Genres:

Escape Pod 279: Conditional Love

Originally published in Asimov’s, Jan 2010 issue

Rated PG-13: Swearing and disturbing hospital images

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 43:16 — 39.7MB)

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Show Notes

Show Notes:

  • Serious apologies – circumstances this week had me recording later than usual.
  • Feedback for Episode 271
  • Next week… A longer piece by Blake Charlton

Conditional Love

By: Felicity Shoulders

The new patient was five or six years old, male, Caucasian, John Doe as usual.  Grace checked the vitals his bed sensors were feeding her board and concluded he was asleep.  She eased the door of 408 open and stepped in.

The boy’s head was tilted on his pillow, brown curls cluttering his forehead.  Sleep had flushed his cheeks so he looked younger than the estimate.  He seemed healthy, with no visible deformities, and if he had been opted for looks, it had worked—Grace would have described him as ‘cherubic’.  He wouldn’t have been dumped if nothing was wrong, so Grace found herself stepping softly, unwilling to disturb him and discover psychological conditions.

“Don’t worry about waking him, he sleeps pretty deep.”

Grace started and turned to the other bed.  “Hi, Minnie.”

The girl grimaced.  “I go by my full name now, Dr. Steller.”  Grace brought up her board to refresh her memory, but the girl said, “Minerva.  Had you forgotten they’re doubling up rooms?”

“Yep, you caught me.”

“Is the rise in numbers caused by a rise in opting?  Or is it a rise in surrenders, or arrests of parents?”

“Lord, Minn—Minerva, I don’t know.  Planning to be a reporter when you grow up?”

“No, a scientist,” Minerva said and smiled, pleased to be asked.

“Why the scalpel-edged questions then?”

“Just curious if my campaign had had any effect,” Minerva said, nodding toward the window.  The billboard across from the Gene-Engineered Pediatric Inpatient Center flashed a smog warning, then a PSA about eye strain from computer visors, but Grace remembered when it had borne a static image:  Minnie, one year old, a pink sundress exposing the stubs of her arms and legs.  _Babies should be born, not made._  The ad had stayed up until Minnie was eight, three years after her parents turned her over to GEPIC, and apparently she had seen it.  She was twelve now, with serious eyes and a loose ponytail, dark blonde.

Book review: “Zero Sum Game” by David Mack

In the summer of 1988, my mom picked my sister and me up from our summer camp and said that my dad had gotten hurt at work (his foot) and was in the hospital. We were going to go see him, but since we’d be there for a while, she’d take us to the bookstore first. I remember picking out a book, and then on the way to the front, I noticed a whole shelf of Star Trek novels. I grabbed the one with the coolest cover.

That was my first exposure to non-YA genre fiction. The book was Diane Duane’s My Enemy, My Ally, still one of my favorites.

Since then, I have read hundreds of Star Trek novels across all five series. I used to read every single one, but now I pick and choose. I’ve been pretty judicious lately. However, I decided I’d give the Typhon Pact novels a try, and started with the first one, David Mack’s Zero Sum Game.

Although marketed as a Typhon Pact novel, Zero Sum Game is really a DS9 book at its heart. It also kind of requires that you’ve read the Destiny trilogy so you know about the characters, and that you’re at least aware of the events in Keith R.A. DeCandido’s A Singular Destiny (read the spoilers; I found the book kind of boring and Mary-Sue-ish). For those who aren’t: Ezri Dax is now the captain of the starship Aventine, and her crew contains folks from DS9 and TNG — including Simon Tarses. The Typhon Pact is a group of traditional Trek enemies that formed in the wake of the Borg invasion chronicled in Destiny; it includes the Romulans, the Tholians, the Gorn, the Breen, the Kinshaya, and the Tzenkethi. I seem to remember the reason for their creation as being pretty flimsy, but that’s neither here nor there. It seems as though the Typhon Pact novels are going to humanize Trek enemies who haven’t gotten a lot of play over the years. First up, the Breen, who speak in machine language and whose faces have never been seen. In the DS9 years, the Breen allied themselves with the Dominion, and that’s really about all you need to know.

In Zero Sum Game, Starfleet Intelligence has learned that the Breen are developing a slipstream drive to rival the Federation’s fastest propulsion technology, which is installed aboard the Aventine. Dr. Bashir, who has done a few missions for SI in the past, is tapped to infiltrate the Breen because he is genetically-enhanced, thereby giving him the ability to learn, process, and react faster than your average SI agent. His briefing is conducted by the other enhanced individuals Bashir met during DS9, including Sarina Douglas, with whom he’d fallen in love at one point. He agrees to go on the mission, with Douglas as his partner, and after an overly-convoluted plan to get them inserted into Breen space on the correct planet, they get their — and every Trek fan’s — first view of what the Breen are really like.

And that is, by far, the best part of the book. Not the action sequences, not the narrow escapes from death, not the way Douglas overcomes her captors or Bashir fights moral battles with himself over killing, and definitely not the B-plot of Dax trying to keep the Aventine on the Breen border so they can pick up Bashir and Douglas when their mission is complete. All of the plot and action is average Trek, and there’s actually quite a lot of improbable goings-on that seem to work out perfectly for our heroes. Even the ending is pretty unbelievable, and the coda wasn’t as surprising (to me, anyway), as I think it was intended to be.

But the Breen… ah, the Breen. I’d hate to spoil it all by saying everything Mack came up with to make them interesting, but the reason they really wear those masks and armor is almost worth the price of admission. As with many Trek novels, there’s plenty of space to explain and describe things that just can’t be covered in a television episode, and Bashir and Douglas’s mission to the Breen world is enough to fill a couple of episodes by itself.

The novel is $8, whether it’s electronic or paper, and I’m quite pleased that Mack writes such long stories because there’s almost nothing that annoys me more than paying $8 for something that’s only 225 pages with large print and big spaces between the lines. While all Kindle books use more or less the same font size and kerning, Zero Sum Game is 352 pages in print, so I definitely didn’t feel cheated by paying $8 for it. However, after the heart-wrenching character deaths in SCE: Wildfire and the sweeping grandness of Destiny — probably the best cross-series saga available in the Trek universe — I felt a little let down by Zero Sum Game. I’ll still read Mack’s next book, because he can easily reach the bar he set with Destiny, but I don’t feel as though I needed to read this novel the way I needed to read Destiny or Invasion or The Lost Era.

A few last words on the Typhon Pact miniseries: I happen to be the kind of person who can’t stop reading a series once it’s started, so I’ve already bought the second in the miniseries. It’s the Titan entry, and I happen to enjoy the Titan novels — they seem to have taken the mantle of the single-episode novel that TNG and TOS used to have, back in the day. I also understand the concept of needing a Big Boss now that the Borg are out of the picture. I even understand wanting to show us the Trek races we don’t know very well and humanizing them so we sympathize. But I’m not sure the Typhon Pact is a credible enough enemy, and I don’t fear them the way I feared the Borg or the Romulans. Where these books will shine is the exploration of the lesser-known enemy races, and also in the interactions between characters. Mack wrote Dax’s crew as a cohesive unit, and I don’t remember if he invented Lieutenant Kedair but she is definitely an interesting addition to the cast; the way he showed us the Breen was also quite well-done. So far in Book 2, I’m learning quite a bit about the Gorn.

I think my problem is that I’m just not as excited about these books as I was for Destiny, or for new entries in New Frontier, or even for stand-alone Trek novels like in the 90s and early 2000s. And I think that really does a disservice to both Star Trek and to the novelists they’ve tapped to write these books — Mack, Michael A. Martin, David R. George III, and Dayton Ward, who have written some really great Star Trek fiction in the past. Perhaps when taken as a whole, after I’ve read them all, the Typhon Pact miniseries will feel like a complete storyline and I’ll feel better about recommending the entire series. But not yet.

Book Review: “Kraken” by China Mieville

When China Mieville’s The Scar — still my favorite book of his — came out, I was working for an over-the-air sci-fi-themed radio show which shall remain nameless. They booked an interview with Mieville, and as the board-op, I called him (I’m guessing at his hotel in Los Angeles or wherever he was), thanked him for being on the show, and potted him up when it was time for him to go on. The hosts talked to him about the novel, which was noteworthy to them I guess because it had a vampire in it. After about 15 minutes, they thanked him, and it was over*.

Mieville’s latest novel, Kraken, is about a giant squid in the same way The Scar is about a vampire.

Kraken is an extremely difficult book to summarize; Mieville’s plots often are. So instead I’m going to link you to this review by The Guardian. Their one-sentence precis is quite masterful:

Following the quest of museum curator Billy Harrow to recover his mysteriously vanished prize exhibit, the giant squid Architeuthis, Kraken plunges Billy and the reader into an alternative London of cults and magic.

Now that you know that, here’s what I liked (and didn’t) about the book:

When I first started reading the novel, I have to say I was — quite sadly — disappointed. Not with the content or the ideas, but with what I perceived to be the novel’s generic nature. It had many of the hallmarks of a fantasy story, and while each element was quite interesting… well, a $1000 hamburger at a gourmet restaurant still looks like a hamburger. To wit:

  • The main character, Billy Harrow, is about 30, intelligent, a little geeky (but not too much), and non-violent. Stuff happens to him. Eventually he takes control of that stuff.
  • Dane is a guard who is the key to the world of weird, and while our MC didn’t like him at first, it turns out he’s quite an important character.
  • There’s a trio of policemen who want Billy to work for them, and they come off kind of like Smith in the first Matrix, but it turns out that, hey, they’re not all bad.
  • Wisecracking female cop who knows more than her colleagues? Check.
  • Small god who is very helpful but can’t actually do anything.
  • This is the big one, the one that really ripped it for me: while the Big Bad Guys are the usual sort, it seems like most urban (or regular) fantasy contains two guys who speak with a funny patois or patter to their speech, are ruthless, love their jobs, and are feared by everyone. Yep. They’re totally there. And they commit murder and inventively-violent ways which, to me, seemed far too over-the-top even for Mieville, who, in the past, has had the arms of a dead child grafted onto its mother’s face as a form of punishment.

After the first 100 pages or so, I got into the swing of things and the generic feel of the characters went away. The use of conventions makes sense — it allows a fantasy reader to jump right into the world through the use of familiar characters, and casual readers are able to map character types onto the kind of characters they’re used to in, say, political thrillers or romantic comedies, thereby making what is often a very tough book to read just slightly easier.

And make no mistake: this isn’t the easiest book in the world to read. Mieville knows a lot of words, and he makes no bones about using them all — and not just in the order you’re used to. His writing is almost gymnastic in nature, and it forces you to pay attention to every bit of it in order to ensure you don’t miss anything. It’s really tough on those of us who are quick readers. He also continues to use very visceral and phantasmagoric verbal imagery — something I noticed in the New Crobuzon books — and, while it adds strength to the storytelling, sometimes it just gets tiring to have to think so hard about the words, instead of what they’re saying. (For example, when the Final Boss is revealed, and the monologue is given, I had trouble remembering the various clues that were given throughout the rest of the story as the Final Boss explained them.) I don’t mind working hard to read a book, but it can be too much from time to time.

I really enjoyed the book’s humor and genre awareness — for example: if you give a Star Trek fan the magical power to teleport, of course he’s going to beam everywhere he can. And speaking of Trek, one of Billy’s primary weapons throughout the novel is his phaser. It really works. In some places, Mieville basically says “yeah, this genre convention is crap, here’s how it really is when a magical practitioner does it”. That works too. One of his strengths is that every little bit of the world is fully-realized, which means the novel is packed full of little moments of win.

Also on the positive column is the sheer amount of cool and different powers the denizens of London possess. Smoking reality, teleportation, burning something so thoroughly it never even existed, creating a demonically-possessed iPod… there are dozens, and they’re all interesting. As are the end-of-the-world cults and the weird religions, the Embassy of the Sea, and the penultimate Boss Fight (think Jenova, with the final boss being Sephiroth).

Kraken is Mieville at his creative best, building a detailed and immersive world with a complex and layered plot that — in this case, quite literally — could mean the end of the world. The novel certainly has its flaws, as I noted above, but it’s definitely a good story, exciting and enjoyable to read. It’s no The Scar, but I think it’s a better book than The City and The City (which I didn’t really enjoy that much). I for one would’ve preferred another visit to New Crobuzon, but this is almost as good.

So, if this book’s just sitting on your bookshelf, gathering dust, perhaps it’s time to —

— oh, yes, I’m going there —

RELEASE THE KRAKEN!

funny dog pictures-Release the Kraken!

* One would think the guy who had actually read the first novel in the New Crobuzon cycle might have helped in the prep for the interview. But that didn’t happen. If only I’d known how big a fan of Mieville’s I’d become, I’d have gotten in on the ground floor there.

Genres:

Escape Pod 278: Written on the Wind

Originally published in Beyond the Last Star

Rated PG: Talk of war elsewhere

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 53:14 — 36.6MB)

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Show Notes

Show Notes:

  • Feedback for Episode 270
  • Next week… A groovy strange kind of love

Written on the Wind

By David D. Levine

Thuren Nektopk peered down at Luulianni from above his massive desk. “I suspect you know why I’ve called you to speak with me in person.” He spoke in his native language, Ptopku Dominant, using the form of address for a subordinate or a child. It was a constant reminder that the Ptopku had built and largely staffed this station, and was one of the most powerful species in the Consortium.

“Yes, Supervisor,” Luulianni replied in the same language, knotting her tentacles.

“And that would be…?”

“Because of my side project.”

“Yes.” Nektopk suddenly released the bar from which he hung, caught himself on another handhold, and with two swift strokes of his arms swung down to where his six slitted eyes were level with Luulianni’s. “Your little side project.”

Luulianni cringed. “I don’t understand why it’s so much of a problem.” She straightened and tried to meet his gaze. “I put in my full quota of time every day.”

“Yes, you do, and not one moment more. But I know you are capable of so much more than that. Any work you do on this pointless little side project of yours constitutes theft of resources from the Section — from the whole Project!”

“Theft?” she squeaked. Angry at herself for the loss of control, she brought her voice down. “Theft of resources? But I don’t use any data storage space, or any other Section resources! I write my notes on the backs of old printouts.” She did not mention how much more natural it felt to work on paper.

“You are stealing the most valuable resource of all!” Nektopk pointed at her with one limber foot. “Your own time and attention!”

“But it’s my time!”
(Continue Reading…)

The Soundproof Escape Pod #4

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E-Book PDF: Open in New Window | Download (1.1MB)

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To our lovely readers—

It’s awards season, and yes, we will be talking about it on the blog, and in future podcasts. Even as SF authors all over are posting on their blogs about their 2010 award-eligible work, others are discussing whether this is blatantly trolling for votes.

I can see how a constant barrage of VOTE FOR ME OMG could be irritating and tacky. I certainly find it so when it’s podcast award season, and one award allows listeners to vote daily, so the constant vote requests tend to be cacophonous. However, I’m spreading out the awards information for one main reason: don’t forget the podcasts.

Until recently, people didn’t even think about nominating a podcast (or any web content) for a Hugo. Heck, it was ground-breaking when webzines started to win. But last year, Catherine Valente self-published a book on her site, and it went on to win the Andre Norton award for best YA novel. Clarkesworld, an online magazine, won the Hugo for best semi-pro zine. And as we’ve mentioned several times (because it’s still SO FREAKING COOL) Starship Sofa won the Hugo for best fanzine.

I had an uncomfortable panel discussion at last year’s NASFiC (North American Science Fiction Convention). We had a panel on podcasting and a very bitter fanzine author showed up (I’d politely say they shall remain nameless, but honestly I never did catch their name), This person expressed anger that these new methods of reaching fans were getting all their friends to vote for them, as if new fans, or listeners to SF instead of readers, were less worthy to vote for the Hugos.

What gets me is that the new is considered unworthy, not paying its dues, and the fans are similarly unworthy, and their votes just don’t mean as much. I find that incredibly offensive, as our fans are worldwide, and many have been dedicated to us since we launched five years ago. Others are new to the genre, just trying it out, and loving it, and I sure as hell don’t want to take a new fan of the genre and tell them they aren’t worthy.

You, the readers and listeners, don’t give a crap about this infighting in SF. You want a good story. We try to deliver it to you. As does LightSpeed and Clarkesworld and Starship Sofa and Pseudopod and Podcastle and Drabblecast and Asimov’s and Analog and F&SF and Weird Tales… and so on. You want SF content. We give it to you. And that’s the end of story. (Until next week, anyway.)

I had not planned on going on such an impassioned rant. I just want to say that a new fan is worth just as much as an old fan, and a new way to experience shot stories is not a reason to discount it. And whether the Internet-wary veterans like it or not, if you’re eligible to vote for these awards (WorldCon member for Hugos, SFWA member for Nebulas, and HWA member for Stokers) then your vote counts just as much as theirs does.

I wanted to use this letter to remind you that many, many podcasts are now eligible for the major awards. Starship Sofa broke it open last year, and now we just need to let the listeners know. When you make your Hugo or Nebula or World Fantasy or Stoker ballots, consider Escape Pod, Pseudopod, and Podcastle. Don’t forget Starship Sofa and Drabblecast. Remember also your favorite podcast novels, novellas, and short stories that were released last year. I’m not telling you who to vote for, in any of the categories, just wanting to remind you that we — the online content providers — are here are here, delivering weekly content, and if you enjoy it, consider us when you make your nominations.

Yours,

—Mur

The ePub version can be found here.

Book Review: The Dervish House by Ian McDonald

The Dervish House by Ian McDonald is the kind of science fiction novel that rewards the attentive reader. It begs its fans to create timelines and diagrams and carefully-plotted maps of the characters’ paths through the Queen of Cities. I felt I was missing layers of meaning, and if I just took the time to do the math, to make a map, I could discover the clever synchronicities and hidden stories that I missed on my first read. It may just be an illusion created by the quantity of detail crammed into this book, but I wouldn’t bet on it.

The Dervish House covers a week in the lives of a group of people in Istanbul as they move through a morass of religion, technology, terrorism, commodities trading, and deals made over ancient artifacts. The drama begins when a suicide bomber strikes on the tram line. Nobody except the bomber dies — that wasn’t the point of the attack. The effects of the explosion ripple outward. One character miss a job interview. Another send his Kid Detective spy robots out to see what happened. Still another makes a note of how high the stocks for a bombing had gotten on the Terror Market.

From there, events spin out of anyone’s control. One of the last Greeks in Istanbul must finally face the consequences of his misspent youth. A group of day traders conspire to divert crude oil from Iran’s radioactive oil fields to Baku, and thereby turn themselves into instant millionaires. A nine-year-old boy hunts for terrorists while the squatter in his basement sees visions of djinni. Across the street, a woman searches for the tomb of a mummy who was embalmed in honey — the legendary Mellified Man, whose flesh is said to have healing powers to rival a unicorn’s horn, and who may have never existed in the first place.

From a science fiction point of view, one of the more interesting aspects of The Dervish House is the way McDonald makes nanotech scary without resorting to a gray goo scenario. In fact, explicitly denies that scenario. He points out that we already live in a world filled with replicating micro-bots: We call them bacteria. The problem with nanotech is not that it might drown the world under a blanket of ooze, but that it could be used to reprogram the human mind on the scale of an epidemic. Simultaneously, he presents this as nanotech’s great promise — that we could turn every person’s body into a living computer of vast capacity.

I first heard of Ian McDonald in discussions of The Windup Girl. The Dervish House has the same sort of complex plotting and frenetic pace as The Windup Girl, but with far more complexity and optimism and both in the setting and in the characters. Yes, there is global warming to deal with, and nasty geopolitics, and the threat of technology used for evil, but there is also beauty and hope in McDonald’s Istanbul. In a way, The Dervish House calls to mind my favorite parts of my beloved cyberpunk — flying through filthy, glorious cities, watching brilliant people struggling in the space between corrupt governments and ruthless corporations.

The Dervish House is supremely clever. I have a feeling that I’ve missed many of the jokes (although there are some good ones about a science fiction writer who plays a minor role in the story). A reader who is knowledgeable in Turkish politics and history would probably get much more out of this book than I did. However, The Dervish House contains enough detail to get its readers through the various intrigues without resorting to tedious infodumps. This is probably not a book that will change your life, but it is a lot of fun.

Book Review: “Super Sad True Love Story” by Gary Shteyngart

Warning: the following book review contains explicit language, which is quoted directly from the novel. Reader discretion is advised.

I find most near-future-world-gone-mad stories hit-or-miss. Either they try too hard, or the characters are too flat, or the ideas are just too far out there (or not far out there enough). But occasionally I’ll find one that has the perfect mix of stuff I like.

With Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart, I got lucky.

Super Sad True Love Story is a hilariously-scary near-future love story about a 39-year-old man named Lenny Abramov, clearly based at least in part on Shteyngart himself. The son of Jewish Russian immigrants who moved to New York before he was born, Lenny grew up with all the Russian pessimism, Jewish guilt, and immigrant pride that those folks were wont to do. Now he works for a multinational corporation’s Post Human Services division, selling life extensions to HNWIs (high net worth individuals). Our story begins with him finishing up a year in Italy, trying to make sales and failing spectacularly, living in a way considered dangerous by his coworkers (eating too many carbs, drinking too much wine), going to parties, and trying to figure out how he’s going to explain to his boss and close friend Joshie why he hasn’t hooked any clients.

At a party, Lenny runs into Eunice Park, spending time in Italy between her graduation from college and her entry into law school. Eunice, the daughter of Korean immigrants living in New Jersey, is very thin, very pretty, and very much a product of her environment. Lenny falls in love with her instantly, and through a strange confluence of circumstances manages to take her to bed.

Using first-person accounts from Lenny’s diary and Eunice’s GlobalTeens account (more on that shortly), the book then follows Lenny and Eunice as they separate and get back together, return to New York, and try to build a relationship.

Until America falls.

From a science-fictional perspective, Super Sad True Love Story is the standard “America loses power while Europe and China grow in strength, America falls, America is rebuilt” story I’ve read in various short-stories and novels over the years. But where the novel shines is in the author’s uncanny predictions of the near future*. Here are some:

Money: The dollar is as devalued as the currency in current third-world nations, but most upper- or middle-class Americans use yuan, or “yuan-pegged dollars”, which are worth more. Right now, if I’m reading the news right, the dollar isn’t as well-respected globally as it used to be. Also, in the book, several nations are run by their largest companies — StatOil in Norway, HSBC in the UK (which is now called HSBC-London), Stability in Canada, and Petro in Russia. Mergers are rampant, too; Eunice’s bank is AlliedWasteCVSCitigroup, and LandOLakes also apparently has a financial wing.

Technology: Phones have been replaced by an umlaut-laden version of the word apparatus, “apparat”. People rarely speak (or “verbal”) to each other, preferring to use apparati to instantly find out about others. This is already happening; people on dates, trying to build relationships, would rather sit and stare at their phones than actually speak to each other. Apparati are also getting smaller and smaller, and are able to bring in more and more information; while cell phones have actually gotten slightly larger, the other half is already happening. (The book also has a very clever dig against iPhones in it.) Oh, and the sheer amount of information Lenny can get about Eunice as he flies back from Italy is staggering and scary — credit information, friends, photos, addresses, shopping trends…

Social Networking: Today, everyone and everything is on Facebook, and Facebook can suck in all your different social networks — Twitter, Foursquare, GetGlue, etc. In Super Sad True Love Story, everyone — adults, kids, professionals — uses a social network called GlobalTeens. Eunice happens to write long letters to her best friend Jenny, who lives in California (where Eunice used to live), and GlobalTeens keeps telling her that people don’t read anymore, that she should send image messages or video streams instead.

TV News: There are apparently only two 24-hour news channels, FoxLiberty-Prime and FoxLiberty-Ultra. Lenny’s parents watch these. Everyone else gets their news from media streams, which can come from anywhere, including Lenny’s friend Noah (who does a political stream) and Noah’s girlfriend Amy (who, despite being in perfect shape, runs the “Muffintop Hour”). This is sort of a riff on Current, and others who have YouTube or UStream shows.

Devaluation of Shock: Slang has gotten more and more extreme. JK, for example, has become “JBF”, or “just butt-fucking”. Eunice talks to Jenny about porn they watched together as children (and the context indicates this is completely normal). The terms AssLuxury and AssDoctor are thrown around with impunity. One of Noah’s friends runs a liberal-slanting news stream intercut with explicit video of hardcore homosexual sex. The pervasiveness of porn and the subsequent imitation of acts seen in it is described in Jenny’s letters to Eunice about parties where it is normal for people to have pornographic-style sex in company. A top retailer of clothes for women and men is JuicyPussy. The hot new jeans trend is called Onionskin, which are completely transparent. “TotalSurrenders” are women’s undergarments that pop right off with the touch of a button. And we complain about pants on the ground…

Rating Everything: Walking through New York City, Lenny passes credit poles, which display his high rating (1520). Apparati can rank everyone in the room to see who the most desirable men and women are. Personality and fuckability are measured on a scale of 0 to 800. At Lenny’s office (a converted synagogue — actually kind of a cool image), an arrivals/departures train board shows what kind of mood everyone is in.

American Patriotism: In the novel, America is very much in decline. Poorly-spelled signs from the American Restoration Authority claim “Together We’ll Go Far” (the Wells Fargo slogan; I knew it sounded familiar) and various other vaguely-positive messages about change. Anti-immigrant sentiment is strong, and people who don’t look like “‘Murricans” (in the Fox News sense of the word) are grouped by metaphor or stereotype — Chinese people save, Latinos spend or have bad credit, and so on. As things get worse, roadblocks are set up throughout New York, plastered with signs saying that, by reading the sign, citizens deny the existence of the checkpoint while implying their consent to let the ARA do whatever it needs to do. And while the use of apparati is permitted on airplanes, the closest Lenny can get to JFK to meet Eunice’s plane is somewhere on the Van Wyck Expressway, at an ARA checkpoint patrolled by National Guardsmen with automatic weapons.

The novel is full of clever wordplay, prescient references, hilarious-while-being-vaguely-uncomfortable interactions between characters, and a scenario about the end of America that will frighten the hell out of you because it’s completely plausible. It’s also vaguely reminiscent of the way Muggle Britain was unaware of the war between Voldemort and the Order during HP6 and HP7. I really enjoyed reading it, and I got through it quickly — it’s an easy read, and I’ve always found humor to go faster than tragedy. I’d call this a satire more than anything else, but I think it also fits into sci-fi in the same way as films like Gattaca and Code 46**, and its exaggeration of what’s happening now echoes the “Would You Like To Know More” moments of Paul Verhoeven’s adaptation of Starship Troopers. I definitely recommend Super Sad True Love Story.

And I’m not JBF.

* I believe the book takes place in the 2030s (possibly the 2020s or 2040s). I can’t recall it ever being explicitly stated, and I wasn’t able to easily infer it.

** A quick rant about “Code 46” — I really liked the film, and thought it was beautifully-shot with great sets and locations. It doesn’t have any cursing, and there’s no explicit violence, but it’s rated R. Why? Because in one scene, actress Samantha Morton is shown from the front with her bottom half completely uncovered. Meanwhile, films suffused with violence like “The Dark Knight” and “Batman Begins” are PG-13. What does it say about us as a culture that we’re more afraid of a one-second shot of the place that babies come from than our tweens and teens seeing a pencil jammed through a guy’s eye and the aforementioned guy stumbling around in pain for at least five times that long?

Hugo- past, present, and yet to come

Laura Burns, aka @moonrangerlaura or @scifilaura, is a NASA Contractor and a science fiction and podcasting fan. She participates in the science tracks at many East Coast cons. She has attended several WorldCons and has voted for the Hugos in times past. She is the head of the Parsec Awards Steering Committee (www.parsecawards.com) and has had her secret identity documented by Mur Lafferty and Matt Wallace (www.murverse.com)

In Hollywood it is Awards season. With the constant coverage of the Golden Globes and Oscar nominations, it is hard not to know about what is going on in sunny Southern California. In the Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror world, awards season has also started, but with much less pomp and circumstance. The two big awards for genre fiction are the Hugos and the Nebulas. The Nebulas are determined by members of the Science Fiction Writer’s Association, but the Hugos.. the Hugos are determined by the fans. That means you. Or at least it could. And your favorite podcasters hope you take the challenge.

First, a bit of history. The Hugo awards are managed by the World Science Fiction Society (http://www.wsfs.org/) and awarded at the World Science Fiction Convention (WorldCon). The awards honor professional and fan contributions to the community. The first WorldCon was in 1936, but the first awards weren’t given out in 1953. Isaac Asamov was the Toastmaster and Philip Jose Farmer won for “Best New SF Author or Artist”. Even then, there was a Fan aspect to the awards as Forrest J. Ackerman won for “#1 Fan Personality”. Over the years the categories have evolved with the times.

The 2011 Categories are as follows: (http://www.renovationsf.org/hugo-intro.php) (http://www.thehugoawards.org/hugo-categories/)
* Best Novel
* Best Novella
* Best Novelette
* Best Short Story
* Best Related Work
* Best Graphic Story (Trial Award)
* Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form
* Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form
* Best Editor (Long Form)
* Best Editor (Short Form)
* Best Professional Artist
* Best SemiProzine
* Best Fanzine
* Best Fan Writer
* Best Fan Artist

Historically, the Hugo award is a literary award, and thus the nominees are based on printed, ink on paper works. This is changing. In 2006 podcast Novella “Burn” (http://www.jimkelly.net/index.php?Itemid=45&id=15&option=com_content&task=blogcategory) by James Patrick Kelly was nominated for the Hugo and won the Nebula in 2007.  At the 2010 ceremony, the podcast Starship Sofa (http://www.starshipsofa.com/) won the Hugo award for best Fanzine. Having been at WorldCon and NASFic (North American Science Fiction Convention held since WorldCon was outside North America), I can tell you that this caused a bit of a stir.

From what I can determine, your favorite podcasts, stories, authors and editors are eligible for the following categories.
* Best Novel
* Best Novella
* Best Novelette
* Best Short Story
* Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form
* Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form
* Best SemiProzine
* Best Fanzine
* Best Fan Writer

Web content is also eligible for
* Best Graphic Story (Trial Award)
* Best Professional Artist
* Best Fan Artist

The story must have been first published in 2010. You can find out more details regarding eligibilty and the specific awards here (http://www.thehugoawards.org/hugo-categories/).

Since the Hugo awards are determined by the fans, you have the power to make an impact. All of the statistics on the number of nominations and votes are posted online. (http://www.thehugoawards.org/2010/09/2010-hugo-award-statistics-posted/) Historically, fan involvement has been very low.  Last year was a record year for Hugo Nominations with less than 900 ballots. (http://www.thehugoawards.org/2010/04/a-little-data/) Some of the short story finalists made the cut with only 23 nomination votes.

So, how do you nominate and vote? First, you need to “join” the World Science Fiction Society by purchasing a membership to the World Science Fiction Convention. (http://www.renovationsf.org/memberships.php) There are several different membership levels. A supporting member, someone not planning on attending the convention, costs $50 until February 28, 2011.  A supporting member has the right to Hugo Award and Site Selection voting rights. Receives any materials relating to that voting. In 2010, the voting packet included free digital access to the nominees. If you later decide to upgrade to an attending member, you will do so at a discount. (http://www.renovationsf.org/register.php#types)

The Hugos are arguably the most prestigious award given for genre fiction. Far too few people get involved in the nomination and selection process. This is your chance. Nominations are open until March 26, 2011, but you need to have purchased your membership on or before January 31, 2011. If you were an attending or supporting member of the 2010 WorldCon (Aussiecon 4), you are automatically eligible to nominate, but not to vote.

There are a lot of nuances to the Hugo awards, and I have not covered all of the details here, but if you are interested, please follow the links and get involved. There are some frequently asked questions here (http://www.thehugoawards.org/hugo-faq/).

No Ordinary Defense of Genre Television

Anyone who’s ever been a fan of a losing sports team knows that sometimes you have to make excuses for your club’s poor play. As a lifelong Dolphins fan, believe me, I know — I’ve spent more than a decade extolling our defense while facepalming at the antics of our atrocious offense.

As a sci-fi fan, I’ve lately found myself feeling the same way.

No one was more excited than me when No Ordinary Family was announced. I’ve often thought The Incredibles was robbed of a best picture nomination, but if the compensation is a live-action version, well… who am I to complain?

There’s just one problem: I don’t actually like No Ordinary Family.

On paper, the show is a great concept for someone like me: normal family gets superpowers, does superheroic things. And the cast is pretty good: Michael Chiklis as Mr Incredible, Julie Benz as the super-speedy mom, Stephen Collins playing against type as an evil research magnate, and Romany Malco (who always stole the show in Weeds) as the sidekick. The scripts are your tried and true origin story plots — family vs superheroism, vigilantism vs the need to do right, and the ever-popular “getting discovered” story arc. On paper, it’s a recipe for success.

Except that the execution keeps falling flat. The family drama is too dramatic or too silly. Most of the subplots with the kids make me want to facepalm (despite the excellent job Kay Panabaker does as the telepathic teen daughter). The geek references from Katie, one of the sidekicks, are wasted on the audience because it’s abundantly clear she’s a geek only to pacify the geek crowd who — and let’s be honest here — isn’t getting what they need from this show.

We wanted a live-action Incredibles. What we got was a family drama with a veneer of superheroic fantasy. And as bad as it would be for genre as a whole to lose No Ordinary Family, I can’t see any way that the show can turn itself around without killing off a few of the characters in a David Mack style (remember what he did to the crew of the Da Vinci, and the billions he sacrificed to the Borg).

The thing is, instead of geeks saying we should cut our losses and support other genre shows like Fringe, we try to have our jumja sticks and eat them too. We make apologies for the less-intelligent plots, the overused origin stories, the constant hammering into our heads that MISUSING POWERS FOR PERSONAL GAIN IS WRONG. The core audience already knows all this stuff. They want more Chuck and less Brothers & Sisters.

Now I’m not completely dim — I’ve worked in television for six years, and I understand the concept of making a show appeal to the widest audience possible. Unfortunately, homeopathy doesn’t work. Putting 1/100th of 1% of genre into a 100% solution of ABC family drama won’t cure the lack of geek audience.

I’m tired of making excuses for shows like No Ordinary Family. I’m tired of keeping passable excuses for genre on the air at the expense of truly good shows like Fringe. I don’t wish anyone working on the show any ill will, and if it stays on the air for five years, I’m totally fine with that. But I can’t keep ignoring the flaws of genre shows like No Ordinary Family. I say it cheapens the content pool as a whole, and — let’s be honest here — if they wanted a TV version of The Incredibles… well, doesn’t Disney own it already?

I’m leaving No Ordinary Family on the DVR, and I’ll probably finish out the season. But I can’t lie to myself anymore.

I don’t think I actually like the show.

Escape Pod 277: Rejiggering the Thingamajig

Originally published in Analog, 2010

Rated PG: For violence.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 31:41 — 21.8MB)

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Show Notes

Show Notes:

  • Feedback for Episode 269: Élan Vital
  • Next week… Linguistics… in space.

Creative Commons License

Rejiggering the Thingamajig by Eric James Stone is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Based on a work at escapepod.org.

Rejiggering the Thingamajig

by Eric James Stone

The teleport terminal had not been built with tyrannosaurus sapiens in mind.

Resisting the urge to knock human-sized chairs about with her tail, Bokeerk squatted on the tile floor, folded the claws of her forelimbs together, and concentrated on her breathing. Meditation would calm her nerves. What should have been a two-minute waystop as she switched to a different teleport line had stretched to three hours, and being the only passenger in the terminal creeped her out.

The cheerful voice of the customer service AI roused Bokeerk from her trance. “It is my pleasure to inform you that the cause of the technical difficulties in the galactic teleport network has been found.”

Bokeerk perked up and rose on her hind legs, remembering just in time to duck her head so it wouldn’t bang the ceiling lamps. “Please send me to Krawlak,” she said. It was unlikely that any of her eggs would hatch for another few days yet, but she was anxious to get home.

“It is with the utmost regret that I must tell you that will not be possible at this time,” said the AI, with a tone of such abysmal sorrow that Bokeerk’s eyes could not help but moisten with sympathetic tears. “I require assistance in repairing the problem.”

Bokeerk lowered herself into a squat again. “When will help get here?” She looked at the time display on the digital assistant strapped to her left forelimb. She had now been stranded for three hours and fifty-two minutes.

“I estimate a spaceship carrying a repair crew could be here within twelve years,” said the AI. Its voice seemed to have lost the customer service aspect.
(Continue Reading…)