talk of book-burning, or the genocide of ideas, is the antithesis of democracy.  But trying to put the genie back in the bottle, if you'll allow me to blur the metaphor, is futile.  The box is opened, the horse is out of the barn.  Whatever metaphor you'd like, the idea is out there and burning a book isn't going to put the world back the way it was.  All they're really doing is stoking the flames of curiosity.

But maybe that's their goal.  The article points out that maybe this is just a ploy to garner attention to their cause.  In that case, shame on them, for inciting indignation for even a worthy cause.  We tell the story of Peter and the Wolf as a cautionary story for exactly this reason.  The threat of a book-burning is a terrible thing, and ought not to be bandied about for political reasons.

Regardless, I deplore the burning of books in every instance.  The suppression of an idea by violence is anathema to the ideals of freedom and ought to be deplored.

The New Kindle Conflagration

www.uncrate.com

Last Thursday, Amazon rolled out their new product line.  With an eye toward the coming holidays, Amazon must be hoping to capture some of the excitement surrounding the forthcoming announcement from Apple believed to be the unveiling of their new iPhone.  Amazon, however, is doing things a little differently.  Instead of focusing strictly on what's forthcoming, they've taken the opportunity to showcase technologies new and old.

The Kindle Fire has a new look, a bit bigger and a bit more powerful; but where Amazon really succeeds is its continuing dedication to pre-existing technologies, improving on the traditional Kindle with a back-light, higher contrast screen, and a pixel count over sixty percent greater than existing technologies.  This is a big deal for two reasons. 

The Kindle still maintains the allure of a read-only device.  That is, instead of handling multiple functions poorly, it focuses on a single product and delivers remarkably.  Amazon has always realized that e-readers are about ease of reading.  While Barnes and Noble, Sony and others jumped on the bandwagon with various degrees of success, Amazon legitimately holds the market firmly in its grasp.  And by reducing pricepoints on pre-existing technology, they're able to capitalize on a key market demographic that isn't terribly concerned about snazzy graphics and downloadable apps.  They just want the book.

www.uncrate.com

But the improvements they've made sound pretty good, including an LED backlight that's apparently been in the works for over four years.  A definite selling-point here, I'm excited to see how it handles as far as eye-strain and reading in the dark are concerned.  The flickering of most tablet screens has always bothered me, and strained my eyes, so that I've foregone extended reading on computer screens.  This seems revolutionary.

More remarkable, though, is managing to maintain the coveted under $200 price-point for their Kindle Fires, despite improvements in screen size and operating speeds.  For a little more, you get a little more, but the Fire's primary use is still mainly apps, videos and music and for under $200 you're getting a pretty good deal.  Including a new HD screen is icing on the cake, and may be what Amazon needs to steal a big chunk of the pie from Apple.

The one feature that doesn't really make sense to me is the Time to Read function, which times your page turns to gauge how long a particular chapter or book takes to read.  I can imagine someone generating tables from these statistics to demonstrate the readability of a particular book, or gauge how much of a fit it is with your style or reading based on your own reading rate.  At best, I'm leery of this feature.  I think it's invasive beyond necessity and seems patronizing.  At worst, I think it's more data floating around the ether about you that doesn't need to be there.

Despite that, I'm excited for Amazon's new releases, and I'm all the more excited to try out the new Kindle Fire for myself.  What do you think?  Let me know in the comments below.

No Easy Day . . . During An Election Year

"No Easy Day," a book detailing the raid in which United States Navy SEALs violated Pakistani sovereignty, and ended in the death of Osama bin Laden, will be released September 4, 2012.  Hyped as much by the fact that it's pseudonymous author, "Mark Owen" has been outed as Matt Bissonnette, the book purports to divulge secrets that contradict official reports by the Obama administration.  According to the Washington Post, Pentagon officials have begun pursuing legal measures against Bissonnette.

Those are some of the more tawdry details.  What I find fascinating is a comment made by Fox News Executive Vice President and Executive Editor John Moody who declared authors of books have no expectation of privacy.  The Associated Press and others have gone on record saying that (to paraphrase) once the horse is out of the barn don't bother shutting the door.  Once Bissonnette's name was broadcast it was no longer necessary to protect his identity.  Others, notably CBS News Chairman Jeff Fager, who took pains to hide Bissonnette's identity in his outlets, despite the leak elsewhere.  I admire his moral courage.  While I personally side with the AP (as you can clearly see in this post), Fager makes a remarkable point in this day and age of WikiLeaks and information overload: Sometimes you should stick to your guns because it's the right thing to do.

This is an election year.  As such, it's a year wherein normally even-minded people will resort to name-calling and emotional terrorism in order to prove they're right.  I can't wholly abstain, though I'll try.  Living in a dual-party political system has its advantages, but one of the disadvantages is that once the nominees are locked in, they're basically all you've got. 

Someone once exhorted me to write in my own name on the ballot if I didn't like either candidate, and he was excoriated for his call to "split the vote."  Indeed, there's some wisdom in this; we're reminded that the lesser of two evils is the better deal.  Really?  Maybe you've heard that cliche so many times that it has lost its meaning.  Because what you're telling me is still to pick an evil.  Something that no good and right person should ever willingly choose.

We've been told that the only way for evil to exist is for a good men to do nothing.  Or maybe just to choose the lesser of the evils.  Maybe it is time to stand up and say no to both.  Perhaps we won't win.  Perhaps the path is narrow, but surely it's better than that grand boulevard heading to hell.  So, way to go, Fager, for sticking to your guns and deciding to keep Bissonnette's name confidential.  And go ahead, all you anonymous vote-splitters.  Show us what courage looks like.  And hey, buy "Mark Owen's" book; it'll help him pay his legal bills.

The Inferno . . . With "Star Trek?"

So there's a new, modern translation of Dante's Inferno.  You can read the original article, as well as the author's comments here.  Written by Mary Jo Bang, it hopes to translate the vernacular Italian that Dante used in the 14th century into something that modern readers can understand.  To that end, she has replaced much of his original language with things like Star Trek, John Wayne Gacy and Eric Cartman.  This isn't really a translation anymore; it's akin to the mash-up of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, and the spate of other classical mash-ups that we've seen in the past few years.  None of that is particularly bothersome to me--I enjoyed . . . and Zombies because the author, while taking his subject matter seriously, realized that the book itself wasn't that serious.  He did it for fun, and because people seemed to like it.

Reading Bang's account of her rationale for replacing another author's words for her own, she decides that the temporal and cultural distances between Dante and us have made it difficult or impossible to access his work.  But what she seems to fail to realize is that it's okay if we don't immediately access his work.  That's fine.  We use his images still, but in ways that are wholly original to our time and place.  I find her reasoning distressing, at best.  Even more, this is no longer a simple translation but a re-telling of the story that excises the rigor of the original and replaces it with something cheap and lazy.

But hey, the way things are going it'll probably be adopted as required reading in public high schools.

Hugo Nominees

 

So voting ended yesterday for this year's Hugo awards.  These are reader's choice awards in science-fiction and fantasy and represent some of the best works of 2011.  It is also a pretty good way of gauging where those particular fields are heading.  I currently own, or have already read, most of the books nominated for best novel.  I'll let you know what I think. 

Here's the full list of nominees

Wheel of Time

 

The Wheel of Time series is done.  Now, I know there are no ends in the Wheel of Time, this is just an end, but out here in the world where these works are read and loved, the series has reached a conclusion.  I have to say, this is a bitter-sweet moment.  Fourteen years ago I discovered Robert Jordan's immense body of work.  And when I say immense, I mean truly epic (in the literal sense of that word).  Every book is bigger than the Bible; a hardback in your book bag could stop a car.  I've seen them used to prop open blast doors.  They are incredible.  And they are engaging and fun.

My first foray into writing came about through the Wheel of Time.  I wrote fan-fiction (yeah, I'll admit it) set during the time of the Trolloc Wars.  Set a couple hundred years before the main story set in the novels, but frequently mentioned, this gave myself and small cohort that wrote with me, ample opportunity to experiment without the constraints of playing entirely in someone else's sandbox.  I wrote hundreds of thousands of words there, perhaps more, and it taught me important lessons that I've carried into my writing today.  You could say that Robert Jordan was my literary instructor, the mentor I emulated with every written word.  As the years between books dragged on, however, I became disillusioned.  I decided that what I needed to do was put the books down and wait until they had all been published so that I could read the entire series in a single orgy of reading.  But then Robert Jordan died.

I remember feeling a great loss--the sense that something great had left the world and would be left unfinished.  I knew from Jordan's comments that he had written out the entire framework of the plot in his notebooks, so the story would survive, but I couldn't imagine that the Wheel of Time would ever be completed in a way that was truly satisfying to me, as a reader.  I was reminded of J.R.R. Tolkien and the Lord of the Rings, never truly completed in his lifetime, and I feared that the Wheel of Time (which the blurb on the first book blatantly declares is the successor to Tolkien's magisterial works) would suffer the same fate.

Then, when Tor and the Jordan estate (through his wife, Harriet) announced that they had found someone to complete the series I was annoyed.  In fact, I was miffed.  How could any author have both the chutzpah and the audacity to think he could finish another author's work?  Furthermore, the guy they picked I'd never even heard of--and at that time I was steeped in the genre.  I knew all the names, all the titles, and had probably read most of them, and this new guy was simply unknown to me.  Brandon Sanderson.  It turned out he got the gig because of a letter, a eulogy really, that he'd written.  I went to his website when I heard he'd be finishing the series and I read that letter.  You can read it here.  I had something of a flabbergasm.  His sincerity, humility and good grace gave me hope that he could not only handle the series, but make it something that would astound and delight me all over again.

I've continually said that when the last book was finished, I would re-read the series.  I never really gave it much thought; I somehow suspected that it would never end.  And now it's over.  Sanderson posted today on all his social media outlets that he'd completed the last word and sent it off to the publisher.  I've got to wonder what it means to the genre to have something this immense finally completed.  It represents two decades of the genre; fantasy has come a long way since then; it's gone meta with Patrick Rothfuss, and noir with Joe Abercrombie and still continues the epic tradition with Steven Erikson's ten-book cycle, Malazan Book of the Fallen.  But Jordan was always the cornerstone.  He was the modern foundation of our fantasy genre.  And for that contribution I will always be indebted to him.

What's Sci-Fi Got To Do With Global Warming?

Tobias Buckell's "Arctic Rising" has been on my radar for a while now, and I recently got his book so when I saw the below review, I figured it was fate telling me something.  Also, recently taking a class that was basically "Geography of How People are F*cking Up the Planet" got me thinking along this vein.  Take a look.

MIND MELD: Ecological Sci-Fi