Shirley Jackson Award for suspense, horror, and the dark fantastic

By way of Ellen Datlow's blog comes news of the Shirley Jackson Award for "outstanding achievementin the literature of psychological suspense, horror, and the dark fantastic." There's not a lot of info up on the award website yet, but evidently the award "will be voted upon by a jury of professional writers, editors, critics, and academics, with input from a Board of Advisors. The awards will be given for the best work published in the preceding calendar year in the following categories: Novel, Novella, Novelette, Short Story, Single-Author Collection, and Edited Anthology." Information on deadlines and how to submit works will be forthcoming.

Clarkesworld earns SFWA seal of approval

Nick Mamatas has the details on Clarkesworld becoming a qualifying market for the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. As usual, Nick provides a hilarious account of the bureaucratic SFWA process for deciding that Clarkesworld was worthy of their blessing. Now if only the SFWA would fix one of their biggest mistakes of recent years--declaring that Interzone, one of the best science fiction and fantasy magazines in the world, doesn't meet their definition of a professional market.

Dozois releases selections for Year's Best Science Fiction

Gardner Dozois has released his selections for the next Year's Best Science Fiction, which will hit book stores in June or July. The discussion link above also contains some fascinating insight into his thoughts on science fiction and how he compiles the annual anthology. For example, Dozois states:

I have stuck to my guns with this series and am reprinting only stuff that I consider to be SF (Ted Chiang's "The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate" is about as far out as I go, and even that has a slight SF rationale, if you squint at it), but I wonder if it isn't eventually going to hurt me that I don't use fantasy as well, as Jonathan Strahan is doing; I get the increasing impression, particularly on the internet (and looking over the Nebula results) that nobody much cares about this distinction anymore, except me.

I also care deeply about this distinction and it is Dozois's focus on science fiction which keeps me purchasing his anthology year after year. Like Dozois, I dislike it when science fiction anthologies are filled with slipstream, fantasy and soft horror. Not that there's anything wrong with these other genres, which I also love and occasionally write in myself. But it sometimes feels as if both writers and the reading public have forgotten how the best science fiction stories easily rank among the most liberating types of fiction out there.

In the discussion Dozois also mentions new writers who popped up on his radar this year. These include Una McCormack, Jennifer Pellard, C.W. Johnson, Sarah K. Castle, Andrea Kail,  Aliette de Boddard, and Beth Bernobich, along with several writers who've been publishing for only a couple or years like Justin Stanchfield, Jason Stoddard, Vandana Singh, Ted Kosmatka, and Lavie Tidhar.

"Dipping Their Toes..." essay now online

My essay "Dipping Their Toes in the Genre Pool: The U.S. Literary Establishment's Need-Hate Relationship with Speculative Fiction" was published in the New York Review of Science Fiction about six months ago and stirred up a minor hornet's nest (for a summary of this angry buzzing, see my original post on the matter).

For those who missed the essay, it has now been reprinted online in Monsters and Critics. I've updated the essay slightly to clarify my earlier points about the U.S. literary establishment. I also added in information about Michael Chabon's essay on Cormac McCarthy's The Road. Chabon's essay had just been published when my own essay was accepted by the NYRSF, so obviously I didn't mention it. But it would be silly not to include such a mention in this reprinting. For those who don't want to wade through the whole essay for one new section, in summary I think Chabon's essay is an excellent examination of McCarthy's book. I also feel it doesn't change my basic argument that the U.S. literary establish has a double standard when it comes to speculative fiction.

My picks from the Nebula Award preliminary ballot

The Nebula Award preliminary ballot has been released. The novels and stories I'd select from the ballot would be:

  • Novels: Ragamuffin by Tobias Buckell, The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon, and Blindsight by Peter Watts
  • Novellas:"Fountain of Age" by Nancy Kress and "Memorare" by Gene Wolfe
  • Novelettes: "The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate" by Ted Chiang and "Alastair Baffle's Emporium of Wonders" by Mike Resnick.
  • Short Stories: "Always" by Karen Joy Fowler and "Titanium Mike Saves the Day" by David D. Levine.
  • Scripts: Children of Men by Alfonso Cuaron, Timothy J. Sexton, David Arata, Mark Fergus, and Hawk Ostby; and Pan's Labyrinth by Guillermo del Toro

Story of the week: Joe Haldeman's Marsbound

Since I love to live life on the edge, I'm selecting a novel I haven't even finished as my story of the week: Joe Haldeman's Marsbound. The novel is being serialized in three parts in Analog Science Fiction and Fact, with the first installment in the combined Jan./Feb. 2008 issue and the second in the brand-new March issue.

Marsbound focuses on a family colonizing Mars in the near future and is 100% hard science fiction, which means the story features reasonable extrapolations based on science as we understand it today. However, as genre readers know, over the last 15 years a number of Mars colonization books have been published, with Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy being perhaps the most famous. What makes Marsbound such a unique and thrilling read is that the story is told through the point of view of an 18-year-old girl. As with all teenagers teetering on the brink of adulthood, the main character worries about mundane things like college, growing up, and sex, along with life-altering events like whether she'll survive the actual trip to Mars. Add in that the main character sees the universe through youthful eyes, but understands things as an adult, and you have the perfect narrator to describe a space exploration story. (I say this because the core of any exploration narrative is a combination of youthful wonder and adult hard work.)

With Marsbound, Haldeman--best known for his Hugo and Nebula award winning novels like The Forever War--has in many ways written an updated version of a Robert Heinlein juvenile novel. But instead of being aimed at teenage boys of the 1950s, Marsbound is uniquely suited for teenagers of the 21st century. I sincerely hope this is the beginning of a new trend of science fiction novels which appeal to readers of all genders and ages (in this case, from ages 15 and up due to some sexual content). I also look forward to the novel's final installment. If Haldeman finishes the story as well as he began it, Marsbound will no doubt be one of my favorite novels of the year.

UPDATE: For my review of the last installment of Marsbound, go here.

Wanted: Library or fan to support a science fiction legacy

You never know what you'll find on the Analog Science Fiction and Fact forum. A reader named Keith has been contacted by a SF fan's heirs who are selling microfiche sets of Astounding Science Fiction (1930-1984, plus color fiche of all its covers, and an index too), its fantasy companion Unknown/Unknown Worlds (1939-1943), and the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Specifically, the heirs want to honor their dad's love and respect for SF by finding a home for the collection "with either some institution like a university library, or someone who'll read it and use it to enrich the SF community." Keith also hopes there's a university or local public library out there with a computerized microfiche reader hybrid machine that can scan and create PDFs from the originals.

For more information, see the original post or contact Keith at asfmicrofiche@gmail.com. As with all internet purchases, please check out the details before sending any cash (although this seems very legit and an excellent way for a library to gain instant credibility as a destination for SF/F researchers).

Pimping for that Hugo or Nebula Award

The SF/F awards season must be upon us because across the blogoshere authors are pimping their writings in hopes as catching an award nomination. As usual with online trends, John Scalzi started this ball rolling several years ago by annually listing his works which were eligible for the Hugo and Nebula Awards. Now that so many others are jumping on the award-blogging bandwagon, I thought I'd compile a list of links to the different authors and editors who are promoting their award-eligible works:

  • John Scalzi (For his novel The Last Colony, novelette "The Sagan Diary," and more.
  • Chris Roberson (For his novelette "The Sky is Large and the Earth is Small," which is slated to appear in two "best of" collections and is posted on Chris' blog.)
  • Robert J. Sawyer (For his novel Rollback, which Publisher's Weekly says "may well win another major SF award." Sawyer also promotes Stanley Schmidt as the person most deserving of the next Hugo Award for best editor.)
  • Jay Lake (For his novel Mainspring and assorted short fiction.)
  • John Joseph Adams (Mainly for his editing work under the Hugo's Special Award: Professional category; he also lists short stories by other authors for consideration)
  • David Louis Edelman (For the 2008 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Science Fiction or Fantasy Writer. Edelman also promotes Mary Robinette Kowal and Cat Rambo for the same award, which IMHO is mighty nice of him.)

For those in the dark about how the Hugo Award process works, Frank Wu offers an excellent primer (along with his ideas on nominees in the fanzine and fan writer categories).

I hope people will also check out two of my SF/F stories from the last year: "Book Scouts of the Galactic Rim" in Menda City Review and "Rumspringa" in Orson Scott Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show. I'm not trying to pimp these stories for an award because I'm realistic enough to know that neither has a snowball's chance in hell of landing a nomination. Still, I'm proud of the stories and hope readers enjoy them.

The end of the book--and the world

John Scalzi has released the ending of his new book: "And then the planet blew up and everybody died horribly. The end!" I wonder if the pressure of finishing the book is getting to Scalzi? :-)

And while I hesitate to add more pressure to one of my favorite authors, Douglas Adams beat him to that hilarious ending by about 15 years. The fifth and final book in Adam's Hitchhikers Trilogy, Mostly Harmless, ends with earth--or more precisely, all the earths across the entire multiverse--blowing up, much to Arthur Dent's everlasting relief. At which point life goes on as before, with the exception that there's now nothing on television.

The passing of a soldier and science fiction fan

Major Andrew Olmsted was killed in Irag the other day. Olmsted blogged under his own name at The Rocky Mountain News and under the name G'Kar on other blogs. The fact that Olmsted used the pseudonym of a character from the TV series Babylon 5 shows how much he loved science fiction.

Olmsted left a final message to be posted in the event of his death and it is a moving, intelligent, must read piece. My deepest sympathy go out to both Olmsted's family and the entire world, which has lost an insightful and extremely decent man.

Richard Horton's summary reviews of SF/F magazines

Anthologist and reviewer Richard Horton just blogged a year-long summary review of Orson Scott Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show in which he mentioned me for my short story "Rumspringa." Many thanks. More importantly, Horton loved Peter S. Beagle's "We Never Talk About My Brother" and Tammy Brown's "Original Audrey," both of which were published in the same issue of IGMS as my story.

Horton has also published excellent year-end summary reviews for a number of other SF/F magazines, including Neo-Opsis, Talebones, Black Gate, Apex Digest, Yog's Notebook, Cemetary Dance, Fantasy Magazine, Tales of the Unanticipated, Strange Horizons, and many more. To access all the summary reviews, go here or here.

More on the ending to I Am Legend

I've received a ton of hits on my recent post about the unsatisfying ending to the new film version of I Am Legend. As I wrote then, the studio did a last minute about-face and forced the director to craft a new ending. The problem is that audiences are leaving the movie extremely unsatisfied. People know when an ending doesn't fit with a story and they are Googling to discover what the original ending was supposed to be. I wouldn't be surprised if we eventually see a director's cut of this movie with the original ending tacked back on, along the lines of Blade Runner.

Into the science fiction event horizon

James Wallace Harris has been on a roll lately with his blog. Following up on his recent Science Fiction Short Stories State of the Union, he now offers the fascinating Science Fiction Event Horizon. Just as the event horizon of a black hole traps everything which enters it, Harris states that believing in certain science fiction cliches can trap a believer in a genre-created event horizon. To quote Harris:

"What we know about physics and astronomy puts nearly all speculative fiction about space travel inside the SF Event Horizon. If you are a true believer in Star Wars, then you are trapped inside and can’t see out. Is it any wonder that the generation after the Star Wars generation embraced Tolkien mythology and Harry Potter?

"Science fiction as true speculative fiction is going through a morbid period right now. Has science thrown most of science fiction or speculative fiction into the gravity well of fantasy?"

Review: Feb. 2008 Fantasy and Science Fiction

Fantasy and Science Fiction has produced an incredibly strong Feb. 2008 issue which features an array of high quality stories such as "Retrospect" by Ann Miller and "If Angels Fight" by Richard Bowes (whose "There's a Hole in the City" won the 2006 Million Writers Award). My favorite story in the issue is "Balancing Account" by James L. Cambias. This old-fashioned-yet-new-feeling hard science fiction story focuses on an intelligent rocket booster named Orphan Annie in the Saturn planetary system. If you think it's difficult for writers to create a human being with whom readers can relate, try doing the same with a machine. Cambias not only pulls this off, his fast-paced tale will have you rooting against Annie's human overlords. Highly recommended.

Another good read is "Memoirs of the Witch Queen" by Ron Goulart, in which a ghost-writer works with a real witch on her memoirs. You can tell Goulart had a blast writing this story and it left me wondering how many of the ghost-writer's foils--a greedy ex-wife, idiotic editor, assorted debt-collectors--are real. Considering that Goulart is rumored to have ghost-written William Shatner's TekWar series, I also wonder if the overbearing and overweight witch isn't based on a certain actor. I should add, though, that while I enjoyed this story, it isn't equal to Goulart's best and feels forced at times. I much preferred his recent "Conversations with My Knees" from the Jan./Feb. 2008 Analog.

Overview of new SF/F magazines

A number of new SF/F magazines have graced my mailbox this holiday season. Among the items of note are:

  • An excellent Feb. 2008 issue of Asimov's Science Fiction. As previously noted, the issue contains the wonderful conclusion to Allen M. Steele's Galaxy Blues serial. The issue also contains a number of other top-notch stories, including "The Ray Gun: A Love Story" by James Alan Gardner (a highly recommended story in which a teenage boy finds his life's purpose and love through an alien ray gun); "From Babel's Fall'n Glory We Fled" by Michael Swanwich (a very good story featuring amazing world creation by Swanwich, although it was harder to relate to this story's characters than in many of Swanwich's tales); and the short but sweet "Sex and Violence" by Nancy Kress (in which the grand meaning of our existence turns out to be sex, something our genes have always known).

  • The Dec. 2007 issue of The New York Review of Science Fiction features explorations of C.L. Moore, R.A. Lafferty, A.E. van Vogt, and a very good interview with Nalo Hopkinson by Michael Lohr. The NYRSF remains my favorite nonfiction SF/F magazine, proving itself again and again with insightful articles and essays you will find nowhere else.

  • The Jan./Feb. 2008 Analog Science Fiction and Fact features many excellent stories, including "Marsbound," the first part of a new serial by Joe Haldeman. If the next two parts keep pace with Haldeman's opening, this could end up being his best novel in years. Other very good stories in the double issue include "Conversations with My Knees" by Ron Goulart, in which a knee replacement surgery leads to all sorts of unexpected yet humorous events, and "The Man in the Mirror" by Geoffrey  A. Landis, about an astronaut's near death experience with a nearly frictionless alien mirror.

State of SF/F short stories

James Wallace Harris offers a Science Fiction Short Stories State of the Union in which he praises the many ways to read SF/F short stories through distribution methods which once would have been seen as mere science fiction. He signals out for praise Escape Pod for offering free podcast readings of short stories and Fictionwise for offering e-book versions of top SF/F magazines like Analog and Asimov's (and I should add that one of my favorite SF/F magazines, Interzone, is now available on Fictionwise).

Harris adds that SF/F short stories are what "really defines the science fiction genre in my mind. I don’t have time to keep up with SF novels, and to be honest, they seldom offer the punch as they did when I was a teenager. The short story is different, it still has sense of wonder value and presents far out visions from writers who are working with the rule that the sky is no limit."

The best online literary magazines and journals

Scott Boyan at Thinksimian has completed a wonderful meta-analysis of storySouth's Million Writers Award to determine the best online literary journals and magazines. Basically, Scott crunched the numbers from the first four years of the award to see which online magazines placed the most stories in the notable and top ten listings. You can access Scott's complete analysis as a Google spreadsheet, but here are his top ranking online journals and magazines:

  1. Pindeldyboz
  2. Eclectica Magazine
  3. Narrative Magazine
  4. Agni
  5. Identity Theory
  6. Word Riot
  7. FRiGG
  8. Fiction Warehouse (Note: See my recent post about this journal)
  9. Strange Horizons
  10. Barcelona Review
  11. Clarkesworld Magazine
  12. Fail Better
  13. Stickman Review
  14. Mississippi Review
  15. HOBART
  16. 42opus
  17. Summerset Review
  18. Small Spiral Notebook (Note: no longer publishing)
  19. Blithe House Quarterly
  20. ChiZine
  21. Thieves Jargon
  22. Storyglossia
  23. Barrelhouse
  24. King's English
  25. Gowanus
  26. Drunken Boat
  27. Intergalactic Medicine Show
  28. Literary Mama
  29. Write This
  30. Danforth Review

Thanks to Scott for doing this analysis. And as a reminder, the 2008 Million Writers Award will start accepting nominations in about a month.

The real ending of I Am Legend (film)

I'm not going to bother with a complete review of the I Am Legend film, partly because many others have already done so. In short, though, the movie is excellent until the last five minutes. Will Smith does an amazing job in this moody action adventure tale about the last man on earth trying to save both humanity and his own sanity.

What really interests me, though, is the film's ending. As has been reported before, the director had to reshoot the ending because "the studio was unhappy with the film's finale, which is said to be very faithful to Richard Matheson's original story." I easily believe this report about how the movie was originally supposed to wrap up because there are numerous plot points setting up Matheson's ending. These include:

  • The fact that the film shows the Infected leader allowing himself to be burned by sunlight so he can glare at Robert Neville. This portrays the leader as moving beyond mere animal cunning, and possibly even caring about the capture of one of his fellow Infected. The incident is so unusual Neville comments about it later in the film.
  • The Infected showing increasing intelligence, including setting that snare trap for Neville. Despite what some viewers have suggested, that was not one of Neville's own snares. His snares used a black tarp to protect the captured Infected from the sunlight.
  • The "coincidence" of Anna arriving just in time to save Neville from the Infected. It's almost as if that was a set-up to discover where Neville lived. Also, why would she have been hanging out after dark in that area unless she was safe from the other Infected?
  • Anna showing disgust at how many Infected Neville killed for his experiments.

Because of these and other plot devices, the director was obviously aiming for Matheson's original ending (which would have been appropriate since it's one of the best finales in SF/F literature). Unfortunately, the studio decided that American audiences would revolt over such a bleak ending. The result is a finale which not only destroys the previous two hours of build-up and mood, but also leaves audiences feeling unsatisfied with the entire film.