THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
06/25/10 -- Vol. 28, No. 52, Whole Number 1603
C3PO: Mark Leeper, mleeper@optonline.net
R2D2: Evelyn Leeper, eleeper@optonline.net
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Topics:
Self-Knowledge (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Why We Probably Won't See You At the Next Convention
(comments by Mark R. Leeper)
This Week's Reading (Hugo short fiction--novellas)
(book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
===================================================================
TOPIC: Self-Knowledge (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
I was listening to a lecture about the early civilizations in
Mesopotamia and one of the students asked the lecturer if there is
any indication that they realized just how early they were. It is
amazing that being so early suffused their whole civilization and
everything that it did, but they actually may not have even noticed
it. [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Why We Probably Won't See You At the Next Convention
(comments by Mark R. Leeper)
(I apologize in advance to the hardworking people who put on
science fiction conventions. Too often your intentions are good,
but there are just not enough people committed to putting on a
professional science fiction convention.)
At one time science fiction convention-going was one of Evelyn's
and my favorite activities. I toyed with the idea of a perfect
existence being a science fiction convention that just never ended.
You go to panels, you eat in restaurants, you buy more books in the
huckster room. The combination of going to panels discussing SF
topics and film was just too inviting. Maybe that would not be a
permanent existence, but I would have liked to try it for a month.
But years have passed and today it is hard to be that enthusiastic
about science fiction conventions. These days there are few things
that I used to be really enthusiastic about and that I still am. (I
still like tuna fish sandwiches with too much Miracle Whip.) But
most science fiction conventions just are not that much fun any
more. I go in large part for the panels, but too many of them are
just not worth the effort. It is a minority of the panels, but it
is usually enough to really damage the convention, at least for me.
If you go to enough conventions they become too much like what you
have already seen and done. The panels are all starting to
resemble each other. You get the sort of thing with four panelists
trying to stretch to sixty minutes a topic like "Why are we getting
so many remake movies and why are they so bad?" or "Just what is
alternate history and is it really science fiction?" The people
who choose these panel topics must know that they have been done to
death at previous conventions. They are probably hoping the
attendees are new enough to conventions that they will have seen
these panels only once or twice before.
And the panels too frequently seem to be about the same. If it is
a four-person panel three will show up. Nobody will admit to being
the moderator. The fourth person will be fifteen minutes late.
One or more panel members will be just a bit squiffy. They will
have spent a total of twenty-six minutes preparing for the panel,
besides having seen panels on the same subject their last two
conventions. That does not matter so much because the panel will
go off-topic in the first ten minutes and will not return, so any
preparation is useless. Perhaps this sort happens at only a
minority of panels. But it happens all too frequently.
If the panel involves projectors or sound equipment, there is no
way anybody will have thought to test it in advance. It is assumed
it will work the first time. I don't know how many panels have a
meeting room full of people straining to hear an unamplified PC.
You cannot blame the panelists since they are volunteers and the
convention is dependent on their good will. If you have no
panelists you have no panels. So you might want to blame the
convention committee who set things up this way. But you cannot
blame them either because without a con committee you cannot have
much of a convention. It is more or less de rigueur that attendees
be grateful to the panelists and the convention committee.
Even Worldcons seem to be rubber stamps of previous Worldcons. The
difference is that at a Worldcon you are spending $150 a night to
stay in a fancy hotel in some part of the country that is
absolutely beautiful. At least in the right season it is
beautiful. You are going to this beautiful corner of the country
the time of year that nobody in his or her right mind would want to
go there. It is off-season, which is why the hotel room is only
$150 a night. If it is winter when you come out in the morning
your car will be encased in ice. If it is summer the tires of your
car will be melting into the concrete. This year the Worldcon is
in a nice place, but it is just about 180-degrees on the other side
of the world.
There are alternatives. The frontiers of innovative fandom are
mostly electronic these days. And one gets the idea that things
much like conventions are getting started online. It is becoming
more and more feasible to run a convention over the Internet.
There are not a lot of activities that go on at a convention that
do not have some electronic analog. You can socialize with your
friends, attend discussions and panels, and huckster all on-line.
You even can party with friends, but you have to bring your own
food. I suppose you cannot go to restaurants with your friends
electronically.
I suggested on-line conventions a while ago in the MT Void. Then
just recently I attended an online horror film convention on my
computer. They called it a Marathon Webcast, but it bore no small
similarity to a weekend-long film convention. It included a 24-
hour-a-day films.
To be honest I did not give it my full attention (that may be a
problem) but I watched a little bit of the films and participated
in some discussions via chat. The hotel was very comfortable being
that it was my own house. My room was just a few rooms away from
the convention center (which for me was on my desk in the den).
The cost was that the movies were interrupted occasionally for ads.
Too frequently they were interrupted, actually. But then the
convention membership was just a few pennies on my electric bill.
If I remember it was a bit rainy, but the walk from my den to my
bedroom was completely enclosed and took me right through my
kitchen. The convention layout was convenient.
Was it as good as a real convention? Probably not. But I really
believe the future of science fiction conventions is in tele-
presence and not in physical presence. [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
This year, for the first time in sixteen years, I'm not eligible to
vote for the Hugos (because I'm not going to Australia for the
Worldcon), but what the heck--reviewing the short fiction nominees
has become a tradition.
But before I start, a few general observations. First, this year
was an all-time high for nominating ballots, and this in spite of
the facts that 1) neither the 2009 nor the 2010 Worldcons (source
of the electors) was in the United States, and 2) the Progress
Report with the nominating ballot did not reach most United States
members until well after the nominating deadline. Perhaps as a
result of the latter, only about 3% of the ballots were received in
hard-copy form.
Second, considering the record number of nominating ballots, the
number of ties (manifested as six-item slates) this year was
astonishing: Novel, Novella, Novelette, Related Work, and Fanzine.
Third, the source for the short fiction was the most varied ever:
Of the "Big Three" magazines (F&SF, ANALOG, and ASIMOV'S) only
ASIMOV'S is represented. The rest are small-press books (e.g.,
Subterranean, Tachyon), semi-prozines (e.g., "Interzone"), web
sites (e.g., tor.com, Clarkesworld), collections (e.g., CYBERABAD
DAYS), series anthologies (e.g., THE NEW SPACE OPERA 2, ECLIPSE
THREE, THE SOLARIS BOOK OF NEW SCIENCE FICTION: VOLUME THREE), and
stand-alone anthologies (FOOTPRINTS, WIRELESS).
On the quirky side, two unrelated works titled "Palimpsest" were
nominated, and this is the first time in twenty-one years that Dave
Langford is not on the ballot for Fan Writer (though his semi-
prozine, "Ansible", is nominated).
And finally, while in the past authors tended to put their
nominated works up on the Web, for the last couple of years they
have relied more on packages of all the nominated fiction which are
sent only to eligible voters. But since I am not a member of
Aussiecon 4, I am not eligible, so there is one work I was unable
to read. (Well, yes, I could buy it, but is only available as a
book from a small press at a somewhat large price.) Luckily, most
of the others are available on-line or through my library.
I will cover the novellas this week, and the novelettes and short
stories next week.
Novella:
"Act One" by Nancy Kress (Asimov's 3/09) adds to Kress's body of
work of medical/biological science fiction. In this instance, it
is a story about genetic modification--and not surprisingly, about
the Law of Unintended Consequences. As in most such near-future
science fiction stories, Kress recognizes that anti-genemod laws
passed by individual countries will be basically useless, as people
will just "offshore" their procedures. (Indeed, Ireland already
discovered a variant of this. It had made abortion illegal, and
also tried to legislate against Irish citizens traveling to England
for abortions. But it ran afoul of European Union laws which
mandate that all citizens have unrestricted travel among the member
countries. Ah, you might say, but the United States prohibits
travel to Cuba. Well, not really--it prohibits giving or spending
any money in Cuba. But even so, when a genemod clinic can be set
up on a ship in international waters, what exactly could be
legislated here?) I will refrain from revealing the actual genetic
modifications, since that is to a great extent the point, but it is
at least made plausible. Is this Hugo material, though? I'm not
sure.
"The God Engines" by John Scalzi (Subterranean) is one of the
stories I have no access to.
"Palimpsest" by Charles Stross (WIRELESS) seems to be heavily
inspired by Isaac Asimov's THE END OF ETERNITY crossed with Poul
Anderson's "Time Patrol" stories, with a dash from John Kessel's
CORRUPTING DR. NICE. It was fine up to a point, but I would have
preferred something maybe at the novelette length. (In his
afterword, Stross explains why he did not make it a short novel,
and also implies he would have liked to add another hundred
thousand words, which would have produced something longer than a
short novel.)
"Shambling Towards Hiroshima" by James Morrow (Tachyon)
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 03/20/2009]
"Shambling Towards Hiroshima" by James Morrow (ISBN-13 978-1-
892391-84-1, ISBN-10 1-892391-84-8) is an alternate history in
which the United States developed a secret biological weapon
towards the end of World War II: Gorgantis, a giant lizard designed
to stomp Japanese cities. But in order to demonstrate its power,
they enlist the aid of Hollywood to fake a demonstration using a
man in a suit, and that man is horror film star Syms Thorley.
Now, Syms Thorley is a fictional character, as are many of the
other Hollywood personages, but many others are real (though in our
world not involved in a giant reptilian weapon). Just to cover a
few that appear relatively early: James Whale and Willis O' Brien
are of course real, and THE BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS is a real
movie. Gorgantis is obviously a copy of Gojira/Godzilla. Kha-Ton-
Ra is obviously a copy of the cinematic Im-ho-tep (who is also
mentioned). Crepuscula is completely made up. Siegfried K.
Dagover appears to be a fictional relative of Lil Dagover (from THE
CABINET OF CALIGARI). Producer Sam Katzman, director William
("One-Take"), cinematographer Mack Stengler, and art director Dave
Milton are real.
All this should make clear that the book is aimed at fans of the
horror films of the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. If you like Morrow's
other work, but are unfamiliar with the films, this book is not
going to be very meaningful.
"Vishnu at the Cat Circus" by Ian McDonald (CYBERABAD DAYS) was the
one new story in the collection CYBERABAD DAYS, and frankly, the
least engaging. In fact, I had started it, given up, and was about
to return the book to the library when the Hugo nominations were
announced. So I went back and read it, but still could not managed
to get enthused about it.
"The Women of Nell Gwynne's" by Kage Baker (Subterranean)
is really only marginally science fiction. The basic story is
about someone in Britain trying to sell military secrets to the
highest bidder (instead of giving them to Britain like a loyal
subject). That this particular military secret has a science-
fictional aspect, or that there are some gadgets of a steampunk/Q-
out-of-James-Bond nature is really rather marginal. (I am reminded
of Austin Mitchelson's THE EARTHQUAKE MACHINE and HELLBIRDS, two
1970s Sherlock Holmes adventures involving science fictional
inventions that came out well before "steampunk" as a genre was
invented.)
My voting order would be: "Shambling Towards Hiroshima",
"Palimpsest", No Award, "Act One", "The Women of Nell Gwynne's",
"Vishnu at the Cat Circus"
Unable to rank: "The God Engines"
[-ecl]
===================================================================
Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
The intellectuals' chief cause of anguish are
one another's works.
-- Jacques Barzun, 1959