April 2011
This is a Martha Jones appreciation post.
Martha Jones all day everyday!!!
Description: animated .gif of Martha making a “yesss!” gesture.
“I’ve seen my novel shelved with literary fiction and with science fiction, and both make me very happy. I think where it is shelved is really a reader’s decision, right? My idea of where it ought to be shelved is probably too limiting. I mean, ideally, I’d love to be on the shelf that has Lethem, Chabon, Adams, Harkaway, Egan, but then again, who wouldn’t want to be on that shelf?”
—Charles Yu (How To Live Safely In a Science Fictional Universe) interviewed at the LA Times’ book blog.
Nnedi's Wahala Zone Blog » The Kenyan science fiction short film Pumzi is now available for purchase!! →
nnedi.blogspot.com
It is featured with three other brilliant African shorts from Focus Film’s Africa First Program. Buy it here.
Pumzi was directed by Wanuri Kahiu, who will direct Who Fears Death: The Movie. I asked Wanuri how she came to write Pumzi. She said that she was not a big reader of science fiction and that the STORY led her to science fiction. Pumzi is fabulous, and it is a new type of science fiction, grown completely from African soil. I hope to see more like it, on the screen and in print.
Suvudu » Take Five with Silva Moreno-Garcia, Co-Editor, "Historical Lovecraft" →
suvudu.com
1. We knew we’d receive some stories set in Victorian England, but we didn’t know we’d get that many. At one point, 90% of all stories submitted were set in that time period. Since we had a project called Historical Lovecraft, not Ye Little Victorian Cthulhu, we blogged and Tweeted about the problems in the slush. Then we began receiving stories with more varied settings, resulting in what you see now.
2. We also had a problem with the low number of female protagonists. It was all men, all the time (and all wealthy
Victorian men, to boot). Again, that corrected itself once we started talking about it. Blogging and Tweeting really helped spread the word out.3. We read submissions in English, French and Spanish, and encouraged international authors to submit. Two of the stories in the anthology were translated: “Ahuizotl” from the Spanish and “Found in a Trunk from Extremadura” from the French.
4. Silvia is heavily into the Tudor period and Paula is a medieval historian with an interest in prehistory. So, we were perhaps more stringent about getting real history in our stories than the Zombies on the Nile that you might see in historical horror. Fortunately, we ended up with a good chronological and geographical mix.
5. Considering it was a Lovecraft anthology, we were surprised that the most popular Mythos character we ended up with was not Cthulhu but Nyarlathotep, even one Nyarly-POV story where he is sympathetic and almost human.
SF Signal » FINALISTS: 2011 Hugo Awards and John W. Campbell Award (w/ Free Fiction Links) →
sfsignal.com
Several Hugo-nominated works are available to read online, and SF Signal helpfully provides the links:
BEST NOVELLA
- ”The Lady Who Plucked Red Flowers beneath the Queen’s Window” by Rachel Swirsky (Subterranean Magazine, Summer 2010)
- The Lifecycle of Software Objects by Ted Chiang (Subterranean)
- “The Maiden Flight of McCauley’s Bellerophon” by Elizabeth Hand (Stories: All New Tales, William Morrow)
- ”The Sultan of the Clouds” by Geoffrey A. Landis (Asimov’s, September 2010)
- “Troika” by Alastair Reynolds (Godlike Machines, Science Fiction Book Club)
BEST NOVELETTE
- “Eight Miles” by Sean McMullen (Analog, September 2010)
- ”The Emperor of Mars” by Allen M. Steele (Asimov’s, June 2010)
- ”The Jaguar House, in Shadow” by Aliette de Bodard (Asimov’s, July 2010)
- ”Plus or Minus” by James Patrick Kelly (Asimov’s, December 2010)
- ”That Leviathan, Whom Thou Hast Made” by Eric James Stone (Analog, September 2010)
BEST SHORT STORY
- ”Amaryllis” by Carrie Vaughn (Lightspeed, June 2010)
- “For Want of a Nail” by Mary Robinette Kowal (Asimov’s, September 2010)
- ”Ponies” by Kij Johnson (Tor.com, November 17, 2010)
- ”The Things” by Peter Watts (Clarkesworld, January 2010)
BEST SEMIPROZINE
- Clarkesworld, edited by Neil Clarke, Cheryl Morgan, Sean Wallace; podcast directed by Kate Baker
- Interzone, edited by Andy Cox
- Lightspeed, edited by John Joseph Adams
- Locus, edited by Liza Groen Trombi and Kirsten Gong-Wong
- Weird Tales, edited by Ann VanderMeer and Stephen H. Segal
Science Fiction Awards Watch » Seiun nominees →
sfawardswatch.com
Japan’s Seiun Award nominees have been announced! There are categories for both Japanese and foreign works, as well as art and comics, but the most interesting category to me (AFAIK) doesn’t have an equivalent in the Hugos or Nebulas:
Open category- Hayabusa (MUSES-C) space probe
- IKAROS solar sail demonstration mission
- “Robots and the fine arts” art exhibition
- SF Magazine‘s 50th anniversary collection
- Live feed of Hayabusa by Wakayama University
- Introduction of the iPad to Japan
The Independent, Books » New world order ahead: The developing world is the setting for science fiction's best new novels →
independent.co.uk
…by white Western people, apparently.*
Props to Geoff Ryman:
…this kind of reaction concerns novelist and University of Manchester lecturer Geoff Ryman, who says the West too often looks for negative stories about the developing world. Ryman has recently run writing workshops in Nigeria and, he says, we’re not reading the kinds of stories that Nigerians write about themselves. He’s also dubious about the idea that Western novelists can convey other nations’ futures with the “richness” that writers from these nations bring to the same endeavour.
He’s ambivalent about his own 2006 Arthur C. Clarke Award winner, Air, which imagined the effect of a super-internet technology on villagers living in a Kazakhstan-like nation. Why not read Indian, Nigerian and Brazilian science-fiction stories instead, he asks? Somehow, you suspect we increasingly will. It’s heartening, for example, that the reputation of American-Nigerian Nnedi Okorafor is starting to grow. The World SF Blog (worldsf.wordpress.com), which highlights science fiction and fantasy from around the globe, publishes short stories from different nations every week.
___
* Well, Lauren Beukes is actually from South Africa. So there’s that.
Bibliophile Stalker » Essay: The Impact of Tokyopop on Western Fandom →
charles-tan.blogspot.com
Charles Tan looks back on the recently departed manga publisher.
A lot of today’s manga fans might remember Tokyopop for its impact in the 21st century but for me, the real innovation started as far back as 1996. Back then, at least as far as English-translated manga was concerned, the only major players in the market were Viz (especially with their Ranma 1/2 and Dragonball titles) and Dark Horse. Moreover, the focus of both companies tended to be on the Shonen (“boys”) and Seinen (“men”) respectively (although series like Ranma 1/2 appealed to both genders). It was a time when manga was sold either as pamphlet (much like most of your weekly US comics) or expensive graphic novels/trades ($15.00 and upwards—more when you start factoring inflation). Tokyopop—then known as Mixx—would release its bi-monthly manga anthology Mixxzine, which is not-quite patterned after Japan’s massive “phonebook directory mangas”. To set the record straight, Mixx wasn’t the first one to do so: that honor belongs to Viz and it’s monthly Manga Vision anthology. What did set Mixxzine apart was its content, as two of the four serials were drawn from Shojo titles: Sailormoon and Magic Knight Rayearth. Now the Sailormoon franchise was a milieu into itself, while Magic Knight Rayearth was a popular title during its time. (It’s also interesting to note that the other title featured in the original Mixxzine launch, Parasyte, would later be picked up Del Rey.) other titles that would eventually be part of Mixx’s pre-2001 stable include Gundam Blue Destiny and Gundam Wing, as well as Card Captor Sakura.
A Comment Most Awesome.
This is a comment made by the amazing Mia (ephemere on DW if you’re interested) on my thread on steampunk postcoloniality. Just to say, she is one of my greatest inspirations for writing the stuff I do. I’m not going to link to the thread because I know some of you will just hop on over and witness the fail and I don’t really feel like distressing more people than necessary, but you must must must read Mia’s response:
the effects of Western Colonialism on those citizens of former colonies who are TOO YOUNG TO HAVE EXPERIENCED THEM.
How dare you make the assumption of lack of damage or effect and dismiss the lived experiences of myself and millions of other people like me — people who were not alive at the time that our countries were under colonial rule but who bear imprinted on our bodies and on our tongues and seared into our brains the scars and the ashes, the undeniably damaging effects, of our colonial history. Because (apparently you seem to have missed it) the past shapes the present, and thus I am a product not only of a present life in a country casually dismissed as a Third World Source of Cheap Labor, but also of an inherited legacy and an all-too-significant collective past wherein my ancestors were taught to at once bow to our white colonizers and to idolize their ways, to submit and to obey, to act in accordance with what they believed befit the stations in life of those who were born in their colonies.
Do you want to play a game of cause and effect? Let me show you my pieces. Here is a tongue twisted out of shape into learning English as its primary tongue, because English was and still is the language of the educated and fluency in my native tongue is given only passing weight. Here is a body wrapped in skin that I have hated for decades because I have been taught sowell that White is Beautiful and Brown is Less. Here is a spine coiled so well into patterns of subservience that I still find myself automatically deferring just a little bit more to USAmericans solely because of their nationalities, even on matters where I am not supposed to defer; I find myself needing to show that I am a Good Member of My Nationality, that I too know English, that I am just as worthy of respect as they. Here are the social skills and responses of one who was brought up in a society carefully manipulated by USAmericans to aid their colonial rule — the hierarchy they supported and reinforced, of elites and masses, of “more” and “less”, is in my blood, do you understand? Can you understand? Here are hands and eyes shaped by hours of imbibing Western values and Western ideologies because clearly they are so much more sophisticated and superior; here is a self living in a territory that has time and again worked against its own interests simply because imperialistic ideologies pervade it so thoroughly that our officials and our workers and the vast majority of our people think it a greater wrong to say ‘no’ to the West than to say ‘yes’ to our own survival. I say to you now: in our economy and in our arts and in our labor and in our philosophy, in our daily speech and in the way we regard ourselves, we are caged by so many unseen barriers we are still in the process of identifying them, and these traps are neither invention nor figment of the imagination.
Can you really tell me that I am not a victim of colonialism? Because I will have to strenuously object, and I should think I know better than you what I live with everyday and what I do not. It is not self-pity. It is not delusion. Colonialism is there, sunk into our laws and into our psyches, into our everyday interactions with media and pop culture, into the tongues of market vendors and negotiators in the upper echelons of power. How can you say that there are no victims when time and again those who live with the debris of the past every day, those who struggle with the way it presses up, over and over, against our skin, decry it for all the ruin it has wrought on our societies and our souls and our nations? Will you pile grievous erasure upon grievous erasure? Will you erase our grief along with the memory of our dead? Do you think once the bodies sink out of sight they are forgotten?
Finally, do you really think colonialism is dead? Please. I live in a country where policy considerations, both domestic and foreign, are still governed largely by what our supposedly former colonial master wishes for us. The drive for empire is alive and well. It has just taken on different forms.
SETI Institute to shut down alien-seeking radio dishes →
mercurynews.com
The Allen Telescope Array is being shut down due to a lack of funding. Their funding comes from UC Berkeley and California in general, so it’s not a big surprise, but very sad anyway…
SETI senior astronomer Seth Shostak compared the project’s suspension to “the Niña, Pinta and Santa Maria being put into dry dock. “… This is about exploration, and we want to keep the thing operational. It’s no good to have it sit idle.”
OH FUCK YOU! Why do you have to go and ruin it all with your fucking historical revisionist space colonialism?! Maybe we shouldn’t even be fucking looking for aliens until everyone understands that (tl;dr) SPACE COLUMBUS IS BAD OKAY?!
Via Liz Henry on Twitter.
THIS IS MY NEW FAVOURITE THING →
duiker101.tk
ALL OF MY OTHER FAVOURITE THINGS HAVE BEEN LIES
THIS IS IT
THE ULTIMATE FAVOURITE THING
DO YOU EVEN REALISE HOW OFTEN I MAKE MOVE HACKER JOKES
WAY TOO OFTEN AND EVERYONE’S PROBABLY SICK OF IT
When I was in the first grade I would pull up a DOS command prompt on our classroom computers and hammer stuff in randomly, so this is a lot of fun for me.
:D :D :D :D
LEET AS FUCK
Shawty Got Skillz: Help the Shawty Got Skillz Skillsharers Get to the AMC! →
shawtygotskillz.tumblr.com
Hello Interwebs!
It’s about that time again for the best conference ever! Yes The Allied Media Conference will be happening June 23-26 in Detroit and we want to be there!
Who are we?
We are the Skillsharers of the 3rd Annual INCITE! Shawty Got Skillz workshop! We are women, trans* and genderqueer people of color making media that directly mingles our personal lives with the political issues we care about. We believe, as Audre Lorde did, that “it is better to speak, knowing we were never meant to survive.” We are all pushing the boundaries of what media is capable of and sharing the lessons of that experience with each other, and would love for you to help us get to Detroit this June to do just that!
Skillsharers include but aren’t limited to:
who will be presenting topics that range from: Nihilism for Negroes, What Up Doe! Detroit Hustle & Resistance, Sex Worker Saftey, How to Tumbl & Tweet for Social Justice, and so much more!
YOU can help us get there by:
- Reposting! - Tell folks that we are trying to get to the AMC! Tweet, Tumbl, Facebook, Myspace (I mean, there are still some folks on there) telling folks about what skills we are sharing and ask them to support us getting to the conference! Should you feel so inclined to blog or tumbl about it we can put your post on our site!
- Pre-Buying our ‘Zine! - We know a lot of folks aren’t going to make it to the AMC and we also know that what we share there is going to be amazing! We will document all the fabulousness of the skills shared with a zine, dropbox folder, and cd that encompasses digital versions of the skills we shared all housed online in a dropbox or via a CD or zine we could mail to you. For just $7 (the price of a fancy cup of coffee) you can live or relive the dream that was this years Skillshare!
We need to raise $6 G’s to get all 15 of us to the AMC (a low estimate)! YOU can donate Here! We so appreciate what ever you can give! A reblog and a tweet make us so happy!!!
http://www.chipin.com/contribute/id/1651d4149b61ae58
xoxo,
Shawty Got Skillz Skillshare Crew
