Science Fiction Blog

Anyone else think the character called “The Editor” was an OTT parody of Michael Grade, the man responsible for cancelling Dr Who back in the 80s?

I loved the first two of Miéville’s baroque steampunk fantasies, “Perdito Street Station” and “The Scar“. Set in a phantasmagorical mix of steam-age technology, D&D magic and cyberpunk attitude, they managed to breath new life into some old cliches, and produce something that was far more than the sum of the parts.

The third novel in this setting, “Iron Council” tells the story of the construction of a transcontinental railway, who’s striking construction crew rebelled and struck out on their own across the wilderness, laying down rails in front of the construction train and taking them up again behind. But despite some nice touches, such as the golem magic, I found this book something of a disappointment compared to it’s predecessors.

With the action switching between the city of New Crozubon and the rebels in the wilderness, and between present-day and flashback, the whole thing seemed to lack the focus of his two earlier works. This time, Miéville’s politics is far more heavy-handed and comes over very preachy. Being shown what’s wrong with unrestrained robber-baron capitalism is one thing, but sometimes it felt like being beaten over the head with a hammer-and-sickle. The biggest flaw of all was the weak characterisation, so bad that I found I didn’t care what happened to several of the leading characters by the end of the book.

While the book isn’t a total failure, Miéville is capable of far better than this.

Joe Gordon, who until recently was an employee of Waterstone’s bookshop in Edinburgh, has been sacked for blogging. British SF Writer Charlie Stross knows Joe well, and has some comments on the subject:

For starters, Joe is an extremely knowledgable specialist bookseller. He’s an SF fan. Not just an SF fan, but a reasonably personable bookselling SF fan with an encyclopaedic grasp of the field and an enthusiasm for it that was infectious — it was difficult to walk into that shop and walk out again without having spent far too much money. His buying recommendations spread throughout the company (and outside it, as a regular reviewer writing for the online SF lit crit field), to an extent such that one editor of my acquaintance knew him by name as one of the key people to target if you wanted a new SF book launch in the UK to go down well. People trusted his opinions, people inside his company. The combination of specialist knowledge with enthusiasm isn’t something you can buy: if you’re running a business you just have to hope you can grab it when you see it. For a fellow occupying a relatively humble niche — no manager, he — Joe was disproportionately influential.

For seconds … over the past few years Waterstones has plotted a precarious path through the turbulent waters of corporate retail. Most recently, the company was taken over by HMV, another large retail media chain. About six to eight months ago a new manager arrived at Joe’s branch, and reading between the lines it appears that there was an immediate negative reaction: perhaps calling it a clash of corporate cultures wouldn’t be excessive. Joe was banished from the front desk to the stock room, a grubby windowless basement from which he had no exposure to customers. The previously thriving program of author readings and signings mysteriously vanished. Shelf space devoted to SF and fantasy — Joe’s speciality — receded into the shadowy depths of the store and shortened, shedding titles and variety (which, for a genre where sales are largely midlist driven and readers are browsers, is the kiss of death). And finally, Joe was accused of gross misconduct by his manager on the basis of a trawl through his online journal.

The story has now made it into the national media. If Joe was sacked from ‘bringing the company into disrepute’, then his pointy-haired idiot of a boss has brought the company into far more disrepute than one blog ever could.

This sort of behaviour makes me most unwilling to patronise this corporation; unfortunately almost all the larger book shops in my area are theirs. Unless Waterstones somehow sees sense, all my future book purchases are going to be online.

The Gline reviews a “Sci-Fi Musical” called The Apple

The Apple had me laughing hysterically all the way through. It’s a love letter to the stylistic excess of that time, only it’s been penned by illiterates with terrible handwriting. It’s an awful movie, to be sure, but it’s never boring, if only because they find something absolutely stupefying to point the camera at in every second of film. And as bad as the movie is, it actually manages to point its satire in the right direction and even feels weirdly timely—that is, when it’s not burning your eyes out with some of the most horrific production design since the Star Wars Holiday Special. Shock Cinema described it as “Can’t Stop the Music meets Logan’s Run”, two other Seventies artifacts guaranteed to clear the room in seconds.

Sounds like it has all the makings of a cult classic.

Today In Alternate History. This one is going straight onto the blogroll! Some examples:

in 1245, two devout young men of European descent honor Allah by creating a powered aircraft. They name it the Wings of Gabriel; the maiden flight lasts a mere 2 minutes, but is hailed as a great advance by scientists throughout Islam.

and…

in 1990, Fascists are swept from power in Italy, and Germany sends troops in. The overburdened Nazis, besieged on every front, will lose power by the fall, but not without hundreds of thousands of casualties.

Not only, but also…

in 1992, filmmaker Oliver Stone releases JBR, in which he attempts to give credence to People’s Attorney Presley’s arguments that Comrade President Rosenberg was killed by a conspiracy rather than a lone counter-revolutionary. The film is a huge success, prompting the Communist Party to call for its banning.

So, the dire predictions that the Academy would never give the best film award to something made by a fat bloke from New Zealand whose main audience is ‘engineers called Dave’ turned out to be wrong. Still, had anything else won the ‘best film’, the Oscars would have ended up with roughly the same credibility as the Mercury Music Prize.

It’s the first time a fantasy or science-fiction film has won the Best Film award. 2001, A Clockwork Orange, ET and Star Wars all managed to get nominated, but never won anything but consolation prizes like ‘best special effects’. It’s a belated recognition that these genres are now part of the cinematic mainstream. It’s a contrast to the world of books where sadly SF is still confined to the ghetto.

You don’t want to see the alternative timeline, where they gave the award to ‘Seabiscuit’. Those Los Angeles Nerd Riots were a terrible thing.

Before Peter Jackson, there was Ralph Bakshi. Just in case you’d forgotten just how horrible his version of LOTR was.

(Link from Royce Day)