Little Brother

This weekend I read a tough little cookie of a YA novel, Cory Doctorow's Little Brother. Published earlier this year, the book is already nominated for next year's Prometheus Award, and could indeed be a strong contender. I'm working on a review of the novel for Prometheus (unless any other brave souls out there would like to contribute a review...), but I'm already jokingly calling this the book that sent me to the ER.

The Young Adult fiction market these days is smokin' hot. As a grown up reading some these books I can't help but be irritated and impatient with the tendency toward a very simplistic style. I struggled to get going with Little Brother, and the ended certainly fizzled into a "Rock the Vote" solution that does nothing to advance individual liberty (a recent conversation with L. Neil Smith comes to mind, where he said that it's easy to write dystopias, as we all can agree upon what we are against. But it's damn tough to come up with better solutions. ) Still, the middle part of Doctorow's novel is worth every penny, and is the part that most readers probably will remember.

Traipsing through olden times

I used to average reading 100-150 books a year. A middling amount, maybe, as some people never read a book and others read probably far more than this number of volumes. Though that number dipped for a while, I've probably ready between 1000 and 2000 books in the past two decades. Far from all are science fiction. Still, I'd be the first to admit there are far more sf books out there that I have NOT read, so I try to catch up on some of these every year.

Not sure if 1987 can be considered olden times, but 1965 predates me and so I say it qualifies.

I just finished reading David Brin's The Uplift War, which is the third volume in his Uplift series. I read some other Brin novels in the 1980s, early 1990s, but none of the Uplift books. I do have the tendency to pick up new series in the middle or end, and then work my way backwards, so now I need to check if I have the first two books in the series and seek them out. There were times I skipped ahead, but overall I enjoyed the book.

I'm in the early stages of H. Beam Piper's Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen, which is another book that's been in my shelves for many, many years. I keep meaning to read it, but never get around to it. Already in the first 50 pages, hell, the first 10 pages, I can see that this book deeply influenced L. Neil Smith's novel, The Probability Broach. Good stuff also so far, but of a different cut altogether from the Brin book.

Blaylock interview

I discovered the fiction of James P. Blaylock back in 1989 around the time of my first science fiction convention, ArmadilloCon, which is held in Austin, Texas every year. Along with Blaylock, that year I started reading books by Tim Powers, K.W. Jeter, Charles de Lint, Lewis Shiner, Joe Lansdale, Bruce Sterling, and Dan Simmons. Twenty years later some of these writers are fairly established and famous, others not so much, but Blaylock and Powers stand above the rest in my eyes.

I liked the early Blaylock more so than his later fiction. While he started off quirky and light-hearted, his later books seemed darker and far more introspective. I am eagerly awaiting his latest novel, which will appear in Demember 2008. Meanwhile, the sf review site Fantasy BookSpot has posted a brief interview with Blaylock, which fans of his fiction, or people unaware of his books, may find interesting.

Half a loaf of WorldCon

I've attended three full WorldCon's, but I don't think I can count last week's Denvention as my fourth, since I was at the con for only a few hours. I had never been to Colorado aside from layovers at the Denver airport, so the plan was to remedy that with a few days in Colorado Springs followed by some time in Denver. Along the way I would attend the LFS Prometheus Awards at the World Science Fiction Convention, and meet up with some people I had not seen in a decade or more. In the Springs we did a little bit of sightseeing, including climbing two sets of stairs at Seven Falls. I thought I was in decent shape, but after step number 40 out of 185, I could feel the burn in my legs, along with being out of breath and panting from the accelerated heart rate. Perhaps it was the altitude... I then failed to learn my lesson and climbed the other sets of stairs (in the photo), which went higher and followed the seven small falls. I did not see any bears or mountain lions aside from in the news and at the zoo, but was impressed by the wonderful scenery.

We drove back to Denver on Wednesday, and I rode over to the convention center. A large blue bear stood outside, gazing in at the tasty humans inside. After a long walk to find the registration table, I signed up for a one day membership, which granted me the right to see stuff for that day, plus a photo copy of the program for that week. I was not sure about the usefulness of seeing what was happening Thursday through Sunday, aside from telling me what I would miss. I noted the room and time for the Prometheus Awards, and headed up to the dealer's room. There I ran into L. Neil Smith and Scott Bieser, manning the Big Head Press table. After chatting with them briefly I wandered around the anemic room for a while before heading to the location for the awards. I attended DragonCon in 1995, and the WorldCons from 1996 through 1998, and the number of dealers as well as selection has declined considerably since then. Most tables featured dealers who sold new books, which sad to say I can get cheaper online. It was rare to find dealers with a good selection of out of print books, and I walked out without making a single purchase, which is rare for me.


Initially I sat far in the back of the room, as the panel prior still had a few aisle-talkers. Once they cleared out I moved up, and then over some more for a better camera angle. Jo Walton appeared, followed by Harry Turtledove. Fred Moulton from LFS and Fran Van Cleave arrived and started setting up, then with little preamble launched into the presentation. Cheryl Morgan (formerly of the Emerald City fanzine) was there to take pictures for the awards web-site she co-manages. A funny moment occurred after the presentation. Morgan requested that the winners stand by a side wall, to which Turtledove quipped that "the libertarians are lining us up against the wall." Morgan replied, "I am not a libertarian." I suppose libertarians do not line people up against walls after all. Both the winners thanked the LFS and mentioned the reasons for their works, which dealt with people rebelling in various ways against variants of communism and fascism. A full convention report will appear in the Fall issue of Prometheus, as the Summer issue currently is at the printer, after getting some last minute photos dropped into the second page.


I chatted briefly with a couple of the LFS people, met a few people for the first time, and enjoyed being in the audience instead of presenting or organizing. I then headed back upstairs for another round through the dealers' room, and another long chat with Smith and Bieser. I could not make the LFS dinner that night, but did enjoy a small dinner the following night with a handful of people. I ended up spending only half a day at the WorldCon, as I was in town with the family and wanted to see more of the area. I hope to return to Colorado and spend more time there, as it's a great place and I know there is far more I want to see of that area.

I used to enjoy going to panels and listening to sf people talk, but this year I did not see one panel, and I felt somewhat removed from the whole experience. I would like to visit Montreal, but the kids are still too young to enjoy that place, and I find it difficult to split time between the conference and family. Perhaps the next time the WorldCon is in America it might be different. I believe that might not be until 2011, as 2010 is in Australia.

Robinson reviews Doctorow

Nice review over at Canada's Globe and Mail by Spider Robinson, of fellow Canadian writer Cory Doctorow's Prometheus Award nominated novel, Little Brother.

New Serenity comic online

First the TV show, then the fans, then the movie, then the comic books, now the online comic book. The voyage of Serenity continues in yet another format.

Back from CO

Normal sporadic posts to follow shortly...

Odysseus the Rebel

From Forbidden Planet, news about Big Head Press and Scott Bieser's latest project. Interesting take on a well-worn and well-known tale.

Wrapped up Prometheus content

Thursday night I finished writing the first draft of my final review for the Summer Prometheus issue. There's a lot of good stuff from other contributors, but I had one last obligation that needed to get written.

I was hoping to get this done a week ago, but other things interfered. As I'm heading to Colorado next week, I won't have time to finish the final edits before WorldCon, but the newsletter will be in the mail the week after WorldCon.

As always, I am looking for reviews, essays, letters, etc. for Prometheus so please feel free to contact me if you are interested.

Mucking about in Drupal Again

I'm exciting about new potential project dealing with sf reviews online. The structure will be based on Drupal, an open source CMS driven site that uses PHP and MySQL. I looked into Drupal a little over a year ago, built a small site and test-drove the application. Nothing came out of that effort, but now I have some incentive to take another look. I download version 6.3 (it was 5.x when I last tried), installed it and now I need to a refresher on all the aspects of Drupal. Time to stretch the brain.

WALL-E

I finally saw the movie WALL-E. I like almost everything Pixar has made, even their older short films. I regret they are so tightly connected to the Disney corp, which is an entity that has forgotten how to make good movies. Much has been made of WALL-E's attack on consumerism, and the irony that WALL-E and EVE merchandise is everywhere - buy, buy, buy! I went with my five year old daughter, so I tried to watch it from her perspective as well. The lack of dialog, which I thought would be problematic, did not hinder the story.

There were some sf inside jokes that she didn't get (ie. the auto-pilot's resemblance to HAL), but the movie snagged her on an emotional level since she expressed great concern for the fate of WALL-E, asking fearfully if he would be restored to his "old self" again after being crushed on the Axiom. She also asked about all the garbage on the planet and why the people were so fat, but whether the director and writer was trying to make a political point, or just contrasting humans with robots, I'm not sure. Life in space does alter bone structure, but the humans 700 years later certainly looked and acted a lot like American tourists at DisneyWorld. (News stories about over-weight people in other countries usually terms this an American-like problem.)

I did wonder about Andrew Stanton's lack of understand of economic reality and theory, if he thought that one company - Buy n Large - could take over the world through consumerism. Was this a veiled attack on Wal-Mart? Success does not always sustain a company, and who knows if Wal-Mart will exist some years from now. Also, not every individual is a slave to trinkets, though they are often shiny and tempting.

I also wondered how the humans could be surprised when their screens vanished, and yet still procreate. Did the space ship artificially implant the women and deliver the babies without anyone catching on? Still, it was an entertaining film, very touching, and certainly one of Pixar's better efforts. I always wonder how they pull it off. When I watched the previews for Finding Nemo and Cars, I thought, "Who could make a movie about fish or talking race cars?" But it worked. I ought to know; I watched Finding Nemo 200 times or more after my daughter got hooked on it, and we thought DVDs were better options than TV shows.

This has to be a freakin' joke

I often glance through The Libertarian Enterprise, an online newsletter published by L. Neil Smith and edited by Ken Holder. In the current issue one contributor by the name of Michael Bradshaw riffs on a letter to the editor from Victor Milan, and so I read the hole thing. A few paragraphs into the article I had to carefully lift my jaw off the table. Is this person advocating murder as a strategy for achieving liberty? I think Milan's original letter nailed the issue: too many libertarians are focused on the so-called Libertarian Party, and political campaigning such as the recent Ron Paul movement. Instead of reasonable discourse, Bradshaw instead calls for "sacrific[ing] the state. Literally. On an altar of fire" through killing political leaders. I am staggered that TLE actually published this stuff, as murder and violence never advances liberty. I abhor the loss of liberty throughout the world, but I certainly don't consider John Ross's Unintended Consequences or Vin Supryniwicz's The Black Arrow as manifestos for liberty. I am no pacifist, for I believe in self-defense, but assassination politics is still politics and better left to professional criminals. It is also insane and completely without ethical grounding.

2008 Prometheus Award Winners Announced

Breaking with tradition, the Libertarian Futurist Society yesterday announced the winners of the 2008 Prometheus Award for best novel published in 2007, as well as the classic fiction award (what used to be called the Hall of Fame). None of the five finalists consider themselves libertarian, from what I understand, but the LFS judges and voters (I am one of the latter) found enough pro-liberty content in the novels to declare one, no wait, two books the winner. Jo Walton's Ha'Penny and Harry Turtledove's The Gladiator tied for the award, which is a first in LFS history. The awards will be presented at the 2008 WorldCon in Denver. At the moment the time for the presentation has been set for 14:30 on Wednesday August 6th. I am in Colorado that week (mostly in Colorado Springs) and plan to be there in the audience that day.

As far as my own votes, I placed Jo Walton first, followed tightly by Ken MacLeod's The Execution Channel. I think I had Turtledove's book third or fourth, as I found his writing style somewhat simplistic, even for a juvie.

The classic fiction award went to Anthony Burgess for A Clockwork Orange. I have seen the movie, but not yet read the book, so I did not place it on my ballot. I have been trying to find the book in used book stores around town, but so far no luck.

Depressing Books

I'm currently reading one of the most depressing books ever published, Anne Applebaum's account of the Russian Gulag system. Entitled simply Gulag, this detailed history covers virtually every aspect of the camps, from conception to dissolution. Many years ago I read Robert Conquest's The Harvest of Sorrow, but Gulag covers a more insidious aspect of Soviet history. An aspect few Westerns remember or seem to care much about, or appear to excuse as merely trivial.

The 20th century may well have been the bloodiest and most brutal time in human history, though perhaps I say this because I came of age in that century and thus I am more aware of the detail of atrocities committed by humans against their own kind in those well-document years. I know this has been the case since time immemorial, but I still stand in shock and despair every time I read of such events. The 20th century is full of such instances, such as the Holocaust, the terror of Pol Pot, the rape of Nanking, the bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. The list goes on and on. If I ever feel miserable about the state of political events in America, I can always turn to books like this one; nothing here is tough compared to what the early Soviets suffered. Nothing.

RSS Restored

It appears this feature dropped in my transition to Blogger's new layout settings, or fumbled the transition somehow. I think this now should work once more.

A massive tome

Recently I ordered a new Michael Shea collection, The Autopsy and Other Tales, from Centipede Press. This has to be the biggest book I have ever owned. It measures 11 and 1/4 inches high, and barely fits in my tallest shelf. Sadly, it is not the complete collection of all his tales, but sometime after the next issue of Prometheus I plan to write a review of this book and will see if I can send it off to some sf review site or publication. It's a fairly expensive book and I wish Night Shade or Subterranean had done a smaller collection at a more reasonable rate, as this would have reached a wider audience.

Love/hate iTunes Store

I've been an iTunes fan since the moment it was released. I used SoundJam prior to iTunes, the app that apple's software was based on originally. I have all my CDs in my iTunes library, have gone through three of four different iPods over the years, and used to buy lots of stuff from the iTunes Store. My current iPod has almost 10,000 tracks, the vast majority ripped from my eclectic CD collection. I thought for a while I would stop buying CDs, since I now could find almost any album I wanted for $9.99 or less (sometime more). However, since January 14th 2008 I have not bought a single song from the iTunes Store, and am resisting out of a matter of principle. I bought an album a couple of days earlier: The Stars at Saint Andrea, by Devics. For the first time since I had listened to a song on the iTunes Store, I experienced several poorly encoded songs. I contacted the support staff to report a problem. They credited me for the five songs that clicked and hissed, and reassured me that in a matter of weeks the problem should have been corrected. Now, six months later, nothing has changed. Until those songs are fixed I will continue my resolution to only buy music in the forms of CDs, and also only buy them from a local, independent music store. Perhaps I should consider Amazon or eMusic.

I'm also peeved that Apple still has many DRM'd songs. Plus, I wanted to get Radiohead's Pablo Honey, which is the only Radiohead album I don't own, but refuse to buy anything that is tagged in bright red as Explicit. I could not believe it when Apple did this with some Lloyd Cole songs I bought a couple of years ago. A nice way to kill interest from customers.

I'd rather still be buying stuff from from iTunes, and me staying away will not affect their bottom line, but I did write an online review warning people to stay away from this album until the issue is fixed.

Cool iPhone app

I don't own an iPhone.I think it's a neat device, though over-priced for my modest needs at the moment in terms of cellular communication. Still, I saw Shazaam! in action last week, and that might be enough to make me buy one of those sexy critters. This app allows you to pick up the names of songs being played, just by pointing the phone for a few seconds at the audio. Worked fine in my car, but the background noise at Chipotle drowned out the same attempt there. Maybe that's just a cute toy affect, but it didn't help that 70% of people I was around at the conference last week had iPhones. Peer pressure...

Mind abuzz

I just returned from a week long developer conference in Phoenix, Arizona. I hesitate to state what type of development, as multiple areas were covered. I returned quite exhausted from lack of sleep, but feel rejuvenated and inspired. Many ideas are competing for time in my head at the moment, and I think the next few months will be quite busy. I am going to try to juggle editing Prometheus, this sparse site, and a myriad other projects.

Denvention Worldcon

It appears that the Worldcon time slot for the 2008 Prometheus Awards has been moved to Wednesday August 6th (the first day of the convention), at 2:30 pm. More details to follow.

I will be in Colorado that week with the family, and plan to attend the Prometheus Award presentation. This will be my first WorldCon in 10 years. Whew! Time flies.

The Tunnel

The day before July 4th I watched a German movie, The Tunnel. First
broadcast on German TV in 2001 and then shown as a feature film in
the US in 2005, I was unaware of the movie until it popped up on
Netflix as a recommended option. After long resisting Netflix, I
finally caved in two months ago and started at the second lowest
level, one movie at a time, unlimited movies per month. I figured
that if I watch one to two movies a week, that's not a bad deal. I
probably never watched that many movies during the time I picked them
up at the local Hollywood movie store,but then that establishment has
slowly been going downhill for a few years now. The preview screen
tries gamely to interest people by broadcasting in audio only, but
when the staff changes in toto almost overnight to scruffy and
unfriendly scowlers behind the counter (even donning somber black
polo shirts) you know something is not right. In retrospect I should
have switched to Netflix sooner, as I can browse and select movies at
leisure, avoid the hassle of driving and spending 30 minutes in the
store picking out something decent and waiting in line, only for the
movie to be a complete waste of time.

Most of the movies in my "queue" are ones that I have heard of
beforehand, and am now finally getting around to watching. But The
Tunnel is different. When Netflix emailed me to say it was next on my
list, I could not remember why I had picked it. Then I read the
synopsis again. This is a movie about an escape from East Berlin
after the wall went up in 1961. But this tunnel did not start on the
east side, but rather from the west, with a small group of people
digging 142 meters by hand through clay and dirt to free almost 30
people living under the glorious communism of the German Democratic
Republic. You want an actual comparison between freedom and
totalitarianism? Look no further than the GDR. Split asunder by the
Soviets and Allies after WWII, Germany existed as two worlds, one a
western style democracy, the other a Soviet-inspired socialist state.
A few months after Joseph Stalin died early in 1953, East Germany
experienced a brief attempt at self-liberation, with June 17
uprising. Shut down by Russian tanks, the uprising had the effect of
creating the idea inside Soviet and East German leaders that the west
was corrupting and leading astray the people of the GDR, and they
needed to create a physical barrier between East and West. Work on
this wall started in 1961, and the wall itself lasted 28 years until
the bricks were torn out by hand and machine in the glorious and
bloodless revolution of 1989. While this wall existed, thousands of
people risked their lives to get to the other side, either going
through the wall, over the wall (in one famous instance, via
balloon), or under it. Hundreds of people died, killed while
attempting to escape the wonderful life in the GDR. Throughout the
building of the wall the western powers stood complicit in the murder
and imprisonment of those trapped in East Germany. Churchill feared
German re-unification. The US and other allies who had carved up the
country did little but stand by and state the could only protect
those in West Germany and West Berlin. Meanwhile, families and
friends were separated. Many escaped, while others either could not,
or were too afraid to make the attempt.

The Tunnel begins with a champion East German swimmer winning a
competition mere weeks before work on the wall begins. Called Harry
Melchior in the movie, he had spent four years in prison for
participating in the 1953 uprising as a student. He remains defiant,
refusing to shake the hands of the government official as he accepts
his medal. Two weeks later he dons a disguise and uses a forged
passport to cross over to West Berlin via Checkpoint Charlie; he made
this trip with Swiss passport, as this border crossing was restricted
to Americans and non-German citizens. There he meets up with his best
friend, Mattis, an engineer who also had managed to escape, although
in the attempt became separated from his wife in the sewers. Joined
by two other confederates, they hatch a plot to tunnel from the west
to the east to rescue friends and family. They rent an abandoned
factory just across from the wall, and begin digging. The tunnel is
seven meters below ground, and zig-zags under the wall and into
abandoned apartments on the other side.

The task appears monumental and daunting. How can four individuals
hope to accomplish this act? Even joined by a young woman who hopes
to free her boyfriend they face impossible odds. The East German
government employs a massive state spy agency which actively ferrets
out defectors and collaborators. Using a vast network of informers
and government resources, they hunt down and destroy attempts to
escape. This government agency, known as the Stasi, built up a vast
network of citizen informers, people who spied on their own
neighbors. Given almost no choice in some circumstances, as with two
people in The Tunnel, the risks of discovery were huge. Later on,
many famous East Germans were discovered to have worked for the
Stasi, which in some circumstances resulted in favors and better
living, as in the case of the ice-skater Katarina Witt. In The
Tunnel, both informers seem forced into their actions, and both
redeem themselves, though at great personal cost.

Death remained a constant risk. There is a famous photograph,
available to those who enter "Berlin Wall" in Wikipedia, of young
Peter Fechter, only 18 years old, who was shot at the base of the
wall and bled to death while those across the wall in the West
watched in horror, unable to help. Anyone who tried to reach over and
help this person would also have been shot. The movie captures than
scene and makes it personal, and no less powerful. As late as 1989,
shortly before the wall came down, the last person to be killed while
trying to cross fell under a hail of bullets. The guards responsible
for his murder received awards for their efforts, and even after
reunification received minimal sentences.

The movie runs around two hours and 43 minutes. To anyone who
experienced the fall of the Berlin Wall, The Tunnel is a powerful
movie, from the opening scene to the last act. I cannot recommend it
enough.

A few minor changes

I've never been happy with the look and feel limitations of this site, but rarely do I have much time to attempt any changes. While I fiddle around with a few things this site may resemble the fate of the terminator T-1000 from second Terminator movie. I may even change the title as I have found this to be somewhat limiting of late.

History Now

Eighty-five issues.

Twenty-six years - December 1982 through April 2008 and counting...

4 Megabytes.

A couple of weeks ago I placed my trusty scanner back into its drawer, after completing phase one of a project that has taken countless hours over the past two months, namely scanning in as text every single copy of the past issues of Prometheus, the newsletter of the Libertarian Futurist Society.

In the end, probably no one cares but myself. Still, since finishing the work of scanning every issue, I have slowly been cleaning up the OCR text, and taking many a walk down memory lane. In other words, little time for web surfing or blogging.

I have no idea when I'll finish this project, but one day I'll end up with a fully searchable repository of all the past issue of Prometheus, at least via spotlight on my Mac.

Old Heinlein = New Heinlein

The latest unearthing of Heinlein material heads to the printer over at Subterranean Press. I'm not being cynical, really, as this looks like an interesting collection.

Subterranean Press does a great job producing quality books at decent prices, and I'm delighted to see that one of the authors they are carrying is Jack Vance. Now, if only they had printed the new Michael Shea collection, and made the price less staggering than the one produced by Millipede Press...

Spring 2008 Prometheus issue nearly wrapped up

It's been quiet here lately, as I've been trying to finish the latest print issue of Prometheus, the newsletter of the Libertarian Futurist Society. The quarterly publication schedule for the newsletter aims to have it in readers' hands around the middle of January, April, July, and October. Looks like I should nearly be able to meet this goal with the current issue.

It's been far, far too long

Finally, a new James P. Blaylock novel! The agony is that I will have to wait until December 2008, but Blaylock has been a personal favorite writer of mine since 1988, when I read The Disappearing Dwarf and The Elfin Ship, two of his earliest novels. To think it's been nine years since his last novel was published is just unreal.

The Last Enemy

SF blogsite io9 has an interesting post about two forthcoming projects, including a TV miniseries called The Last Enemy coming to the US. The second project stars Hugh Jackman, and I expect now we'll soon see a slew of films about the new crackdown on civil liberties.

Free book online

Read Prometheus Award finalist Tobias S. Buckell's novel Crystal Rain over at TOR Books. Free only for a limited time. This is not the Prometheus Award finalist novel (that would be Ragamuffin), but might give readers a taste of Buckell's fiction.

Backhanded compliment

Well, I'm not even sure the second word in the title comes close to accuracy. Locus Online posted the notice about the Prometheus Award finalists today. In the sentence about the Classic Novel category they editorialize with the following snarky comment - "finalists for classic fiction (which can be and are nominated year after year until they win)." Personally I have grumbled about some of the repetitiveness about the nominees, but I have rarely seen Locus Online editorialize about any other science fiction award, so this behavior is questionable at best, and simply bad form. Nor is it entirely accurate. The same nominees do not show up year after year (go check the past list of nominees at www.lfs.com), though as of late this seems to have been the case. Some years ago I compiled a list of the most nominated books in the Classic category (or as it originally was called, the Hall of Fame). Several books dominated this list, while others appeared regularly but sporadically. But it just the fact such a comment was made that bothers me, not so much having to pull the facts to dispute it. I gave up pushing a couple of Jack Vance novels that I thought deserved the award, as he never got enough votes to make the second round, and I fear too few people read Vance, and his older books now are rarely reprinted and thus inaccessible.

2008 Prometheus Award Finalists

The press release went out today, and news should be posted at LFS.com fairly soon. I have not yet read any of the finalists (I am not part of the selection committee), but I'll need to read them all soon before the voting deadline in July. I'm a little disappointed that two of the books I nominated did not make the final cut, but so it goes. From the release:
* Ragamuffin, by Tobias S. Buckell (TOR Books), set in the same world as Crystal Rain, focuses on a struggle for power that leads to total war for humanity’s right to live free from alien rulers.
* The Execution Channel, by Ken MacLeod (TOR), imagines a post-9/11 era of terrorism, paranoia, espionage in an environment of media spin, disinformation and a rogue media outlet that broadcasts murders and executions.
* Fleet of Worlds, by Larry Niven and Edward M. Lerner (TOR), is a prequel to Niven’s classic Ringworld that dramatizes the deception and dominations of alien Puppeteers over enslaved descendants of a human colony ship.
* The Gladiator, by Harry Turtledove (TOR) , a Crosstime Traffic story about a future where the Soviet Union won the Cold War but curious teenagers rediscover capitalism.
* Ha’penny, by Jo Walton (TOR), an alternate-history sequel to Farthing, portrays a convincing surrender of freedom for illusory safety in a 1940s-fascist Great Britain.
This is the ninth nomination for MacLeod, who has won three times (The Star Fraction, The Stone Canal, and Learning the World); the third nomination (all as collaborations) for Niven, who won in 1992 for Fallen Angels (with Michael Flynn and Jerry Pournelle).
Turtledove has been nominated once before; this is the first nomination for Buckell and Walton. Special congratulations to TOR Books, for its grand slam of all five finalist slots for the second time in this category’s three-decade history.
The Best Novel finalist-judging committee read more than 15 novels this past year as awards possibilities, including nine official nominees. Here are the other nominees: The Guardener’s Tale, by Bruce Boston (Sam's Dot Publishing); Echoes of an Alien Sky, by James Hogan (Baen Books); Gradisil, by Adam Roberts (Prometheus Books’ Pyr); and Off Armageddon Reef, by David Webber (TOR).

More kid lib lit

The new proprietors at Laissez Faire Books continue highlighting great fiction for kids in their last two posts. Here is an interesting take by Dr. Seuss.

Public schools defined

"A primary purpose of the educational system is to train school children in good citizenship, patriotism and loyalty to the state and the nation as a means of protecting the public welfare" says the judge who wrote an opinion on Californians' lack of any right to homeschool their children. Chilling.

Laissez Faire Books

When news circulated a few months ago that Laissez Faire Books was closing its doors, I was frankly shocked but not too surprised. Thirty or twenty years ago, or even ten years ago, the catalog model was quite viable for a niche market. Searching for libertarian books back then almost always meant picking up the LFB catalog. Then came the internet, and Amazon.com, the equivalent of Wal-Mart for something like LFB. However, there's still life left in the business, and after dropping the www.lfb.com domain, Laissez Faire Books now marches onward under the auspices of the International Society for Individual Liberty, and with a new domain and blog. Recently they posted a long essay on fiction for kids, starting with the Shadow Children series by Margaret Peterson Haddix. For now I have not been able to locate an online catalog, but they are posting reviews and mentions of all their title in stock.

Robert Shea story available online

Robert Shea was the co-author of the Illuminatus! trilogy (with Robert Anton Wilson), plus a great solo author who wrote many a historical novel. Now, one of his older short stories is available free online, originally published in 1957. In related new, his son Mike Shea, is trying to sustain and build up interest in Robert Shea's fiction. He manages a web site about his father, and recently posted news about Shike, a fantastic novel about Japan from a few years back. This book now is available in a free online edition. Mike Shea also links to a fan-made comic book adaptation of this story.

Harry's War

Wendy McElroy has some good news about a libertarian themed movie with newly rediscovered DVDs at a warehouse, now available at Laissez Faire Books.

The Terror

Around one year ago I bought the just-released new novel by Dan Simmons, a nearly 800 page imagined account of the real-life disastrous John Franklin expedition to sail the Northwest Passage in 1845. I've long been a fan of Simmons' books, and own a copy of almost every one of his books. Yet The Terror sat on a shelf for over a year before I pulled it out and started reading. The books sits at eye level as I leave my study, so I see it nearly every night. Yet for many months I have been daunted both by its size and subject matter. I've read Simmons' posting about the book on his website, and even many of the non-spoiler reviews. I was intrigued by the tale of polar exploration, but being aware of the inevitable ending, and of the fantastical nature that appears now and then, I felt reluctant to invest so much time in such a massive book. Yet now, nearly 300 pages into the novel (in just over one day of reading), I feel foolish for having held off so long reading the book. In my opinion this is probably the best Simmons novel since Hyperion, and despite the immense detail and sometimes long drawn out episodes, I find it impossible to desist from reading. It's hard to believe this expedition took place over 150 years ago. How quickly the world has shrunk.

From his original fantasy novel set in India (Song of Kali) to his hard sf novels, then horror, then hard-boiled fiction (yes, I'm bitter that he stopped writing that series after three books...), to The Terror, to his current work on a novel about Dickens, the art of Dan Simmons has come a long way. The coldest weather I've experienced was -13 Fahrenheit, which pales in comparison to what Franklin's men experienced. Let alone the dangers of strange and fantastical creatures hunting men on the ice, just trying to survive winter north of mainland Canada is terror enough for me.

New L. Neil Smith story online

After almost two years as a serialized publication, L. Neil Smith and Scott Bieser's Roswell, Texas saga recently wrapped up at Big Head Press. Almost without a break, a brand new Smith story debuts online, this time drawn by Sherard Jackson. TimePeeper, a futuristic juvenile tale shows great promise in the first dozen and half pages currently online, though for some reason when I clicked on the story link for the first time it took me to the last page, not the first page. Another difference is that this story is black and white, whereas Roswell, Texas appeared in full color. Not sure if that will affect the rate new pages are added, but Smith fans get to enjoy another story, although once again they will need to read at the publisher's pace, instead of being able to have the entire story available at once.

A timid libertarian

One of the stories I bookmarked some weeks ago I read in the print edition of Time. The headline virtually sneers: "Elitist, Moi?" The face that gazes back you in the photo is one a rumbled but fashion-conscious European. The story itself is far more interesting, as it profiles Tom Stoppard, who sees himself as a "timid libertarian." I first encountered his work in college, when I read his play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, and watched film and live play versions. Stoppard's also written screenplays, most notably Terry Gilliam's dystopian movie, Brazil. This libertarian leaning might explain some of the content and themes of his plays, such as "The Coast of Utopia, his nearly nine-hour trilogy about Russia's radical political thinkers of the 19th century." Being located far from New York (though ten minutes walking distance from San Antonio's own Broadway Ave), I have slim chance of attending any of his plays, but I'm going to have to try to located published versions of the same.

MacLeod interview

Here's another recent interview with Ken MacLeod, conducted a couple of weeks ago. In this one MacLeod discusses politics and sf in great detail. I'm behind on my reading of current books, and have not yet read The Execution Channel, but I find myself agreeing with his sentiments about the war on terror.

Friedman on his favorite poet

A slightly different version of David D. Friedman's paean to his favorite poet will appear in the next print issue of Prometheus, which currently nearing completion. Here is the original entry at Friedman's blog.

I've been collecting links of interest over the past month or so, but my computer bought the farm last month. Or rather, the hard drive itself died. The rest of the now four-year-old computer is fine. I managed to get the computer to Apple one day before my extended Apple Care ceased, and so they took care of it, replacing the entire drive. I had a back-up plan, but it seems to have been so fragmented that it took me a few weeks to re-assemble everything, and I think an item here or there vanished into the ether. I think a better and more cohesive plan is required for the future...

"Lipidleggin'" podcast

An audio version of F. Paul Wilson's very libertarian short story, which was released last year as short film on a DVD by someone unrelated this project.

'Nother interview

Here's a interview at IO9 with last year's Prometheus Award-winner, Charles Stross.

This new SF blog site rocks.

Ken MacLeod interview

Over at the new SF blog IO9, an interview with multiple Prometheus Award winning writer, Ken MacLeod. Dare I say he might be the front runner again this year with The Execution Channel? What libertarian can't help cheering at a quote like this? ("Whoops, my own 'litmus test'..." he says with a sardonic smile)

in my own case, the political philosophers whose ideas most directly give rise to SF are the libertarians. Robert Nozick's Anarchy, State and Utopia more or less compels you to think science-fictionally: how would this work? (Or not work, as the case may be.) You start imagining a crazy quilt of societies, and for me it was not far from there to something like Norlonto in The Star Fraction. Then there are the ecologists, but I can only imagine dystopias about them ...

New book on the future

Via Ken MacLeod's blog, word that David D. Friedman is writing a book on the future.

Terry Goodkind interview

I must confess I have not been able to make it through any of Goodkind's massive fantasy tomes. When the first book I received was volume seven or eight in an on-going series, it's tough to get into the plot. However, Goodkind has been nominated several times in the past for the Prometheus Award, and his books are deeply influenced by Objectivist ideas. Fans of Goodkind (or those interested in individualism in fiction) might be interested in a new and lengthy interview published online yesterday.

Firefly/Serenity news

1. No excuses. The new Special edition DVD of Serenity is on sale at Amazon for the sweet price of $8.99

2. Dark Horse Comics announces a new set of Serenity comic books.

3. Firefly/Serenity themed lunchboxes (again, from Dark Horse at same link as above).

Poetic justice

This is too, too funny.

The Edge of Reason

It's going to be a long wait until May 2008, when Melinda Snodgrass's new novel is published. This looks like a killer book. Bigger cover at Snodgrass's web site.

Early jump on nominees

While the winner of this year's Prometheus Award is still touring Japan fresh from receiving his prize at the 2007 WorldCon, Pyr (an imprint of Prometheus Books - no connection) has posted a notice on their blog about the first public nominee of the 2008 Prometheus Award - Adam Roberts' Gradisil.

Charles Stross wins Prometheus Award

Direct from Yokohama, Stross's Glasshouse garners the 2007 Prometheus Award (a real gold coin). When I mulled over my vote a couple of months ago, this was the novel I placed first.

Dystopian books

The Guardian (UK) posts a list of it's top 10 dystopian novels. I have read eight of the ten, the only exceptions being the Meg Rosoff novel, of which I've never heard, and the James Clavell book. I've read several of his novels, but never heard of this story.

This is all the constitution we need

I wanted to link to the image from BBC to give proper credit, but couldn't figure out how. Here's comrade Hugo talking about changes to Venezuela's constitution.

Deep liberty

Over at Deep Genre, a long essay on libertarian sf by Lois Tilton. The essay is somewhat shallow, thinking that libertarian utopia can only be achieved by an army of Robinson Crusoes dropped on their own planets.

A single, naked libertarian dropped onto a virgin terrestrial planet with nothing more than a Swiss Army knife or stone hand axe would indeed enjoy the absolute liberty that he [it is usually he] can only dream of on today’s Earth. Happily unencumbered by bureaucrats or environmental regulations, he would be free to carve his way through forests, dig his way through mountains, plow his way across the plains, fish his way through the seas, and otherwise plunder his world to his heart’s content without let or hindrance.

Unfortunately, no works or authors are cited, so Tilton can make brazen statements without having to worry about any proof, or face any refutation. Consider her concept of freedom. Confusing it with the absence of cost, she can say something like this: "On the mythical frontier, everything is free, and here we can see the double meaning of the term. In this idealized setting, the air is free, and the water; meat is free for the hunting, wood is free for the hewing, minerals free for the mining." I wonder if she has read Robert Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, or remembers Heinlein's TANSTAAFL?

But the main thrust of the essay is that libertarian sf writers and fans believe they only can achieve freedom in space, that they have abandoned Earth to the collectivists. Bosh and piddle, I would say. Libertarians are as passionate about freedom right here, right now, as they are in space. But many libertarian sf fans and many writers firmly believe that humans should get into space to because we can't put all our eggs in one fragile, blue basket.

I wish Tilton would provide us concrete examples to back up her thesis. Still, her essay has already generated some interesting comments.

New political label: techie/libertarian

I have not read the subject of this brief review, but the blog called The Stars my Destination speculates about the politics of Matthew Jarpe's novel, Radio Freefall. The verdict of the reviewer is that's somewhat libertarian, so it might be worth while for me to check out in the context of the Prometheus newsletter, as well the Prometheus Awards. Anyone who has read this rock 'n roll inspired book is welcome to post comments in the affirmative or negative.

Libertarian sf at LRC

An all too brief overview of recent movies and books in the sf genre that contain elements of liberty. No mention of Babylon 5, however.

The libertarian divide

Randy Barnett's recent Op-Ed in the Wall Street Journal appears as a modern pro-war libertarian manifesto. Quite a few libertarian commentators have responded to the effect that a pro-war libertarian is a contradiction in terms. Barnett's original thesis, that Ron Paul's anti-war stance vis a vis Iraq is not the only view in the libertarian movement, is probably true. I certainly don't agree with Barnett's theories on libertraianism and war. Also, not every libertarian supports Paul, but that doesn't meant they don't agree with his views on the war. Ron Paul has some libertarian qualities, but quite a few other bizarre and statist views (immigration, for example). This doesn't stop the minarchists from beating loudly on the Ron Paul drum. Lew Rockwell's web site and blog usually contain several Paul stories a day. And while Justin Raimondo makes some good points in this essay, I strong disagree with his concluding words, that "Ron Paul is the authentic voice of the libertarian movement." Paul, running as a Republican, is the authentic voice of the libertarian movement? Give me a break. Sure, Paul probably will be the last nail in the coffin of the Libertarian Party (a good thing, really), but by the end of 2007 he will be a non-candidate, and the libertarians hooked on politics will need to find a new fix.

Latest edition of Prometheus nears completion

Little posting of last due to work on the current issue, plus being knocked out of commission for over a week due to a bad cold. Right now I'm making final edits to a couple of stories. I'm starting to look ahead to the next issue, which is a temptation I need to resist until this one is in the mail.

I've stubbornly stuck to a 12-page format the past year, but find that I'm writing 60-80% of the more recent issues. So, after cutting the page count down from 16 to 12 for the same reason last year, I may now need to drop the issue down to 8 pages, until I can get more contributions. I might as well look into moving everything online otherwise. That's where all the action is these days anyway, and people writing about liberty and science fiction can get their bylines out faster via the internet, along with the options of commentary, linking, and a massive audience. Why should an organization with the word "futurist" in its name stick to a print newsletter? Anyway, the current issue currently contains these items:

Matthew Gaylor, RIP
Book Reviews:
The Guardener’s Tale, by Bruce Boston
The Mount, by Carol Emshwiller
Giant Lizards from Another Star, by Ken MacLeod
Brasyl, by Ian McDonald,
Glorifying Terrorism, edited by Farah Mendelsohn
Mappa Mundi, by Justina Robson
Empire, by Orson Scott Card
The Jack Vance Treasury, by Jack Vance
Off Armageddon Reef, by David Weber
Movie Reviews:
Sophie Schöll: The Final Days
Army of Shadows
Letters, plus news of the LFS Community on Live Journal

Zimbabwe: Death of a Nation

If this wasn't so sad, it would be almost funny, a perfect exercise in planned chaos. By waving the legislative pen to slash prices, the Mugabe government shows yet again reckless disregard for human life. Stop the government money press, boot out that thug in power, and bring about some genuine reforms. Otherwise this country will vanish into a whirlwind of destruction.

Glasshouse redux

In a comment thread below on Glasshouse, Sunni Maravillosa (whose blog and Salon I regularly read), talks about the criteria that "Prometheus finalists' content [be] firmly in the pro-freedom camp," and whether or not Glasshouse fits this recipe. I'd like to think that it does fall into this camp, as the protagonist holds very individualist view about life and self-defense. Also, the villains in the books are mind-controllers who spread their views via worms and viruses that re-write how people think, and they eradicate those who they believe are not susceptible to such a virus (which is basically identity theft on a large scale). In the experiment that is the glasshouse itself, you can also see how the protagonist, Robin, reacts to the conformism of the people in the village as well the those running the experiment. There's a mini-revolution within the glasshouse experiment, and in Robin's flashback as well as the events prior to him entering the experiment we see a post-human society where freedom to remold your self exists almost totally. That this society at one time almost was wiped out points to conflicts being eternal. Government is hardly present in the post-human society, and no one forces you to back your self up should you chose this.

As far as The Prisoner, I have only seen it on VHS tapes from a few years ago, and remember the fake village where Patrick McGoohan's character wakes up. It was a bizarre, self-contained place of happiness and conformity, much like in Glasshouse. Everyone talks about "the village," and in Glasshouse there's a sign that says "Welcome to the village," which to me is a very direct allusion. The taxis in Glasshouse also seem to mirror those in The Prisoner. I probably am reading too much into this allusion.

"I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, or numbered. My life is my own."

Out Stealing Horses

A Norwegian writer wins one of the richest literary prizes available, for the translation of his 2003 novel. I happen to have the Norwegian version right next to me. Admittedly it was third in line of the Norwegian books on my list to read (my small library is augmented once or twice a year), but it sounds enticing enough to bump it up to next in line.

Glasshouse review

Sunni Maravillosa posts her review of Charles Stross' novel Glasshouse. I did note some similarities between Stross novel and John C. Wright's The Golden Age while reading the former, as she also notes, but then again these are now almost standard sf tropes. Glasshouse is also a sequel of sorts to Accelerando, which was based on several short stories and novellas, and many of these deal with the same themes. Despite its shortcomings, I do believe Glasshouse is the best of the five Prometheus Award finalists. I have now read all the nominees, and I believe the choice comes down between Glasshouse and Vernor Vinge's Rainbows End. I am still mulling my vote, but see no clear cut winner yet. As far as nominees for the 2008 Prometheus Award, I'm firmly behind Adam Roberts' Gradisil, which (as Bruce Sterling would say) rocks hard.

A Scanner Darkly

In my quest to present the entire run of Prometheus online in PDF format, I need to find a tool that allows merging of PDF single PDF files into one document. Today I found a link to a solution on Max OS X hints. This involves using Image Capture (which comes with every new Mac), plus loading a freeware app called Combine PDFs. Simple enough. I install the new app, and open Image Capture. Hmm, no scanner drivers on my Mac. I move onto Vuescan, an application I bought a few years ago to scan images. I proceed to scan three pages of an old issue as a test. Scanning these as B/W images involves adjusting the page on the flatbed scanner just so a few times. After a few minutes of clicking through each step and saving the files, I have three .jpg files to merge. Hmm, will those convert into a PDF? I drop the files, each around 500-600k, into Combine PDFs, and click on Merge. The process seems to work, but the resulting file is 4.2 Mb, quite massive considering it is only three pages. I must have done something wrong.

Back to the instructions from Mac OS X hints. They suggest installing SANE, and so off to that web page, locate the files, and download them. Install three elements (in proper order, if you please), and open Image Capture again. Browse for devices, and SANE appears. Cool. Follow the directions in the hint, but wait, the Scan button is grayed out. At this point take a deep breath and walk away. After a while to cool down, I will try Google for other options to reduce the size of the end product. I can't see anyone downloading 12-15 Mb files at this point.

This is a conference I'd almost like to attend. Well, probably more than almost.

Safari 3 and Blogger

Apple debuted Safari 3 beta today. The big news: it runs on Windows Vista and XP. I believe it's the second Apple application to run on Windows (after iTunes), and a bold move in trying to extend market share in the browser wars. Is it just a matter of time before the full-blown Leopard (or the cat after that) runs on any Intel computer, and not just an Apple controlled Intel machine? What then will happen to the more expensive hardware line Apple produces? How far will Apple have extended into the consumer market by that time (iPod, iPhone, Apple TV, er, scratch that last one)? Lots of questions, as the former computer company continues to slowly re-invent itself. In the meantime, I had bemoaned Safari 2's lack of compatibility with Blogger, and while it seems the Ctrl-keystrokes still don't work, at least the new version does display icons for the shortcuts. A small step forward, I suppose.

Update: I neglected to mention QuickTime, which has been around for Windows for probably a decade or so, and still going strong.

Bradbury: Fahrenheit 451 not about censorship

Now this is an interesting article in LA Weekly. Ray Bradbury revisionism from Bradbury himself.

Bradbury has decided to make news about the writing of his iconographic work and what he really meant. Fahrenheit 451 is not, he says firmly, a story about government censorship. Nor was it a response to Senator Joseph McCarthy, whose investigations had already instilled fear and stifled the creativity of thousands.

This, despite the fact that reviews, critiques and essays over the decades say that is precisely what it is all about. Even Bradbury’s authorized biographer, Sam Weller, in The Bradbury Chronicles, refers to Fahrenheit 451 as a book about censorship.

Bradbury, a man living in the creative and industrial center of reality TV and one-hour dramas, says it is, in fact, a story about how television destroys interest in reading literature.

Clone Wars trailer

Hmm, the trailer for the next installment in the Star Wars franchise hits the web. More toys buy now, we must.

The animation has a rough feel to it, especially for the humans. The droids and ships look great, but faces have to yet to make the seamless leap into realistic animation. I still prefer this over the previous Clone Wars animated episodes from a couple of years ago. Let's hope the story also improves.

Prometheus Experiment

Releasing a first draft into the wild is never a sane idea, but I'm playing around with publishing some older issues of Prometheus online as PDFs. I'm open to any and all suggestions about the pages, keeping in mind I'm still formatting much of the text.

The PDFs can be found here which also is my first attempt at Apple's (not always simple) iWeb software. I'm used to coding html in BBEdit, which is all source code virtually all the time, so again, not perfect. This is more of a proof of concept design.

The content index is identical to the one over at http://www.lfs.org that I compiled over the years. I sent over the index of contributors in 2005, but it has not yet been posted there. Obviously, I need to update both pages at some point.

The url probably will change at some point, and I'll probably move away from the constraints of iWeb towards something more flexible.

Glasshouse

The real reason I logged on was to mention Charles Stross's novel, Glasshouse, a Prometheus Award finalist. I finished the novel today, and am now 3/5 of the way through the finalists. Until reading this novel I did not see a strong candidate, but now I have one, and it probably will take a lot for the next two novels on the list to change my mind. Next up, John Scalzi's The Ghost Brigades. I've heard a lot of good stuff about Scalzi, but this is his first novel I've had the opportunity to read, so I'm looking forward to it. My only complaint about Glasshouse is that Stross seems to have spent a lot of time inside the head of his Merchant Princes series' main character, and she sort of jumped into another novel. The protagonist of Glasshouse is female for most of the novel, and acts and talks exactly like a Miriam Beckstein template. I feel like my head needs a cool plunge into The Jennifer Morgue next to shake off that feeling. I stopped reading The Clan Corporate 22 pages into that novel because I just could not take Miriam's voice any longer. Aside from that small (and probably isolated to my own views) issue, I think Glasshouse comes across as a superb science fiction novel, and contains hugely interesting political speculations and implications, and very much driven by libertarian (or classical liberal) ideas.

Moving to Firefox?

As a Mac user I know what it's like to be kicked around and forced to eat the table scraps in the internet wars. I have tried virtually every browser that runs on the Mac, but always fall back on Safari because a) it has all my bookmarks and b) it's the most elegant and visually pleasing browser to my eye. But Blogger no longer lets me spell-check on Safari, and now Preview stopped working. At the bottom of each posting window I see the shortcuts taunting me, as none of them work in Safari. I open the same Blogger posting page in Firefox, and everything works. I guess I should switch everything over to Firefox, though my new LiveJournal page works fine in Safari, and Firefox has just such a hideous interface. Ideally I should dump blogger altogether and figure out how to move the localhost version of my blog on Movable Type that I created as a lark in October 2005. It still works fine, and is loaded with far more features I like than either LJ or Blogger.

The LP is dead

As a non-voting voluntaryist, I haven't paid much attention to the Libertarian Party. For some reason it manages to limp along, sucking in libertarians and spitting out their burnt-out husks every few years. Still, the LP core usually has remained pro-liberty, though vapidly ineffectual. In 2006, a new group took power in a coup against principles, and gutted long-standing articles of freedom. In 2007, the LP officially died when Ron Paul declared for president as a Republican. His candidacy acted like a neutron star, pulling in libertarians left and right who saw Paul as their great new hope. Over at Reason's Hit and Run, Brian Doherty links to one of the current LP'ers bemoaning the former party of principle. I wonder when libertarians will realize that the LP now has no future, through the combination of this coup and Ron Paul. What I don't wonder about is why a Republican candidate enraptures so many libertarians. Politics seduces people, and Paul's candidacy is the most prominent 'libertarian' political candidate in many years, if not all time. I expect to see many libertarian sites cozying up to the new Republican dream (in fact, I think Lew Rockwell's site already is hard at work waving the pom-poms for Paul. I believe former LP presidential candidate Badnarik is working hard inside the Paul republican machine, which shows the pure expediency of politics.) Paul certainly shares many libertarian ideals, and is the only anti-war candidate on the right (but why do so many libertarians ally themselves with just the right?), but I do not believe liberty will be achieved through this political process, nor will the media connect the dots between liberty and Paul. This is a great delusion, and when Paul falls to Rudy McMittney, those libertarians who supported Paul will moan about the great anti-liberty conspiracy. But these are just my curmudgeonly thoughts on a Monday.

New Babylon 5 movie

Via Roderick Long's blog, news that a new, original B5 movie is mere weeks away from release. I've aleady added this to my wish-list at Amazon, along with a bunch of other things I plan to purchase soon.

Unrelated post

I've been checking Centipede Press's web page often, and today discovered the first mention of the new Michael Shea collection, along with the title. No price yet, but I'm sure I will need to start saving early. (This Shea is not related to the other Michael Shea in an earlier post below.) Shea is my favorite horror/dark fantasy writer for his powerful stories and baroque language.

Melinda Snodgrass blog

Sometimes I feel like I live under the proverbial rock. I just discovered Melinda Snodgrass's wonderful blog today via Victor Milan's own blog. She's a superb writer, known for her sf and fantasy books, her work in the Wild Card series, and also from Hollywood. The only Star Trek video that I own is an episode from The Next Generation, called "Measure of a Man," written by Snodgrass for the show in 1989. One thing missing from her website is a bibliography, but perhaps I just didn't see it out there. I would like to know more about those EDGE books she occasionally refers to...

Robert Shea novel freely available

A few nights ago I stumbled upon a PBS show, an episode in a vast series on the Inquisition. This episode focused on the Cathars, and the total and brutal suppression of this 'heresy' in the early fourteenth century by the Catholic church. Having read about this moment in history many years ago, I remained on the channel, and then one word fired off a strong association. The word "light" was mentioned as part of the Cathar belief system, and I remembered Robert Shea's novel All Things Are Lights. Immediately after the show I looked up Shea on Wikipedia, and sure enough that book did deal with the Cathars and Inquisition. (It's bad when you know it's faster to look up the book on the internet rather than search through your own shelves for your copy.) Lo and behold there's a link to an official Robert Shea web page.

Shea, which died in 1994, wrote my favorite historical novel, Shike. The external page on Shea is managed by his son, Michael, who's written fiction himself. If you haven't read Shea's hard to find historical fiction, the text for All Things Are Lights has been made available online at that web site, as well as an outline to the planned sequel to Shaman.

Finally!

The Spring issue of Prometheus is out the door, one month behind schedule, and on the last day before the monopoly raises postage rates. Of course, all the press stories all focus on how the poor Post Office is force to raise rates to compete. Apparently every other business model out there follows the same process, and all succeed in our landy of milk and honey. Nevermind.

This issue was on many levels frustrating, but in the end hopefully rewarding. When I started planning the issue some months ago, I sat staring at a dozen blank pages. I outlined what would be required to fill those pages, and started reading. I hoped that I would receive submissions from other individuals, plus I went out and sought a reprint. In the end, I wrote ten reviews and a couple of news items, which is far more than I wanted, but virtually in line with what I had planned. And all the work on Prometheus takes place late at night during a brief hour or so window in my day. Tough noogies, right?

Huge thanks go out to the other individuals who contributed to the issue, which let me push out at least four of my reviews to the Summer issue. I already have a few pages laid out for that issue, with the tables of contents planned and big goals in sight. As always, if you read this and wuld like to write reviews or articles for Prometheus, feel free to contact me -- editor@lfs.org. The newsletter appears quarterly, but I always wish it were less of a struggle to fill all the pages. I constantly marvel at The New York Review of Science Fiction which has been around ten few years than Prometheus, yet appears monthly with 24 pages per issue, and has produced over twice the number of issues than the LFs newsletter in that time.

EW's 25 best sf movies/TV shows

Lists always create controversy, and this one from Entertainment Weekly is no exception. The new Battlestar Gallactica at number 2? WTF? No Star Wars except for the decent (yet Samurai Jack inspired Clone Wars), not even The Empire Strikes Back? and where is Babylon 5 or Alien Nation? Most of the shows listed are fairly recent, except for weird selection of V: The Miniseries. Whatever happened to Logan's Run or Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. Or even The Incredible Hulk. And Lost? Another popular yet faddish choice. In a few years that show will have drifted off into obscurity, just like the show it mirrors, Twin Peaks: nice first season, then fell over the cliff and impaled itself on its own incoherence. I do agree with the number one choice, and still have vivid memories of the first time I saw The Matrix. Too bad the producers of that movie didn't stop there.

Victor Milan blog

Prometheus Award-winning writer Victor Milan has a new blog.

F. Paul Wilson interview

Brief interview over at Sci-Fi.com with F. Paul Wilson, discussing his novel Harbingers and a forthcoming YA series about a teenage Repairman Jack. Harry Potter sure opened up some new markets, and we're all better off as a result, if that means we get more FPW stories.

Poul Anderson

Nice story over at Yahoo (a reprint from 2001, the year Anderson died) about sf writer and multiple Prometheus Award winner Poul Anderson. One very typical quote from Anderson in this story:
"If I preach at all, it's probably in the direction of individual liberty, which is a theme that looms large in my work."
I did not know that Anderson didn't allow phone calls until after 6:30pm. One time in 1995, I actually called him up, having been given his number by another writer who knew him personally. Anderson that year had won both Prometheus Awards, and I was looking for some comment from him for the newsletter and award ceremony. I can't remember the gist of the conversation, or what time I called, but he of course had no clue who I was at the time, though he was quite cordial. I regret never having met him in person.

The Guardener's Tale

I'm hoping to review Bruce Boston's new novel, The Guardeners Tale for the Summer issue of Prometheus. One blurb opens like this "Brave New World. Fahrenheit 451. THX 1138. A Scanner Darkly. Bruce Boston's new novel, The Guardener's Tale, assumes its rightful place in this noble lineage of anti-authoritarian fables." Boston in an interview a few years ago said, " I am not a libertarian or an anarchist, but I do see government as it has existed as a necessary evil." He also views himself as somewhat left of center, but anti-authoritarian views come in many packages, and cares little for left or right. Read more about Boston at his website.

Regular activity to resume shortly

Now that I've completed the Spring issue of Prometheus, after a couple of delays caused by what my optician called a "corneal ulcer" in my right eye that made any bright light unbearable and migrane inducing, I have a little time for my irregular blogging. I'm getting ready to read through all the finalists for this year's Prometheus Awards. I read F. Paul Wilson's Harbingers when it appeared as the limited edition from Gauntlet Press, and am awaiting his latest Repairman Jack novel due out from that publisher next month. While I'm an FPW fan and like the RJ story and books, I don't see any libertarianism in Harbingers. I enjoyed Vernor Vinge's Rainbows End but not nearly as much as his two previous sf novels. Certain ideas and trends raised by Vinge are sobering, and I see his "You Gotta Believe Me" meme cropping up in another book, Justina Robson's excellent Mappa Mundi (not one of the finalists, but the US edition appeared in 2006, while the original UK edition was ahead of Vinge, in 2001). So maybe it's not Vinge's meme after all...

I have not yet read the other three books, but Charles Stross' Glasshouse is next on the list. I like Stross' work, and have read all his other novels published to date save the latest Clan Corporate novel. I haven't read anything from Orson Scott Card in many years, and nothing by John Scalzi, so those books will be interesting.

Sometimes I'm right there on the edge of new sf, but sometimes I'm way behind the times, staring over the fence at non-sf books. Currently I'm trying to finish Mark Shorer's biography, Sinclair Lewis: An American Life. I started the book last November, but set it aside to read a dozen sf books and review most of them. I'm also in the middle of The Complete Short Stories of Ambrose Bierce, Varlam Shamlov's Kolyma Tales (one of the many frightening results of Stalin's gulags), Nora May French's Poems, and Brian Doherty's Radicals for Capitalism (which, for some reason, I feel as if I've already read, since I followed almost the same path 20 years ago when reading as much as I could about the history of libertarianism). I am compiling a list of fiction and non-fiction written under totalitarianism, especially the Soviet Union, possibly towards a long essay on the subject. Lest they are forgotten, writers are imprisoned and exiled for their work even now, in such countries as Vietnam, China, Cuba, Turkey and elsewhere.

Best book I've read so far this year: Adam Roberts' Gradisil. I have to inquire about the current Prometheus Award rules, since the UK edition appeared in 2006, but if the 2007 US edition is eligible, I'd say at this point that Roberts' novel is a shoo-in for the 2008 Prometheus Award. No freakin' contest.

Glorifying Terrorism

Today I received a review copy of this British sf anthology, with stories from such writers as Ken Macleod, Charles Stross, Ian Watson, Adam Roberts, and many more. Unfortunately, due to deadlines, I won't be able to run the review in Prometheus until the summer issue of that newsletter, but with the spring issue nearing completion, there just isn't enough space and time to get it into this issue. Looks very interesting through, and sure to cause controversy.

Smith's Forge of the Elders

L. Neil Smith has a long essay about the travails his novel Forge of the Elders went through in order to get published in full. Ther book is still in print, and can be ordered through online retailers or your local bookstore, and Smith hints at free goodies ahead when the current stock sells out. And if you haven't check out his work in progress at Big Head Press, I highly recommend the time and effort.

Blogging light - Prometheus heavy

This month is crunch time for getting out the next issue of the print newsletter of the LFS - Prometheus. I've been busy reading several long novels and trying to wrie reviews, and I'm happy to say I have several contributions from other individuals already. If you are interested in submitting material for this libertarian sf newsletter, please contact me - editor@lfs.org. Blogging for the next three weeks probably will be very light while I wrap up the issue. Tentative (link free)table of contents includes the following:

Contents:
* Prometheus Award Finalists - a listing of the finalists for the
2007 Prometheus Awards for best novel and classic work of fiction.

In Memoriam
Jesse Walker on Robert Anton Wilson (reprinted from Reason Online)
Brad Linaweaver on Chuck Hammill (possible)

Book reviews
Spider Robinson & Robert A. Heinlein, Variable Star
Elizabeth Moon, Command Decision
John Varley, Red Lightning
Charles Stross, Glasshouse
Orson Scott Card, Empire
Sherri Tepper, Six Moon Dance
Carol Emshwiller, The Mount
Ken MacLeod, Giant Lizards from Another Star
Jack Vance, The Jack Vance Treasury
Jack Vance, Emphyrio
Justina Robson, Mappa Mundi
Mike Resnick, Starship: Pirate
Adam Roberts, Gradisil
T.H. White, The Book of Merlyn

Film reviews
Sophie Scholl (possible)
F.Paul Wilson's Others (possible)

Other
Brief essay on Clark Ashton Smith's individualism

Roswell, Texas

Whoa! The Lamviin land in Texas.

Liberation kid lit

I kept looking for this article from the front page of reason Magazine for many months, but to no avail. I knew I should have tried Google instead. The essay originally appeared in the print edition a little over a year ago, and covers two writers who have written interesting books dealing with liberty, aimed at a younger audience. Lois Lowry and Margaret Peterson Haddix have written two distinct series of books that mainstream readers might not have seen. Young Adult literature is all the rage these days. After the reign of Harry Potter comes to an end this summer, other writers will try to step in and fill the void. In the meantime, here are some great books already in place, waiting to be read.

NIN concept album?

I am not very familiar with NIN beyond a couple of songs from more than a decade ago, but I found an interesting link to a site linking to some viral marketing for a possible future album, including a "resistance" site.

What happened to the Prometheus Awards?

James Nicoll asks this almost rhetorical question in a forum, with a bevy of replies, some from people familiar with the Prometheus Awards, some from individuals hostile to libertarian ideas. Nicoll, no friend of libertarians, closes with this question:

I understand why SF is increasingly not an American genre but Libertarian SF seems ideally suited to the US. Why, then, is the Prometheus Award going to people who aren't libertarians (left or right) and not American?

The debate makes interesting reading. There are many points I could try to rebut, such as the statement that the Prometheus Award is marginal (why, then, do winners of this award seek to state "Winner of the Prometheus Award" on their novels, or other writers when writing about winners often mention how many Prometheus Awards that writer has won? Among other points, of course.)

John C. Wright interviewed

Over at Sci Fi Weekly, Nick Gevers has a long interview with John C. Wright, author of (among others) The Golden Age trilogy, two Everness books (so far), and the recently completed Orphans of Chaos trilogy.

Political history of SF

Someone reprinted Eric S. Raymond's essay in their LiveJournal, spurring a lengthy debate. I reprinted this essay in Prometheus a few issues ago, and while I don't agree with all the points, it's a very interesting essay.

Free speech in America sighs another death-rattle

How long before this much maligned and restricted right dies completely? The most recent example is grim: convicted and arrested for a joke about Scientology? Give me a freakin' break.

Libertarian writer?

Here's an interview with novelist Scott Nicholson, who apparently describes himself as a libertarian writer. However, in the response to this question, he demurrs, stating:

"Well, libertarianism just plain won’t work in the human world. It would only work if we each lived alone, in a vacuum, where our actions didn’t affect other people. But we live in communities that are bubbles inside larger communities. And I also diverge from the traditional party line: for example, while I favor the legalization of most drugs, I don’t favor unlimited access to guns. The government’s role could be much smaller in our lives, but it also can do good things. Libertarians are mostly out on the extreme fringes of both major U.S. political parties, and if you really press them on their beliefs, a mass of contradictions emerges. So I don’t articulate that so much in my fiction."

And, in the other corner, we have Claire Wolfe, who does seeks some solitude in her life, stating something quite the opposite in a blog entry:

"So many things can bind us to a place. Family. Work. Inertia. Fear. History. Money is a big factor, considering leaving the country. But the ties can be so intricate, so multi-layered, so difficult to convey to anyone who isn't walking that mile in one's own moccasins. Being part of a community like this one -- where people help each other so freely and with such enthusiasm -- is a little miracle (especially for people like me who grew up rootless and unattached to the places we lived and the people who lived there). So I speculate often about getting out of this going-to-hell country. Then I think I'd have to be mad to leave a place like this, a place that embodies the essence of real, old-fashioned community, a place that is what America was at its best and ought to be again."

Judge for yourself. Libertarianism: an atomistic impossibility, or the true spirit of a voluntary community?

When fictioneers bite politicians

The vision of real politicians squirming from seeing themselves potryed in a bad light warms my heart. The fact that this is happening in Great Britain and that it's Labor politicos makes me raise an eyebrow or two in surprise. Then you read further and you see the real cause -

"I didn't mind a little betrayal of socialist ideals," says Beaton, "but the war was it."

Still a healthy dose of disrepect of public figures is always a good thing.

Note: I am far from pro-war, but I wonder if the motives had been non-socialist whether this would have reached the airwaves.

Transhumanism

Interesting interview with a leading transhumanist, Nick Bostrom. According to conservative historian Francis Fukuyama, transhumanism is "the greatest threat to the future of humanity" so you know it has to be interesting and probably a good idea. It's definitely a hot topic in modern sf, viz the novels and short stories of Charles Stross, Vernor Vinge, Chris Moriarty, and countless others.

Libertarian pseudo-novels?

A not easily identifiable person writes a LiveJournal essay on what he/she calls two libertarian pseudo-novels - Henry Hazlitt's Time Will Run Back and J. Neil Schulman's The Rainbow Cadenza. I think the writer is spot on in terms of the Hazlitt book, which is one of the dullest works of 'fiction' that I've ever read, but I can't remmber Schulman's book being as much a 'p o r n' novel as alluded to in the review. Sure, there's sex in the book (some of it not very pleasant), and it's been almost two decades since I read the book, but I thought it was a decent work of fiction then. I'll have to re-read the novel to refresh my memory, but I came away thinking more about the musical sections than the erotica or sex scenes.

Wolfe recommends

Claire Wolfe recommends a book that I think I will need to hunt down - The Secret of Santa Vittoria.

Novel dealing with war on terror

This seems like a very interesting book.

The time is a very near future, whose features are only slightly stepped up from today's. The war is still on, and even more misdirected; domestic anti-terror measures have increased to the point where roadblocks and searches are universal and national identification cards are mandated. (In a nicely absurdist sequence, armed agents so thoroughly ransack a Canadian of Middle Eastern descent on his way into a Mariners game that they deposit a whiff of ammunition on his clothing. When he leaves the stadium in the middle of a disappointing afternoon, he is searched again and the residue prompts the evacuation of 30,000 spectators. One dies of a heart attack.)

One character is "August Vanags, the Latvian-born author of a bestselling Holocaust memoir, is a vociferous libertarian whose charm and wit suggest a concealed degeneracy," and the other personalities in the book range all over the spectrum.