m. c. de marco

I wish I could say that I was surprised, but sadly I was not. Earlier today, notes from publisher Warren Lapine, and editors Shawna McCarthy and Douglas Cohen announced the end of Realms of Fantasy magazine. Lapine bought the magazine little more than a year ago with hopes of reviving it. Things did not work out as he had hoped.

There are likely many contributing factors this, not least of which, as Lapine himself notes, is the poor economy. I don’t know if they had embraced electronic publishing earlier on in their process and made a concerted effort to push into that realm, no pun intended, that things would have worked out better.

Given that Amazon recently announced their intention to sell Kindle Singles, I think the electronic medium is the way to go for short fiction. Much like how the MP3 has changed music (almost a retro slide into the single-buying days of music in the 1950s and 1960s), single-shot short stories might be just what readers are looking for. In my experience, the short story works wonderfully on an e-reader.

Will people be able to buy just a few articles or stories from a magazine? Will magazines even publish traditional “issues” in the future, or will they just release content as it’s ready and let their readers decide what they want to read? I have some thoughts and opinions on the subject, but I don’t know any more than the next person what might happen.

I always enjoyed reading Realms of Fantasy, and I will miss them. Unfortunately, I think it’s unlikely that someone will step in and save them again.

John Klima is the editor of the Hugo Award-winning Electric Velocipede, a print magazine. He watches the developments of electronic publishing and short fiction with a keen interest.

This week in the Lord of the Rings re-read, we consider “The Field of Cormallen,” Chapter 4 of book VI of The Return of the King. Spoilers for the entire book after the jump.

[Read more]

Since it’s the Halloween month and all things creepy and wonderful are sneaking about, it seems like a good time to talk about one of the cooler things Neil Gaiman has done for his readers. His middle-grade novel The Graveyard Book achieved mass critical acclaim, from a Hugo to the Newberry award, as well as audience adoration from kids and adults (as discussed in last week’s post on all-ages scary stories).

But did you know that you can listen to it, read by Gaiman himself, for free? Right now?

Well, really, you’ll be watching it, as the story is contained in chapter-by-chapter videos of readings from the book tour. Which is honestly even cooler; Neil Gaiman has excellent stage presence and a wonderful reading voice.

[Keep reading, link below]

H.M.S. Surprise is the third volume of the Aubrey-Maturin series. (Re-reads of the first two volumes can be found here.) It begins a little while after the end of Post Captain, and concerns the voyage of the frigate Surprise, under Captain Aubrey, to Kampong via India, to deliver an envoy. There’s some lovely stuff here as the series starts to get into its stride. This is where I feel it really gets going, and if you weren’t going to start at the beginning, this would work—you’d want to go back and read the earlier ones, but that wouldn’t be a problem.

[Read more: Spoilers]

Worldbuilding is dull. Worldbuilding literalises the urge to invent. Worldbuilding gives an unnecessary permission for acts of writing (indeed, for acts of reading). Worldbuilding numbs the reader’s ability to fulfill their part of the bargain, because it believes that it has to do everything around here if anything is going to get done.

Above all, worldbuilding is not technically neccessary. It is the great clomping foot of nerdism. It is the attempt to exhaustively survey a place that isn’t there. A good writer would never try to do that, even with a place that is there. It isn’t possible, & if it was the results wouldn’t be readable: they would constitute not a book but the biggest library ever built, a hallowed place of dedication & lifelong study. This gives us a clue to the psychological type of the worldbuilder & the worldbuilder’s victim, & makes us very afraid. (—M. John Harrison)

It was the quote heard ’round the nerddom; it set the blogosphere aflame and rose the hackles of readers reared on the likes of J.R.R. Tolkien, Robert Jordan, and Stephen Donaldson. He’s an “utter, arrogant asshole” they yelled. Or, “he probably realised he could never come close to Tolkien in worldbuilding and decided it was just unnecessary crap.” Whether in agreement or disagreement with Harrison, shouts were raised and battlelines drawn, all in the name of worldbuilding and its importance to the genre.

[Read More...]

 Aging, when done properly, does not have to be a chore. While slowing down a bit physically is inevitable, having the benefit of an extra decade or two of life experience can help adjust one’s priorities, focus on the things that truly matter, and enhance appreciation of the finer things in life. It also, as the action movie Red implies, radically increases one’s ability to blow things up and kill bad guys.

[Review, including some spoilers, below the fold...]

Raimund Krumme is a German animator who can give expression to the simplest lines. He’s also an expert at manipulating visual perception. Here are two of his shorts:

Die Kreuzung (The Crossroads): A man must make a decision on where to go, but others insist on interfering.

Seiltänzer (Rope Dance)
Raimund Krumme

For more animation, visit our Saturday Morning Cartoon Index.

René Walling is a fan of SF, animation and comics, this has led him to co-chair Anticipation, the 2009 Worldcon, be involved with fps magazine for more than a decade, and start Nanopress, a Canadian small press. He looks forward to living on Mars where he would benefit from having more than 24 hours in a day.

Each week, Frequency Rotation probes a different song with a science fiction or fantasy theme. Genre, musical quality, and overall seriousness may vary.

This Sunday, synthesizer icon Gary Numan will kick off a North American tour in support of the 30th-anniversary reissue of The Pleasure Principle, the innovative album that contains his lone U.S. hit, the new-wave classic “Cars.” It’s hard to believe—especially for those of us who grew up in the 1980s—that Numan is still active and popular in the far-flung future he once so icily, nasally warned us about. Yet here he is; and strangely enough, his music sounds as futuristic and frigidly hypnotic as ever.

[Read more]

As we continue our journey through the alphabet some of you may have noticed a slight itching in the back of your eyes. Maybe you’ve felt hunger pains, not in your belly, but at the midpoint of your head. That’s where your visual cortex is found and that hunger signals the beginning stages of art addiction. Other symptoms include a compulsive need to discover all the names of teachers and friends of a particular well-known artist, exploding bookcases due to the weight of too many art books, and a deep knowledge of auction houses and their scheduled public viewings. Lastly, hives.

Don’t worry, the addiction is relatively benign and plenty of support groups exist. Just remember, it’s a scavenger hunt which has no list and never ends.

[Read more. One image somewhat NSFW]

Greetlings, WOTlings! Welcome back (finally) to the Wheel of Time Re-read, eh?

Today’s entry covers Chapter 32 of Winter’s Heart, in which we contemplate Risky Business, though with surprisingly little sock-sliding.

“Distinctions”, the Prologue for Towers of Midnight, the upcoming newest release in the series, is now available for download, and a preview of Chapter 1, “Apples First”, is available here. A special preview of Chapter 8, “The Seven Striped Lass”, can be found here. If you would like to read my completely spoiler-free advance review of Towers of Midnight, you can find it here.

Please refrain from posting spoilers for the Prologue, Chapter 1 or Chapter 8 in the posts for the Re-read, in order to protect those who have not yet read them, or do not intend to before the release of the entire book. Spoiler discussion is going on here, in a special post just for discussion of preview material; please keep all spoilers there. Thanks.

Previous re-read entries are here. The Wheel of Time Master Index is here, which has links to all of the above plus links to news, reviews, interviews, and all manner of information about the Wheel of Time in general.

This re-read post contains spoilers for all currently published Wheel of Time novels, up to and including Book 12, The Gathering Storm. If you haven’t read, read at your own risk.

Also, scheduling note: Due to various circumstances, not the least of which being that I need to come up with a suitably stupendous (or lengthy, at least) spoilery review of ToM Real Soon Now, I have made an executive decision to finish off Winter’s Heart by the end of the month, and then we will be going on hiatus again for the release of the new book. But probably not for as long as I did when TGS came out; I’ll have more specifics on that later.

However, for the nonce you can expect the one-post-a-week scheduling to continue for the rest of October, which is to say there are two more posts after this one to go to finish off WH. So expect the next one next Friday.

Okay, so there’s all that. And now, a post!

[sometimes you gotta say “What the fuck,” make your move]

This used to be a favourite book, then I went off it and I haven’t re-read it in a long time. I picked it up now because a discussion about trying to explain a joke to someone with autism reminded me of it.

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress (1967) is a book with a lot in it. It’s about a revolution on the moon. It’s about a computer that has become self-aware and is slowly becoming a person. It’s got polyamory and half a ton of gender issues and lots of very odd politics. What I have always loved about it is the experimental style, and Mike, the computer who isn’t meant to be alive. My fifteen year old self and my present day self are united in thinking that Mike is the best character in the book. But on this re-read, I found something problematic even with him.

However, all problems aside, this is a significant book in the history of the genre, and even better it has the Heinlein magic readability. It’s amazingly engrossing from the first minute, and it drew me along as irresistably now as when I was a teenager. It’s a great story written in a great voice. I’m not saying it won’t drive you nuts in several ways, but it’s nevertheless important, fun, and good.

[Read more: spoilers]

The term “future history” was coined for editor John W. Campbell to describe a series of stories Robert Heinlein was writing for Astounding Science Fiction magazine in the 1940s. As used in the science fiction genre, the term implies more than just a series of stories set in the same universe. The term “future history” is applied to a series that spans an extended period of time. In fact, authors of future histories invariably report it is necessary to write down an outline of the events and changes to society and technology, which occur during various periods of the timeline. Heinlein started this trend with his famous chart. Other future histories include Poul Anderson’s Technic Civilization, Cordwainer Smith’s Lords of the Instrumentality, H. Beam Piper’s TerroHuman Future History, Alan Dean Foster’s Humanx Commonwealth, and Larry Niven’s Known Space.

A Niven Reading Experiment

“Spike” MacPhee (one of this article’s authors) ran the Science-Fantasy Bookstore in Harvard Square, Cambridge Massachusetts, from 1977 to 1989, and so was able to observe people’s reading patterns. In 1977, as a new bookstore clerk, he had many duties, but also time to observe human behavior puzzles. One of these was the case of readers new to Larry Niven’s worlds, who started to explore them by first buying Ringworld. Why then did only one-third of them try more of his books? The normal author continuation rate, he had observed, was roughly one-half. How could he improve this rate for Niven?

[Read more]

In science fiction and fantasy, some really great authors have been autodidacts. Terry Pratchett chose not to go to a university. Same for Alan Moore. Philip K. Dick’s college days were short lived, as were Andre Norton’s, though for very different reasons. Dick refused to comply with the university’s mandatory ROTC training; Norton could not afford to continue. Money troubles also cut short the schooling of Arthur C. Clarke and Frederik Pohl. Pohl’s fellow Futurian H. Beam Piper was also self-educated (and possibly Damon Knight as well, though the bios I’ve read aren’t clear on this).

Let me define my terms. Anyone can be an autodidact, whether they have three doctorates or never passed third grade. For the purpose of this post, I’m focusing on those who have some formal education, usually up to high school, maybe a quick taste of college, and then chose to self-educate thereafter.

[Golden age or dying breed?]

I try to gather up books in this space on a regular basis that deal with issues of gender and sexuality, review them, and give you fine readers a nudge in their direction—which is all well and good, but it’s not the same as being able to sit down and have a talk about the book with the text read ahead of time and a group of people to chat with. That’s what book clubs are for, and in 2011, there are two focusing on women writers of speculative fiction.

(This is all thanks to Elizabeth Bear, who provided links on her blog, without which I might have missed out.)

The Women of Fantasy, hosted by Jawas Read, Too!, and also The Women of Science Fiction hosted by Dreams and Speculation. Both are focused on books in the genre by women writers, and looking at the lists, the books themselves all have at least a minor focus on gender and/or sexuality, so it seemed like the perfect thing to recommend.

[A rundown of the books and writers, plus some personal thoughts]

R.I.P. EVERYONE!

Okay, maybe not everyone, but for an hour-long show, Caprica sure had a lot of death this week!

The title of the episode, “Retribution,” says it all. Clarice spent the episode picking off her former students who were now working with Barnabas against her. She later kills Barnabas by blowing him up, but before being blown to smithereens, Barnabas kills Keon, who threatens to leave the STO. And then there was Random Graystone Board Member who, rather than succumb to Daniel’s blackmailing or allow his wife to find out about his interest in S&M (or his having killed hookers. It’s not made clear. Daniel just says he “likes to hurt women.”) chooses to blow his brains out.

That’s five deaths in this one episode. In case you’re keeping track, that brings the total death count in 11 episodes of Caprica to 509. 500 in the MAGLEV bombing including Zoe, Ben, Shannon, and Tamara; the 2 Tauron men killed in the MCP theft; the politician Sam kills in the pilot; Nestor; Barnabas; Keon; 2 Barnabas lackeys…and a partridge in a Solstice Tree.

Who needs Cylons to destroy humanity when we already do such a good job of destroying ourselves?

[No one is safe!]

Niall Harrison of Torque Control has been hosting an interesting discussion about why so little science fiction by women is published in the UK. This started with Tricia Sullivan talking about why so few women win the Clarke Award, which is for the best science fiction (not fantasy) published in the U.K., and went on from there.

British publisher Gollancz has published a set of “science fiction future classics” which do not contain any books by women. I’m sad to see this, as I imprinted on Gollancz’s yellow-jacketed SF line when I was a teenager and have always felt fond of them. Now Niall’s interested in what people think are the best ten science fiction novels written by women between 2001 and 2010—as if the future classics list was to be all female, instead of all male.

[Read more: Is there a problem? My suggestions]

 Following the announcement that he had joined the cast, it has been confirmed that Welsh actor Rhys Ifans is playing The Lizard, villainous alter-ego of Dr. Curt Connors, in the new Spider-Man movie, which is scheduled to start production in December.

[Read more]

So many of you responded to the Star Trek giveaway last week that we wanted to give everyone who entered another shot at winning some Star Trek swag.

In conjunction with today's coverage of “The Enterprise Incident” by Dayton Ward and David Mack's coverage of “The Enterprise Incident," we'll be giving away the new table book pictured above: Star Trek: The Original Series 365, by Paula M. Block with Terry J. Erdmann and with an introduction by Dorothy “D.C” Fontana.

[Rules and pics below the cut]

“The Enterprise Incident”
Written by D.C. Fontana
Directed by John Meredyth Lucas

Season 3, Episode 2
Episode 62 of 79
Production episode 3x04
Original air date: September 27, 1968
Stardate 5027.3

Recap: Dayton Ward

Question: What do you think of my new look, Spock?

Answer: You remind me of my uncle, Captain. The one nobody ever liked inviting to dinner.

The Enterprise is cruisin’ along, all by its lonesome, and we’re treated to a rare log entry by Dr. McCoy. It seems the good doctor’s worried about Captain Kirk, who’s been acting pretty much like a big ol’ butthead as of late. His normally top-notch crew is pretty much running around with their tails tucked between their legs, and it only gets worse when Kirk orders a course change that will take the Enterprise into the Romulan Neutral Zone.

Yeah, because that always works out.

[Read more]

I have no doubt some of our readers were saddened to arrive at Tor.com’s doorstop on the first of October and not see the intrepid visage of the H.M.S. Stubbington gazing back at them. But Tor.com has not entirely lost its clockwork heart, and so I am pleased to announce that our little ætherweb community has decreed a  Steampunk Fortnight, to be celebrated from 20 October to 3 November of the year two thousand and ten. The Fortnight will occasion the return of many of the features you remember fondly from last year’s Steampunk Month, including scintillating blog posts, engaging adventure fiction, copiuous giveaways, and much more.

But that’s not all! This year there will be a real-world analogue to our ætherweb event: Tor.com, in collaboration with our compatriots at Tor Books, is sponsoring a Literary Corner at this year’s Steampunk Indie Market in Brooklyn, New York on October 24th. The event will feature readings from original works by N. K. Jemisin, Felix Gilman, Genevieve Valentine, Lev AC Rosen, Leanna Renee Hieber, and G. D. Falksen; recitations of steampunk classics by Nina Lourie, Ay-Leen the Peacemaker, and Nasty Canasta; and free tea and scones (baked by yours truly). Please see the Steampunk Literary Corner page for all the information you could desire.

Last, but certainly not least: We’re looking for a few good souls to volunteer at the Steampunk Indie Mart, assisting models, merchants, and organizers from the steampunk community. You will be richly rewarded with an array of steampunk books and swag, the aforementioned refreshments, and the glory and honour of serving your local artisan community. If you’d like to help out, please send a letter of intent to (press.inquiries)(at)(gmail.com). It shall be glorious!