Now It Is Clear

that the one sure way to up your traffic with a blog is to stick XXX in the title.

As I suspected, the fascination with SFnal BDSM imagery has not faded with time. 

I guess I’ll have to do some kind of weekly feature: Feast your eyes on this week’s PROBED BY ALIENS retro cover…

Lots of livejournal coverage of that one.  Makes me wonder a bit about who I’m hanging out with.

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File 770 posted my outrage over twisted history.  Mike makes a distinction between ‘sci fi fanzine’ and ‘fandom’s fanzines’.  Considering my small rant about sci fi below, I guess Mike’s right. 

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Skiffytube has dropped back down in the SF purity ratings game this week.  Not even a full third of the programming is remotely science fiction.  This was accomplihsed by removing all SF content from the channel for an entire day this week.

It’s probably a test.

***

In line with skiffy tube the channel, we now have the skiffy language police. Alistair Reynolds says “So here’s a suggestion. We get over the sci-fi thing. We can still keep talking about SF and science fiction, but we should give up the knee-jerk sense of insult whenever the sci-fi label is applied to what we do.”

Wrong.  This attitude is so dreadfully Neville Chamberlain.  Earlier in the piece Alistair said “To the average person in the street, sci-fi is what we do. It’s what copy-editors will always insist on putting into newspaper articles, even if the original author used the terms SF or science fiction. And guess what, I’m a sci-fi writer. I write sci-fi books. They get shelved in the sci-fi section.”

To them it’s what we do. And to the current administration, what they do at Guantanamo Bay isn’t torture. It’s ‘intensive interrogation’.

SF - SCIENCE FICTION – is about words and language as much as it is about anything else. Any political hack will tell you that once you start letting the other side create the definitions, you’ve lost.

It may be a lost cause – it certainly seems that way – but I’d much prefer to go down fighting than to tuck tail and run.

Maintaining the distinction may actually work in the long run.  Every day I get news feeds from google. One covers the keyword Sci Fi, the other the keyword Science Fiction. The Sci Fi feed produces links to stories that are almost universally crap: ECW discussions, bad anime, clueless ramblings about what star someone hopes to get an autograph from, paranormal television show reviews, self-published novels seeking a reader.   The Science Fiction feed produces links to reviews of real SF literature, commentary about conventions, fanzine reviews, new technologies, serious discussion and some frivolity. (The SF feed gets stories from the San Francisco Chronicle…)

It is clear from two plus years of google newreader feeds that Sci Fi is the great unwashed public’s name of choice for vaguely spacey CRAP. So let them keep it and use it. Let it spread. Because as popular terms spread, they water down and generalize, and I wouldn’t be at all upset if Sci Fi becomes a generalized word for CRAP.

THOSE people who use the word Sci Fi use it to describe all kinds of things that we know aren’t really Science Fiction.  As far as we’re concerned, the word is already synonymous with crap. Give it a few years and everyone will know that it’s synonymous with crap. It won’t be too much longer before THEY will have done the work for us, and there will be a true distinction between Sci Fi (crap) and Science Fiction (that literature thing).

Skiffy Tube is already educating a generation to believe that Sci Fi is profressional wrestling and ghost hunting. Which are decidedly NOT science fiction.  So let’s encourage them to use the word Sci Fi as a stand-in for excrement. Soon, very soon, when we say Science Fiction, they’ll know we’re not talking about Sci Fi.  I live for the day when someone stubs their toe or hits their thumb instead of the nail and shouts out in pain and agony – “OH SCI FI!”

(Apologies to Bill the Sci Fi guy who uses the phrase to suck in unsuspecting wrestling fans and then exposes them to Science Fiction.)

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Here’s a guy who gets EVERYTHING wrong.  From Ansible:  ”From a local-paper story celebrating Garry Jon Simpson’s feat of publishing his sf novel through the ‘author-funded’ Athena Press: ‘I enjoy writing science fiction as you don’t have to do a lot of research for it.’ (Winsford Guardian, 21 August) [SHS]“

Now read it again with my edits: “From a local-paper story celebrating Garry Jon Simpson’s feat of publishing his sci fi novel through the ‘author-funded’ Athena Press: ‘I enjoy writing sci fi as you don’t have to do a lot of research for it.”

See?  Now it actually makes sense and you don’t feel so embarrassed for Garry Jon anymore, do you?

***

Nader coments on the ‘death of science fiction’ here.  I have unformulated objections to his contentions and intend to ramble on about them, probably later on today.

I will say one thing.  I sure hope it’s sci fi that’s dead and not science fiction.

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Speaking of Fascists and Homophobes

I jumped around the net yesterday, looking to see how much wumphus was being caused by Orson’s (third?) anti-gay rant.

I simply plugged “OSC” and “homophobe” into google and quickly got inundated.  Search results appeared from as far back as 2004 to as recently as yesterday.  The sites ranged from the respectable to what some might consider the fringe.

I just plugged the two terms in to see what I would see.  Interestingly, the only defenses that were aired were back-handed compliments – things like “well, the book was good” or “I don’t pay any attention to his politics”.  Quite a few people opined that any enjoyment they had once received from reading his books had now been ruined.

I mentioned in passing the other day that Card’s decision to publish these rants in non-SF related places was obviously at least partially economic.  One has to be blind not to realize that the SF community at large at least tries to be tolerant and all-inclusive.  How well that is actually achieved depends on the era, the issue and the locale as much as anything else.  Not that any SF rag would print such, but it is at least somewhat telling that he doesn’t editorialize on these matters in his own E-zine (Medicine Show).  He’s obviously clued in enough to know that airing this laundry in the SF backyard would not be well received and just might negatively impact sales.

Perhaps the most interesting response I found was this one by localranger.  That article responded to an earlier piece by Card that localranger claims is revelatory of Card’s fascist leanings.  Actually, localranger castigates everyone for not having seen this aspect of Card previously -

“Many people are astonished to learn that the man who wrote about “that poor little boy” is such a rabid Fascist. But Card has always been a rabid Fascist, as well as several other species of asshat, and none of his works demonstrate that better than the sad tale of Ender Wiggin itself.”

You can all add ‘fascist’ to ‘homophobe’ now – unless you consider that redundant.

Localranger then relates the tale of how his friend – a former SFWA member and contemporary of Cards’ – had read Ender’s Game and characterized it as “an apologia for Hitler  … When I was a kid I heard every Sunday how Jesus would forgive Hitler if he really really repented, but I say fuck that. Some things can’t be forgiven or redeemed.”

Interesting.  I’d never heard that one till now.  (Of course, since I’ve refused to read the book, there’s really been no reason for me to bother with its critiques.)  This intrigued me, so I read on.

Localranger relates the tale of how his friend eventually wrote a critical piece expanding  her contentions.  He compares this to another piece of criticism that glancingly rebuts the argument, but points out some additional items of interest.

His friend the critic is inspired to write her piece when she learns that it was likely that the Ender’s Game sequel, Speaker for the Dead, would win the Nebula Award for best novel (it did).  She sums her theory up thusly -

“You are telling me that if I wrote a story where Hitler escapes to Brazil, prevents a massacre of some Native Americans, and then raises a bunch of Jews from the dead, that this would be about parallel?”

The critique was accepted for publication and shortly thereafter, localranger’s friend called to say that she had Orson Scott Card on the phone.  He was trying to persuade her to withdraw the article under threat of rebuttal.  She welcomed the rebuttal.

And then localranger makes a statement that, in light of historical perspective, is the thing that I find most interesting.  He says -

(the publication sent Card’s response to her) “And this is where the story gets strange. Card’s response was completely incoherent. In several places he denied that things are in the novel which are not only in the novel, but (she) had footnoted them with page numbers. “

#

“Then a funny thing happened. The sequel to Speaker never appeared. Speaker ended on a cliffhanger with Ender waiting for a fleet to arrive and shag his sorry ass, and everyone assumed Card would write the third book and go for the Hugo/Nebula Trifecta in 1987. Instead, he started a whole different series and didn’t get around to writing the Ender sequel until 1992. What the hell was up with that?”

…”we speculated on what his motives might be. Her worldview was strongly informed by being raised among fundamentalist Christian nutjobs, which explains part of her anger. She felt Card was building a deliberate fraud, an artifice which seemed to be one thing but was in fact something else, and that when the third book had won its round of awards he would pull the SF community’s pants down and reveal that they had given their imprimateur to one of the most controversial and difficutlt to accept tenets of his religion — which would, of course, be a massive propaganda coup for the Mormon Church.

I tended (and still tend) to agree with this, but if the Hitler Hypothesis offends you I’m afraid I’m about to do her one better. You see, I’m not very convinced that Card even wrote the books.

On the phone and in his incoherent published reply, Card repeatedly shows ignorance of what he himself purportedly wrote. I simply cannot imagine how you could write such a stunningly well crafted piece of work (inasmuch as it is wildly popular and deeply affects people) without being aware of every fibre and splinter of its composition. About the third or fourth time I heard Card say something wasn’t in his book that I knew was, I began to suspect that it was more of a committee effort.” (emphasis mine)

And here is why I find this so interesting.  Back in 1978, 79, 80 or thereabouts, there was a fairly popular fanzine (east coast particularly) that frequently gave a bully pulpit to pros in the field.  One such was written by the editor of one of the professional publications wherein he called out the editors of two other professional publications for printing Card’s stories.  Here’s a bit of it:

“(Respected Professional Editor) has much to answer for in unleashing Orson Scott Card upon science fiction.

I first heard of Card when he sent me three stories a couple of years ago.  His accompanying letter boasted nine story sales and a novel sale to (Respected Professional Editor).  I was impressed by that only until I began to read the first story.

It was awful. It was badly conceived, badly constructed and badly written. The science in it was a joke (a man who had been gelded fathers a child several months later). I tried the second. It was a story about a man who sold the aliens shit. Real human shit. They preferred it with lima beans in it.)

He goes on about the submissions for a bit.

“I was actually shocked. I could not understand how the author of these stories — which were in no way professional on any level–could have sold stories to (Respected Professional Editor). “

He rejects the stories and never receives a submission from Card again.

Then Card wins the Campbell Award. 

The editor/writer of the piece is persuaded to try reading Card again.

“This time I picked one which had been published.  I hoped that this would insure a higher quality.”

The story was printed in a publication edited by Another Respected Professional Editor.  The story chosen is described – “It is, in many respects, anti-sf…”

“Why was this story published? What made (Another Respected Professional Editor) buy it and place it in a volume next to (highly acclaimed authors)?

Could it have been that Campbell Award?…That the winner of the Campbell Award was in fact the worst possible choice of all the nominees?…That Card’s reputation is a flimsy house of cards, waiting for the first critical examination to collapse?”

Back to localranger.

Knowing what he knew about the politics of the SF field at the time, he tries to persuade his friend that it might not be a good idea to publish her critique:

“Still, writing an essay is not the same as getting it published, and I didn’t think anyone would be willing to publish Elaine’s little rant. For one thing, in 1986 Card was more than just a popular writer; he was also a deft political animal. He was in fact a high mucky-muck in SFWA, and word was that bad things happened to people who got on his bad side. Not necessarily Italian mob style bad things, but bad things like not having a chance at awards yourself and publishers shunning you”

The professional editor who rejected Card’s work prior to his winning the Campbell Award left the field about this same time…

TRULY history does give us interesting perspectives, no?

(I’m still seeking out the former editor for permission to reprint his entire piece.)

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Meant to say this the other day -

Jason Sanford brought the updated (2006) version of Earl Kemp’s Who Killed Science Fiction? (for which he won a Hugo in 1961) to our attention, by way of giving him an excuse to say:

“I challenge everyone who moans about the coming death of science fiction short stories to read through this amazing piece of SF history. I think you’ll find that many of the arguments and issues being raised today are the same ones being raised back then, which leads me to suspect that forty years from now people will still be writing and publishing SF short fiction–and moaning about the genre’s coming death.”

I read Kemp’s piece ages ago (well before the update, well after it was originally written) and re-read it on Jason’s suggestion.

I’ll not take sides in the particular fight Jason is picking right now (oh, ok, I will: short fiction IS dying and magazine short fiction is going even faster).  Instead, I’ll ask two of my own:

How many of the names of the writers and editors Kemp solicited responses from in 1961 do you recognize?

How many of them have you read something by?

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Exploding Heads

Is what happens when you wake up at 3:30 am, open up your reader and your blog and discover:

File 770 linked in to the blog.  This is Mike Glyer’s famous fanzine (now in electronic form here and here and really here) about fandom and fannish news.

If I weren’t in the process of moving, I’d be busily scanning a copy or two of the printed, 30 some-odd years old versions and putting them up here to give you all some idea of exactly what a fanzine really looks like (not to mention an idea of exactly how long Mike has been doing this).

BoingBoing mentions are all well and good and far-reaching and instantaneous and all, but a mention in File 770 is like, history man. ” – I mean, I’m no, I can’t – I’m a little man, I’m a little man, he’s, he’s a great man.” (Dennis Hopper, Apocalypse Now)

Maybe Linda Bushyager will resurrect Karass (I’ve got copies of that too to scan) and mention me in there too…

Then there’s this via BoingBoing: Copyright Renewal Notices Now Online

Way cool.  (Repeat after me)  “If I wasn’t moving today” I’d be typing a whole mess of titles into the search engine to check their status.

This has the potential of at least doubling the size of the print section of The Classic Science Fiction Channel.  Speaking of which:

The guy who maintained Phil’s Old Time Radio site over at Multiply.com has disappeared.  Right after I requested that he let me link directly to the radio show episodes he hosted over there (the ones you can’t play on The Classic Science Fiction Channel site).  I copied most of them down to my system and am going to upload to the server and launch them directly from the site, but some I didn’t copy and if Phil doesn’t re-surface, I may not be able to provide active links.  If anyone knows where Phil is, please get in touch. 

To return to File 770 for a moment: I’d have done a more visual presentation of Hugo Voting methods – if I wasn’t moving.

I also failed to mention SF Awards Watch, which just so happens to have a link to an article by Glyer currently running, which concerns predicting the Hugo winner for best novel and the divergence between the Locus Award, the Neblua and the Hugo.  Mike invites speculation as to why this is.

A lack of sweeps (winning all three) – I have no idea.  On the other hand: 29 of the 37 Hugo winners since 1971 (the first year all three awards were given out) have won two of those awards. So its a pretty good bet that either the Locus or Nebula winner will be taking home a Hugo, which means that this year either The Yiddish Policeman’s Union or The Yiddish Policeman’s Union has, based on historical statistics, a better than 78% chance of winning. 

On the other hand, Brasyl, Rollback, The Last Colony and Halting State (the other novel nominees – which doesn’t mean unusual nominees, it signifies length in this case) are all being given away as a free ebook (to current WSFS members), while TYPU is not.  Hmmm.

No, the authors of those books are not ganging up on Chabon in an attempt to skew the vote.  They just weren’t able to get permission to distribute a free e-copy.  (Rigggggght…, lol)

I could easily continue to do a second info dump at this time, more neat stuff (nifty keen even) keeps flooding in every second, but I have to stop somewhere, so I’ll close with these programming notes: I’m busily setting up internally hosted files of the “bad links” on the radio show section of TCSFC site, but today Comcast will be moving my service access from the old house to the new house, so these fixes may take some time.

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