The future of the web?

In one of the threads over at Rants n' Raves, a post pointed to this brilliant little science fiction short story, combining an internet forum with time travel.

Wikihistory
by Desmond Warzel

Well worth reading.

Bad news about Terry Pratchett

I am quite busy at the moment, hence the light blogging, but I thought I'd share this piece of bad news about Terry Pratchett.

He has been diagnosed with a very rare form of early onset Alzheimer's.

He says that he prefers people to keep it cheerful, and that he expects to meet his current and some future commitments. He also expects that there will be some more Discworld books.

Just thought I'd share this

I just started on The Year's Best Fantasy Stories edited by Lin Carter, which was published in 1975 (but covers the year 1974). He writes a bit of what have happened on the fantasy front during 1974, and as part of this, he writes this paragraph.

A modest number of new fantasy novels came out during the year, mostly from familiar authors of reliable abilities, such as Michael Moorcock, Poul Anderson and Andre Norton. But for most readers, and the great big wide and wonderful world of Real Books out there beyond the limited confines of our small genre, 1974 was the year of an explosive blockbuster of a book called Watership Down by a hitherto unknown writer with the uninspired name of Richard Adams. This odd item is being billed by the biggies of Criticdom as the Iliad and the Odyssey of the rabbits - you heard me, rabbits: it's about rabbits; yes I said rabbits. Anyway, it's the first time I can remember when a fantasy novel got to the top of the New York Times' bestseller list (something neither Tolkien nor C. S. Lewis ever did, although I'm not sure T. H. White didn't), and it shows every sign of turning into a Big Book on Campus and a cult classic just like Tolkien.

While he overestimated the future impact of the book somewhat (though it is still around, and read), I love his description of the book ("you heard me, rabbits", "yes I said rabbits").

Author profile: James Tiptree, Jr.

Note: In the Readerville forum, I've written a few profiles of science fiction authors, some of which might also be of interest to others. Once in a while I'll post one of them here.

James Tiptee Jr. (1915 - 1987)

Tiptree is the man to beat this year.
Wilhelm is the woman to beat, but Tiptee is the man.

Thus wrote Harlan Ellison in his introduction to the story "The Milk of Paradise" in Again, Dangerous Visions (1972). Little did he know that Tiptree was a pseudonym for the psychologist Alice Hastings Bradley Sheldon. Her identity was kept a secret until 1977, when it was exposed because of some remarks Tiptree made; she referred to the death of her mother with enough details for people to figure out who her mother was.

Alice Sheldon was the daughter of Mary Hastings Bradley, who was a well known geographer and author of 35 books. She was born in Chicago, but spend much of her childhood in India and Africa. She worked in the US Government for many years, including some time at Pentagon and the CIA, which she left in 1955 for college, acquiring a PhD in experimental psychology in 1967.

Under her real name, she published a non-sf story, "The Lucky Ones", in The New Yorker in 1946, but her first story as James Tiptree Jr., "Birth of a Salesman", was published in Astounding Science Fiction in 1968.
Her best writing occured between 1979 and 1977 though, and short story collections covering that time frame are probably well worth getting (not that I've gotten around to getting any such yet). Especially of note are the stories "The Women Men Don't See " (1973), "The Girl Who Was Plugged In" (1973, Hugo winner), and "Houston, Houston, Do You Read?" (1977, Nebula and, shared, Hugo winner).

The Life of Alice Sheldon had a sad ending. She had married Huntington Sheldon in 1945, and in the 1980s he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's Disease. In 1987 Alice Sheldon first shot her husband, and then killed herself.

Sources:
The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction by John Grant & Peter Nicholls
Again, Dangerous Visions edited by Harlan Ellison.

Since I originally wrote this short profile of James Tiptree Jr., a biography of her has been published. Julie Phillips' James Tiptree, Jr. - The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon describes the life of the subject from a somewhat feminist viewpoint, and quite deservedly won a Hugo this year. I highly recommend it.

Author profile: C.L. Moore

Note: In the Readerville forum, I've written a few profiles of science fiction authors, some of which might also be of interest to others. Once in a while I'll post one of them here.

Catherine Lucille Moore (1911-1987)

They found me under a cabbage plant in Indianapolis on the 24th of January, 1911, and was reared on a diet of Greek mythology, Oz books and Edgar Rice Burroughs, so you can see I never had a chance"

Thus starts C.L. Moore her "An Autobiographical Sketch of C.L. Moore" (Fantasy Magazine, June 1936), she then goes on to tell how she left college without a degree during the depression, and then starts talking about her characters, a subject she appears more at ease writing about. The interesting part of reading that short autobiography, is that nowhere does she mention that she is a woman - something quite common back in those days, as female science fiction writers couldn't sell.

Her first sale was "Shambleau" to Weird Tales (November, 1933), which was the first of 13 stories about the outlaw Northwest Smith roaming the spaceways. In the October 1933 issue of Weird Tales, the story "The Black God's Kiss", with the character Jirel of Joiry, appeared. Many acknowledges Jirel of Joiry as the first female role model of the sword and sorcery sub-genre, perhaps of all fantasy, and Marion Zimmer Bradley appropriately dedicated the first Sword and Sorceress anthology to her and her creator.

In 1940 C.L. Moore married Henry Kuttner (April 7, 1915 - February 3, 1958), and much of their work after that were collaborations. Their marriage ended all to shortly, when Kuttner died of a heart attack in 1958.
This marked the end of Moore's writing career. After that she more or less left the science fiction field, only making a few appearances at conventions.

None of Moore's works I've read, be it solo or in collaboration with Kuttner, are what I'd call spectacular writing, but like so much other stuff from back then, they are entertaining light reads, and the Jirel of Joiry stories are interesting from a historical perspective.

C.L. Moore was one of the few female pioneers in science fiction and fantasy, and like her contemporaries Leigh Brackett and to a lesser degree Andre Norton, she is too often forgotten when the pioneers are discussed, or she is just mentioned as an appendix to her husband's name. This is unjust, and I hope that in time she'll be given the respect she deserves.

Sources:
The Encyclopedia of Fantasy by John Clute & John Grant
Echoes of Valor II edited by Karl Edward Wagner (contains among other items "An Autobiographical Sketch of C.L. Moore")

Author profile: H.P. Lovecraft

Note: In the Readerville forum, I've written a few profiles of science fiction authors, some of which might also be of interest to others. Once in a while I'll post one of them here.

Howard Phillips Lovecraft (1890 - 1937)

The Name of Howard Phillips Lovecraft, obscure during his lifetime except to a select circle of devotees, has acquired a measure of posthumous fame.

Thus began J. Vernion Shea his, or her, article "H.P. Lovecraft: The House and the Shadows" (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction - May, 1966). What held true four decades ago, certainly holds true today, perhaps largely due to August Derleth (1909 - 1971), founder of the Arkham Press, of which Shea says:

August Derleth refers to [Lovecraft] as "The late great H.P. Lovecraft" ... Derleth's viewpoint is perhaps partisan, for he was a friend and correspondent of Lovecraft for many years, and is now the executioner of his estate.

H. P. Lovecraft do appear to split his readers into two bipolar groups - Damon Knight (1922 - 2002) referred to him as "a neurasthenic recluse, scholarly, fastidious, and prim".

Perhaps surprisingly, I fall in neither camp. I like Lovecraft's works, and I think he shows flashed of brilliance, but I won't go out of my way to read his works. On the other hand, Lovecraft has become such a part of the sf/fantasy/horror pantheon, that you nearly have to read him; at least to understand all the references to The Great Old Ones and Cthulhu.

H.P. Lovecraft had a very unusual childhood. His mother treated him like a girl until he was at least six, and his father went mad when Lovecraft was two, and died five years later. Unsurprisingly Lovecraft had many problems throughout his life. He started at school when he was eight, but was withdrawn after a year for medical reasons. This didn't happen before he discovered Edgar Allan Poe (1809 - 1849) though.

In high school, Lovecraft had a nervous collapse after 2½ years, and was again withdrawn. Following this, he more or less spent his life at home writing stories, most of which (perhaps luckily) weren't published. He stayed living with his mother until she died when he was 31. A couple of years after her death, in 1924, Lovecraft married Sonia Greene, 7 years his senior, but the marriage broke up in 1926. As The Encyclopedia of Fantasy puts it: "the fact that she was Jewish and he was prone to antisemitic rants cannot have helped".

In 1924 Lovecraft rewrote a story by one C.M. Eddy, "The Loved Dead", for Weird Tales (a magazine founded because of the founder's love of Edgar Allan Poe, and which Lovecraft apparently declined to become editor of). It was a story about a necrophiliac who becomes a sex murderer, and it caused an uproar, forcing Weird Tales to withdraw the issue from the newsstands. Human nature being what it is, the next issue of Weird Tales sold out within hours, inadvertently saving Weird Tales from bankruptcy, which the magazine had been close to, even before the lost sales from the Lovecraft issue.

In his, now famous, short story, "The Call of Cthulhu" (1928), Lovecraft created his now well known myths about the powerful, but evil, beings called The Great Old Ones (or alternatively The Ancient Old Ones) - not to be confused with the two other Lovecraftian groups of beings: The Old Ones and The Great Ones, which I guess proves that whatever Lovecraft's merits, naming ancient powerful races in distinctive ways is not one of them.

Gradually as he grew older, Lovecraft's stories turned less grim, though I doubt anyone would call them light-hearted. This change took away much of the drive behind his stories, and he seemed to be heading towards less spectacular mainstream fantasy, until his early death of cancer March 15, 1937, put an end to that.

After Lovecraft's death, August Derleth published his works under the Arkham house imprint, gradually making Lovecraft a household name in the fantasy/horror genre.

Lovecraft was in many ways typical of many of the authors in the genres at his time. Compare his story with Robert E. Howard (1906 - 1936), and you'll find many similarities, though Lovecraft's upbringing was certainly more weird than mosts'. Not surprisingly many of the authors of the time wrote together, and I've heard and read that Lovecraft's letters (which has been collected) should be well worth the effort reading.

There are several different Lovecraft collections out there, and if you cannot get hold of any containing his complete works, I'd suggest focusing on collections of his stories about The Great Old Ones.

Sources:
The Encyclopedia of Fantasy by John Clute and John Grant.
The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction - May, 1966

The anti-Crichton

Via an email, I belately became aware of this short Salon profile of Kim Stanley Robinson, and his latest trilogy.

There has been a lot of development since the first book in the triology came out in 2004, and the profile speaks of how that effects the reading of Robinson's work.

What does this mean for a science fiction writer exploring the question of how humanity will confront the challenge of climate change? For starters, it results in all three novels becoming so tightly coupled to current circumstances that as I read them I felt as if I was inhabiting some weird limbo land in which it was impossible to distinguish between what Robinson was reporting and what he was prophesying. The climax of "Forty Days of Rain" is a huge storm that floods Washington, D.C., and changes, once and for all, the political calculus of climate change. By the time the novel came out in paperback the next year, Hurricane Katrina was in full effect. Even if we can't directly connect the destructive force of Katrina with rising temperatures, the symbolic power of the disaster is undeniable.

That tight coupling also raises the question of whether the trilogy should even be considered science fiction. Robinson has always focused on ecological themes in his work, and has always made scientists and engineers his main characters. But in the past, he took us to destinations that are clearly out of this world, such as Mars, or so exotic to our daily lives -- Antarctica -- as to be substantially fantastic. This time around, the scientists are at work at the National Science Foundation, holding meetings, reviewing grant proposals, jumping ship from academia to biotech start-ups and back again -- all while hard at work figuring out what can be done to give humanity a chance to survive its own mess. That's hardly science fiction! That was the American Association for the Advancement of Science conference that I attended two weeks ago, where I amused myself by figuring out which of the panel members I listened to matched best with Robinson's characters.

Sounds like Robinson knows his science, and is not affraid to use it in his writing.

Book review: Ender's Game

Note: Given that Ender's Game appear on the "50 Most Significant SF & Fantasy Books of the Last 50 Years" list that is going around at the moment, I thought I'd repost a book review of it that I originally posted in Readerville.

Orson Scott Card: Ender's Game

Science fiction at its very finiest (at east in my oppinion), unless you're into hard science fiction. Then it's probably too lightweight for your taste. As the book won both the Hugo and the Nebula award, I'm apparently not alone in thinking it very good.

This is the story of Andrew Wiggins, called Ender, a brilliant child who, together with a lot of other very intelligent children, is trained to lead the human fighting forces against an alien force.

Card describes the children well, and many of the devices and details in the book are very interesting, esecially the battle room fights ("the enemy is down"), and the non-Ender parts of the story.
Ender's Game doesn't only deal with Ender and his fellow trainees, it also tells about Ender's two siblings, who are equally brilliant, but have personal flaws that make unfittng for officer duty. The siblings use their intelligence to influence world politics through comments on what might in our world be the Internet (Ender's Game was published in 1985, the Internet didn't exist until 1992). This shows that Card sees the potential in new technology, but he isn't unique in that aspect, though he does it well.

Now comes the hard part - would I recommend this book? It depends.
If you don't like science fiction, it might still be worth a shot, but if you don't want to read books by authors whose personal views you disagree with, be aware that Card has more than once expressed views that many, myself including, consider bigoted towarts homosexuality and homosexuals (see Salon article here). These views aren't explicitely expressed in his writing, which is why I can still read and enjoy him, but it has taken some of the pleasure out of reading Card for me.

Greatest science fiction/fantasy short stories

I am a great fan of fantasy/science fiction short stories, and I keep a mental (and sometimes physical) list of the stories I would include in my dream anthology. As a service to others, and because stuff like that should be shared, I'm posting that list here, with comments about some of the stories.

Feel free to disagree with me.

A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller, Jr.

One of the many cases of a short story that has been turned into a book later, but one of the rare case where it actually works, especially since ending of the short story is not the same as the ending of that part of the book.
A Canticle for Leibowitz is a post-holocaust science fiction classic, no matter if we're talking about the book or the short story here.

A Gun for Dinosaur by L. Sprague de Camp

Michael Swanwick was accussed of plagiating this story not that long ago, to which he said that he had neither heard about L. Sprague de Camp nor this story. While it might be possible for someone to write fantasy and science ficition and not know one of the Grand Masters, I somehow doubt it. I like Swanwick's work, but I lost a lot of respect for him as a person because of this.
A Gun for Dinosaur is a classic time travelling story with a twist.

A Pail of Air by Fritz Leiber

Again a post-holocaust story. While some of the premise for the story sounds inplausible to me, the story is still powerful.

A Rose for Ecclesiastes by Roger Zelazny

If I should name my top-10 favorite short stories, this one would be high on the list. The tale of contact between two cultures.
This is not the last Zelazny story on the list - he is one of my favorite short story writers.

Aye, and Gomorrah by Samuel R. Delany

Delany's classic from the Dangerous Visions anthology edited by Harlan Ellison.

Behold the Man by Michael Moorcock

Moorcock is perhaps more well known for his heroic fantasy (Elric, The Eternal Champion etc.), but he is a good short story writer and editor as well.

Born of Man and Woman by Richard Matheson

I remember the first time I read this story, it haunted me for a long time.

Dodkin’s Job by Jack Vance

Who really rules the world?

Fire Watch by Connie Willis

Based on the same premisses as her Doomesday Book, the story is in many ways more powerful than the book.

Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes

Again a classic short story that was succesfully turned into a book. I think the short story is better, but if you can only get hold of the book, then read that.
It was also turned into a movie, Charly, which I haven't seen (though I have it in my collection).

Fondly Fahrenheit by Alfred Bester

Androids and murder doesn't go well together (remember the 1st rule).

Gonna Roll the Bones by Fritz Leiber

If I recall correctly, this story was also part of Ellison's Dangerous Visions anthology.

Home is the Hangman by Roger Zelazny

One of Zelazny's most well known short stories, and while it's not his best in my oppinion, it's still very very good.

Ill Met in Lankhmar by Fritz Leiber

The classic Fafhrd and Grey Mouser short story that started it all.

Jeffty is Five by Harlan Ellison

Ellison is one of the acknowledged masters of short stories, but I haven't read much by him. Something I need to correct, at least judged by this story.

Millenium by Fredric Brown

Fun.

Nightfall by Isaac Asimov

One of Asimov's best stories, which says something. It has again and again been voted the best short story ever, and for good reason.

Ser Visal’s Tale by Stephen R. Donaldson

A story of romance and magic. Fantasy by a writer who usually writes much darker stuff.

The Daughter of Regals by Stephen R. Donaldson

I like the premise of this story, and the writing is good.

The Doors of His Face, the Lamps of His Mouth by Roger Zelazny

The ultimative fishing story.

The Electric Ant by Robert A. Heinlein

Heinlein is more known for his books (and his views), but he has written a few really good short stories. This is one of them.

The Furies by Roger Zelazny

The Last of the Romany by Norman Spinrad

Again an author I haven't read much by, but who I want to read more by.

The Last of the Winnebagos by Connie Willis

The Long Watch by Robert A. Heinlein

Real powerful story, and for once no politics I disagree with.

The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas by Ursula K. Le Guin

I know that some people find the basic premise for this story false, but it's among my favorite short stories.

The Ship Who Sang by Anne McCaffrey

Sad. Was later expanded into a full book by the same name. This was chiefly done by adding some later short stories to the original.

The Veil of Astellar by Leigh Brackett

The Women Men Don’t See by James Tiptree, Jr.

Tiptree wrote some really good short stories, but I think this one might be her best.

We Can Get Them for You Wholesale by Neil Gaiman

A bit more recent than most of the other stories on this list, but I don't think Gaiman needs any introduction.

We Can Remember It for You Wholesale by Philip K. Dick

The movie Total Recall was based, badly, on this short story.

With Folded Hands by Jack Williamson

Can too much technology and free time be bad?

The Sound of Thunder by Ray Bradbury

I read it many many years ago, and it has haunted me ever since. Then, a couple of years ago, I finally came across it again.

The Man Who Walked Home by James Tiptree, Jr.

Again a briliant short story by Tiptree.

There will probably be other posts with more stories and comments in the future. Feel free to add your own recommendations in the comments.