I really hate these things...

....but I love Meme Therapy, so here goes:

1. One book that changed your life?

The Illuminatus! Trilogy by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson. I started the book a lapsed Christian and ended it an atheist (now an agnostic, which was more in keeping with the point of the book, I think). Really changed my life and helped me deprogram from 12 years of fundamentalist Christian education. That I was 23 when I read it will make sense to those in the know.

2. One book you have read more than once?

My favorite book of all time, The World According to Garp by John Irving. One of the few books I’ve read twice, and the book that made me want to get into this whole writing/publishing life to begin with (though I saw the movie first). Incidentally, either book in question 1 & 2 could be substituted for the other.

3. One book you would want on a desert island?

The complete Time Life Do-It-Yourself series. Don't own that now, but could see how it could have come in handy on Gilligan's Ilsand. Failing that, the Baroque Cycle, since it would take me years to get through.

4. One book that made you laugh?

Hitchhiker's Guide.

5. One book that made you cry?

The Child Garden, by Geoff Ryman.

6. One book you wish had been written?

Babylon 5. Really, a five-book series. As it was meant to be, without network interference or absentee actors necessitating plot changes.

7. One book you wish had never had been written?

Revelations.

8. One book you are currently reading?

Jim Butcher's Proven Guilty.

9. One book you have been meaning to read?

Greg Keyes' The Charnel Prince. Or John Scalzi's The Ghost Brigades.

10. Now tag five people.


David Louis Edelman
Chris Roberson
Joel Shepherd
Eric Spitznagel
Sean Williams

Judging Books by their Covers, Part II

In a recent blog post entitled “Judging Books by their Covers,” I expressed the need for a regular column that would discuss the individual merits of contemporary SF&F cover illustrations, talking candidly about what works and what doesn’t, new trends and directions in illustration and design, etc… After all, cover art is the front line of bookselling —you never get a second chance to make a first impression and all that —and as much concern as there is these days for growing the genre, combating the graying of the field, yada yada yada, more discussion of what works and what doesn’t in promoting the books themselves right off the shelves would be of benefit to readers, publishers, art directors, artists, and wanna be artists everywhere. Finally, more acknowledgment for the wonderful illustrators in our field, the genre where illustrated art plays a larger role than any other, seems long overdue.

Now, as the editorial director of a book line, and one who takes a very heavy hand in the selection of cover illustrators and the overall art direction (Prometheus’ art department is wonderful to put up with me), I am limited in my ability to be critical. I can’t come forward and say “this cover put out this month by this rival house didn’t work” lest it look as though I am trying to unfairly disparage a competitor. It would be impossible for me to talk about the difficiencies of the cover without it being conflated with the book itself. I do think some independent party should be doing this however, for the benefit of all. If not damning, at least discussing whether an individual cover achieves its aims, why, how or how not.

Filmmaker Terry Gilliam said some years back that Hollywood was responsible for training audiences in how to watch films and that their pursuit of LCD filmmaking and the broadest possible appeal had effectively killed the smart, literate filmmaking era of the 70s. Now, I have opinioned elsewhere that I think this tide is turning, but the point that the producers and aggregators of content have a responsibility to their audience in terms of raising or lowering the bar of what they offer is well-made. In the same way, I think that some education on the principals and importance of cover illustration is called for and thus, am thrilled with Irene Gallo’s new blog. But Irene, as art director at Tor, is also limited in what she can say as well. (Though perhaps less so, by having such experience as well as having overseen so many talented artists).

Now and so, while I won’t use this forum to be critical of poor work, I have no problems praising the good stuff produced at competing houses. In part, because I don’t believe that we are competing houses. I may be naïve, but I maintain that our competition is not with each other, but with other media, with DVDs, TV, cinema, videogames, and a general apathy to books, and that – just as a rising tide lifts all boats – every single book of quality published contains the potential to grow and expand the readership, just as it contains the potential to (a la Gilliam’s statement above) educated the existing readership in a further appreciation and understanding of quality. The more good books that are published, the more good books are read, the greater the audience for good books, natch.

All of which is a long way of saying that, in the spirit of the sentiments above, I was mightily impressed with the covers of Jonathan Strahan’s two upcoming Best of volumes. These are both reuses of images originally commishioned for other works, but glacing at them on Jonathan's blog yesterday, I was struck instantly at how well both art and design came together to effectively communicate what I think should be the goal of good SF&F illustration and design - that of managing to intrigue a wider audience without sacrificing the genre-elements of the piece. (No surprise that both images are from the uber-talented John Picacio either.) Both of these books look like they promise mature, intelligent, sophisticated reading material, while at the same time being boldly unashamed of their science fiction and fantasy content. Bravo!

The State of Science Fiction, Part II

Comments on my previous post "The State of Science Fiction" inspired enough of a response on my part to warrant spinning off a second blog entry out of the burgeoning comment thread.

Specifically, in response to Paul Cornell's comment that "movie producers don't mind being 'science fiction', while TV producers do. That's because: movie audience, lots of young men. TV audience: lots of old women," Ian McDonald offered the following:

"Paul's right about the difference between TV and Film production, in that film is very much a medium of genres whereas TV always has it's eye on overall network viewership (there's an immediate 'defect' mechanism on every remote control: there's always an immediate alternative, and increasingly TV is splintering into a long tail of niche digital channels) and network demographics. Asimov's hasn't put Kirstin KatherineRusch's article on where she sees the future of SF going --she sees the salvation of the genre in YA-style 'Star Wars-esque' space opera with cheerable heroes and booable villains (OK, I'm not being whiolly objective here). Me, I see the very thing you're talking about in your post as the future for SF: the genre I feel is going through a period of uncertainty --fantasy is kicking its butt all over the bookstores-- where core question are being asked: what is SF? What makes it SF? What is it for? What is it for now, in July 2006? What is a 21st century SF like --and I, for one, don't think it's necesarily back-to-basics space opera (though there must always be some of that, because it's fun) because that has been so well colonised by the visual media. Things are moving, I think, when you can quote something like JJ Abram's comment. There is a mainstream audienceout there who will enjoy SF minus the geek factor --how do we write books for them?"

Which prompted my long-winded response:

Ian, you are speaking at the heart of my primary concerns these days. The disparity between SF cinema and SF literature has been one of my chief obsessions for years, enough so that I edited a nonfiction anthology on the subject. But I think that - do in part to the Long Tail economics that you reference, in part do to the decreased cost of filmmaking, and in part to the increased importance of secondary markets like the DVD boxes set (see Steven Johnson's Everything Bad is Good for You, we're seeing the rise of the niche and an increase in "narrative complexity" - as well as a general increase of everything, which means that quality SF&F is beginning to emerge - whether we're talking about accurate blockbuster renderings of The Lord of the Rings on one end of the scale, or low budget "low-fi, sci-fi" like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind or Primer on the opposite side.

There's a great quote from David Foster Wallace which I encountered in Chris Anderson's The Long Tail which says:“TV is not vulgar and prurient and dumb because the people who compose the audience are vulgar and dumb. Television is the way it is simply because people tend to be extremely similar in their vulgar and prurient and dumb interests and wildly different in their refined and aesthetic and noble interests.”

And I think we're seeing, if not the end of that - Fear Factor isn't going anywhere - the end of the era where that is everything and all. In the same way, perhaps the macro-category of science fiction will survive by migrating into niche categories - I haven't seen Rusch's article (when is it out?), but the Space Opera which she endorses (and which John Ordover claimed was the future in his Campbell conference talk) may be one end, mainstream appropriate of SF into works like Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go and Niffenegger's The Time Traveler's Wife may be another, and rigorously extrapolated, 21st century relevant SF such as your latest represents may be a third. I think that, in edition to the Star Wars style space opera that Rusch mentions, writers like John Scalzi and Chris Roberson also represent the future of the genre. I see both writers as good "gateway" authors, stepping stones between Star Wars and more rigorous fare. Roberson, in particular, always underpins extremely rigorous physics to his adventure tales, while the upfront narrative is grounded in accessible prose and engaging characters.

Star Wars will, of course, take care of itself, but the million dollar question is how do we drive consumers who enjoy films like Gattacca, Primer, Eternal Sunshine etc and readers of Time Traveler's Wife, Never Let Me Go etc. to writers like yourself, Paul McCauley, Jon Courtenay Grimwood, Michael Swanwick, China Mieville, et al.

I'm personally feeling very vindicated by the new Batman Begins, because this is the Batman I've been insisting I've been reading about on and off since I was six, but it's taken decades and decades for the rest of the larger world to see the Caped Crusader as anything more than Adam West, Super Friends, and Michael Keaton. There are, of course, two Batmen - the Dark Knight that 30 plus year olds read about, and the kid-friendly cartoon character used to sell a buttload of plastic toys.

In the same way, there are at least two SFs, conflated in a good deal of the minds of the wider world with the lesser SF. But, as I said in the post, I think the tides are turning. It hasn't been that long - merely a few decades - since rock stars appropriated the titles and themes of SF novels for their music and SF writers were respected authorities in news shows and documentaries. The perception that it is purely escapism is a recent phenomena, one end of a pendulum that probably swings back and forth, back and forth, beginning with HG Wells on one end and Plan 9 from Outer Space on the other. I see the pendulum swinging back our way now, coupled with a rise in interest in the space program (re: the recent Titan probe), the dot com billionaire's with their own rockets (Virgin Galactic, et al), the aforementioned USA today article, the increased "gadgetization" of 21st century life, and the growing political/environmental awareness of the bloggosphere. All of which leads me to conclude that science fiction shall rise again, yee-haw.

Update: The amazing group blog Meme Therapy, which is fast becoming my favorite blog on the web, weighs in on the debate retro-preemptively, with a Brain Parade question, "Science Fiction often gets a bad rap. Do you agree with this statement? And if so, who or what is to blame?"

As always, the brilliant John Scalzi demonstrates that rather than going to all the trouble to formulate my own opinions, I can shortcut the labor by just appropriating his: "What I would love to see is SF lit make a play for mainstream readers, by any means necessary. Put the books in covers the mundanes can grok; give them some stories they don't feel like they're missing the joke on; fight to get stories where people are instead of where we wish they would go. Of course, it's easy to say this and more difficult to do. But the fact is: SF has a fine image. It's up to SF literature to get a piece of it."

Excellent opinions also from Paul Levinson, Jeff Patterson, and Suan Marie Groppi.

The State of Science Fiction

I've given two talks in three weeks on the "state of science fiction," one at the aforementioned Campbell Conference and one in New York this past Tuesday at a private luncheon hosted by a new literary agency, South Seas Solutions. This, coupled with the fact that I'm working up my thoughts for what I hope will be a witty, erudite, and thoughtful introduction to Fast Forward 1: Future Fiction from the Cutting Edge, means I've been thinking a lot about current trends and directions.

One thing that I've said repeatedly over the last few weeks is that all these denials of SF in the media, these Judas Iscariot's of cinema who proclaim "yes my film is about robots and cyborgs and big space battles and genetically engineered moon cows, but it's actually a drama about people and relationships and the hazards of dairy products" are actually a last gasp of a dying perspective. In this introduction to The Year's Best Science Fiction: 23rd Annual Collection, Gardner Dozois notes that 8 of the top highest grossing films of 2005 were genre-themed, 13 of the top 20. Which means that at its broadest spectrum, the public has no problem with science fiction. TV Guide will certainly tell you that a popular SF show on the cover moves serious copies. And the San Diego Comic Con just had a record attendance of 140,000 people. It's almost as though we are becoming a society of SF&F fans all worried what the other guy thinks and apologizing to each other for our tastes when the other guy is a fan too.

I've been thinking for some time now that this knee-jerk reaction to being labeled "sci-fi" was on the way out and that we would start to see some mainstream re-embracing of the category. Now, USA Today has just given me the first positive proof of this. Look at this list of Hollywood types who aren't denying that what they do is SF, in an article in a major paper that doesn't use the word "geek" or "nerd."

And look at this quote from Lost producer JJ Abrams, who says that science fiction "is an extrapolated version of the present. If you're at war, or you find out the government is spying on you, or if you feel your civil rights are being abrogated, it can provoke you as a writer. Science fiction is never about paradise found. It stems from trouble in our own world. The best kind of storytelling is when writers turn a mirror on ourselves, and that mirror shows us a lot of conflict."

Most interesting, the article equates the fiction of HG Wells & Ray Bradbury with Star Trek, while being clear that by "science fiction" what isn't meant is "science-fiction-cum-fantasy" work like Star Wars. Obviously, this is just one journalist's opinion, and Hollywood can turn on a dime when the almighty dollar decrees differently, but for today I am most gratified.

2006 Campbell Conference

Okay, I am way late on blogging about the Campbell conference. And now my new/old friend Robert J Sawyer has beat me to it, and most elegantly too. But here goes...

The conference was held July 5-9, 2006, at the J. Wayne and Elsie M. Gunn Center for the Study of Science Fiction at the University of Kansas. I came in on Wednesday night, to sit in on the writing workshop held in advance of the awards weekend, and in good ol' workshop tradition, was taken out by a group of students for too many beers on my first night. But I had a wonderful time - thanks guys. You are all wonderful, and I hope I didn't talk your ear off too much about Robyn Hitchcock. Not my fault they had him on the jukebox.

As Rob reports, one of the best aspects of the week was the ability to have ongoing, weekend-long discussions with a few interesting people, as opposed to the chaos of conventions where you have a hundred five-minute discussions. Rob, Paolo Bacigalupi, and I really hit it off, and the conference wouldn't have been the same without them there. As Rob writes on his blog, "Indeed, Lou, Paolo, and I were so simpatico about what's right and wrong with SF, and about how the art form should be practiced, that it was like I'd found two brothers I didn't know I'd had." Rob, I am both deeply honored by and in complete agreement with your sentiments. And congratulations to you both on your respective awards. (Btw, Paolo has a new blog, Windup Stories. Stop by and say hello.)

It was also wonderful to meet in the flesh Pyr author George Zebrowski, along with Pamela Sargent. George and I have had many long telephone conversations, but this was the first time we'd met in person. George is an extremely good man, and his keynote address (we each delivered a speech on Thursday night) was a stirring talk on the importance of integrity in writing and publishing. George is a fierce defender of SF as art for art's sake. As he says you "tighten your belt" and shoot for excellence without compromise or surrender. Counterbalancing this, was Saturday's talk by John Ordover, who argued that science fiction couldn't achieve commercial success comparable to that enjoyed by fantasy novels unless it was willing to forgo innovation in favor of tried and true tropes. Ordover felt that fantasy was accessible because it was instantly familiar and that SF's greatest strength - its commitment to the new and unknown - was its greatest handicap. He argued for a return to Star Wars style space opera, though his "balanced porfolio" analogy made more sense to me that the rest of his talk.

Which, obviously, generated some controversy. Personally, I'm closer to George (and Rob, Jim Gunn, et al.) than John, though I still maintain that a work can be both commercially successful and artistically meaningful. I cite our own River of Gods as an example, as well as Richard Morgan's Altered Carbon and most anything by Charles Stross. I would also suggest that the previous age of lowest common denominator entertainment reaching the widest audience is fading, as online commerce drives more and more consumer eyeballs away from the short selection available in traditional retail and promoted by traditional marketing to the near-infinite and user driven choice offered on the internet (a la Chris Anderson's The Long Tail) and that just as the growing importance of the DVD boxed set has raised the overall narrative complexity of television, so to will quality in writing out in the minds of the consumer in publishing as well. But I digress...

Suffice to say it was a fantastic time. I hope what I had to say held meaning. Certainly, I learned a lot myself from all the discussions. Thank you to Jim Gunn and Chris McKitterick for having me, and to all the students, guests and participants. I would come back in a heartbeat.

Judging Books by their Covers

Personally, I judge books by their covers all the time. I'll be picking up Liz Wiliams' The Demon and the City, which I have absolutely no time to read anytime soon (not that I wouldn't love to) specifically for the extraordinary Jon Foster artwork. Whereas there is a collection out from a golden age writer that I've always wanted to read that I simply will not buy because I cannot get passed the God-awful packaging. I know, I know. But I just can't do it.

I'd like to see more reviews take the art into question. Or else, I'd like to see more reviews of art, some thoughtful discussion of what works and what doesn't. Maybe a monthly column that discusses the merits of new works (and trends) as they emerge. There is a move, for instance, away from illustration towards design afoot in publishing right now, though I tend to side with the thoughts expressed in John Scalzi's post which praised John Picacio for producing cover illustrations which don't "hide the science fiction or fantasy elements of the work, but they do present them in a way that includes (and entices) non-readers of SF/F rather than excludes them." This is what we've tried for with most of our Pyr covers, and which I think works beautifully with a cover like River of Gods (by the brilliant Stephan Martiniere, currently a Hugo nominee).

So I am thrilled to see two new voices join the bloggosphere. One is artist John Picacio, whose blog On the Front, debuted last week. The other is Tor art director Irene Gallo. Not only does it feature a profusion of pretty pictures, but The Art Department contains some sound advice that every beginning illustrator should follow. Only a few days old and already I'm hooked.

Lou vs. the Media Tie-In

I just got my contributor's copies today to BenBella's Star Wars on Trial, the latest in their "Smart Pop" series, and it's given me an excuse to address something that's been worrying at me for a bit.

I'm quite fond of BenBella's Smart Pop books, and quite honored to have been asked to contribute to four of them, their The Man From Krypton, Star Wars on Trial, the forthcoming So Say We All (about Battlestar Galactica), and an upcoming Spider-Man title. I enjoy writing these essays, and I hope to write many more. I also think that Star Wars on Trial is a very good book, possibly one of the most fun books they've put together so far.

So why the worry? The nature of the book is that writers are split into "witnesses" for the defense or the prosecution, themselves represented by Matthew Stover and David Brin. The book is divided into eight sections, looking at the politics of Star Wars, its portrayal of women, its lack of real science, its impact on the field, etc... The back and forth effectively encapsulates the heated emotion all Star Wars debates stir up and has all the juicy fun of a good flame war.

Now, I've got a lot to say about Star Wars, pro and con, a lot of which can be summed up with a not-uncommon deep affection for the original trilogy and an utter disgust with the new one (though I'm less thrilled with Return and quite enjoyed Revenge). And I've got a lot of real problems with some of Lucas' choices in the latter films - something I share with, oh, most of the English speakng world. But the topic I drew was the media tie-in and whether it was good or bad for the genre.

Probably because my head was up my butt and I wasn't paying attention, I didn't quite grok the us vs. them nature of the book and what I set out to write was a much more balanced look at the issue, an attempt to ask the question "are media tie-ins harmful?," rather than answer it outright. To that end, I included quotes from a number of different writers in the field. Realizing into the process that I was supposed to be more emphaticly one-sided in my opinion, my essay was steered towards a more forceful attack on the media tie-in (and even paired back eventually from what you see in print). Now, when I say "steered" I am not saying editorial involvement from above altered my words. I altered them to give BenBella more of what they were looking for and what I had agreed to do. But the result is that I feel I have taken (or will seem to have taken) a strong Lou vs. Media stance that is not entirely how I feel.

Lest you think I'm backtracking, I am not wild about media tie-ins. I don't believe they draw readers into the rest of the field, nor appreciably affect the number of readers a writer gets for his non-media tie-in work. My own sense from working in media as a journalist is that readers of media tie-in works are there for the media, not the writer. There are superstars of the tie-in (R.A. Salvatore for Forgotten Realms of course), but these are different readerships and I don't think if all the Star Wars books disappeared tomorrow that those readers would rush out and pour their dollars into purchases of Accelerando or Starship:Mutiny. And maybe this doesn't matter.

I've bought the occassional Doctor Who book in the past, don't fault my friend Sean Williams for his successful Star Wars trilogy, and am happy for Chris Roberson's upcoming X-Men novel (the cover of which, by John Picacio, will undoubtably blow us all away). I don't fault anyone for writing or reading a media tie-in. Sure, I wish we lived in a world where the cinema of science fiction more closely resembled its literature and where popularity followed quality more closely than it does. Yes, I am aware that there are books of quality written as media tie-ins, and, ironically, I suspect that a lot of Star Wars novels are better than Star Wars itself.

And I think that railing against Star Wars is raging into a wind.

But a few months ago, I gave a young man who only reads Forgotten Realms novels a copy of Sean Williams' fantasy, The Crooked Letter. The next time I saw him, he said he finished the book in a rush, that he couldn't put it down, and that it was "the smartest fantasy he ever read." He said that he "didn't know that fantasy could be this good," and that he was telling all his friends about it and was anxious for the next book in the series.

As I try to say in my essay, I don't object that the media tie-in exists, but that it is so often conflated in the minds of the general public with the rest of the science fiction and fantasy genre. I do not fault you if you read them or write them, and perhaps you write them well, but for my part, it is the rest of the genre that I will strive to proselytize and uphold. Star Wars, after all, doesn't need my help, but there is a lot of smart pop out there which does.

Mundane Me

The keynote address I gave at the Campbell conference has apparently been dehydrated and reduced to an easily-compressed powder, uploaded on Mundane-SF. If you add water to these notes, perhaps my full speech will re-emerge. Hi Trent!

Future So Bright We're Quaking

I'm back from the 2006 Campbell Conference and Awards Banquet, about which more shortly, but first, some really good news on the Pyr horizon.

Barnes & Nobles' Paul Goat Allen just sent an email informing us of his upcoming review of Infoquake and interview with author David Louis Edelman. The review & interview will appear in August in the B&N sff newsletter as well as on B&N's Science Fiction/Fantasy homepage, and I will certainly point out a link to it then. But for now, I'm thrilled to report that Paul says:

"Brilliantly blending the cutthroat intrigues of the high-tech business world with revolutionary world building, Edelman could quite possibly be the illegitimate lovechild of Donald Trump and Vernor Vinge. Infoquake is one of the most impressive science fiction debuts to come along in years - highly recommended."

Obviously, we are thrilled with the comparison to Vinge which joins prior comparisons to Charles Stross and Cory Doctorow. Not bad company to keep! Meanwhile, an interview with Edelman is already up at the blog Meme Therapy, where Edelman explains:

"When I started writing Infoquake, I gave myself a challenge. If you had virtually unlimited computing power and a virtually unlimited supply of energy, what could you do? Keep in mind that neither of these things is an impossibility. Moore's Law continues to predict exponential growth in computing power, and there are all kinds of breakthroughs in solar energy just around the corner."

Finally, Paula Guran blogs about her humorous encounter with Edelman and Yours Truly at the recent Book Expo America, then goes on to kindly praise Infoquake on her blog Dark Echo:

"It is sf, yes, but sf about cut-throat business practices and competitive programming (a way-cool concept of sorta programming in thin air), with an endearingly sociopathic protagonist, and lotsa, lotsa nifty techno-supposings, and an interesting concept of guild/spiritual family/religion/union groups in a technocracy. Highly imaginative use of the current Zeitgeist."

I'm in Therapy!

Hey, lookee!
My round-robin answer to the question "What new formats, subgenres or media would you like to see more science fiction in?" has just showed up at my favorite new blog, Meme Therapy. Also included in this Brain Parade, Chris Roberson, Tim Zinsky and "JP."

I Don't Think We're in Kansas Anymore

I'm traveling shortly to the University of Kansas, where I am very honored to be one of the special guests of the 2006 Campbell Conference and Awards Banquet, held this year from July 6th to 9th. I'll be sitting in on the last days of their writer's workshop, and will be one of two speakers giving the keynote address (the other being George Zebrowski) on the state of the science fiction novel, and taking part at the bookstore signing at Oread Bookstore as well. Looking forward to seeing everyone there.

The Schedule of Events:

Thursday, July 6, 7:30 pm, Alderson Auditorium
• Lou Anders and George Zebrowski present on the state of the science-fiction novel.

Friday, July 7, 10:00 am, First Floor Lobby of Ellsworth Hall
• Interviews with our special guests.

Friday, July 7, 6:00 pm, Kansas Room, KU Memorial Union
• Awards banquet for John W. Campbell Award for best science fiction novel of the year and the Theodore Sturgeon Award for best short science fiction of the year.
• Informal off-campus reception to follow.

Saturday, July 8, 9:00 am, Malott Room, KU Memorial Union
• Round-table Campbell Conference discussion.

Saturday Lunch, KU Memorial Union
• Registered Conference attendees receive an informal, complimentary lunch.

Saturday, July 8, 12:45 pm, Oread Bookstore, KU Memorial Union
• Mass signing by special guests.

Saturday, July 8, 2:00 pm, 100 Smith Hall
• Interviews and talks with our special guests.
• John Ordover presents about the current state of the science-fiction novel.
• Informal off-campus reception in the evening.

Sunday, July 9, 9:00 am, First Floor Lobby of Ellsworth Hall
• Meet the award winners and other attending guests!

SciFi Magazine's Got You Covered

The latest issue of SciFi Magazine has a fantastic review of Cover Story: The Art of John Picacio.

"John Picacio, whose gorgeous book covers utilize materials from standard acrylic paint to found objects employed as elements in complex mosaics, eschews the obvious. The results are sometimes haunting, sometimes witty, sometimes ornate and sometimes startlingly simple, but almost always achingly beautiful. Among the best in this oversized collection, best appreciated by readers willing to page through it slowly....The book closes with a lengthy interview, in which, among other things, Picacio describes his opposition to lazy illustrations that merely duplicate events or places from a given story. He says such covers steal from readers' right to envision such moments in their own imagination. And he may be right. But from the evidence on display, Picacio has plenty of imagination to spare. He doesn't need to steal a thing."

R.I.P.

Jim Baen, editor, publisher, and founder of Baen Books, died yesterday at the age of 62. He suffered a stroke on June 12, and never recovered from his coma. Very sad.

Not to everyone's taste but wildly popular with those they target, I don't own any Baen Books that aren't by Heinlein, but I've been very impressed through the years with many of Baen's innovative strategies, particularly with their enlightened view of electronic texts.

What's more, Toni Weisskopf and David Drake have suggested that people who wish to make a memorial donation "purchase copies of The World Turned Upside Down and donate them to libraries or teenagers of their acquaintance." What a wonderful way to be remembered.

By the Way - Scalzi interviews Edelman

John Scalzi, about whom one cannot say enough nice things, interviews David Louis Edelman on his AOL blog By the Way today. David's debut novel, Infoquake, should be appearing in stores any day now and is already shipping from Amazon. Meanwhile, for excerpts, podcasts, and exclusive background material, check out the Infoquake website.

Keeping it Real, Gradisil, & Buying American

The latest issue of Cheryl Morgan's wonderful Emerald City is online, and this one includes two very enthusiastic reviews I'd like to call attention to. One is by Karina Meerman and is of Justina Robson's latest, Keeping it Real. The other is by Joe Gordon and is of Adam Roberts' latest, Gradisil.

Both reviews are of the UK editions of these novels, both of which were published by Gollancz and edited by Simon Spanton, the man who first brought you Richard Morgan's Altered Carbon and whose editorial judgement I am coming to greatly admire. In fact, I've yet to read a novel Simon selected that I don't think is positively brilliant. Both these books, certainly, are garnering wonderful reviews in places like Locus, SFX, Starburst, SFFWorld...

Now Keeping it Real and Gradisil will be coming out from Pyr in our Spring/Summer 2007 season. We expect to use a variant of Larry Rostant's fantastic cover for our edition of Keeping it Real, whereas the marvelous Stephan Martiniere has already turned in his artwork for Gradisil, to my and Adam's considerable delight, and I am anxious for the day when I can debut it here.

And speaking of that day...

If you live in the United Kingdom or one of the territories served by Gollancz, then I urge to rush out and buy these books right now. Justina's novel is the most over-the-top fun I've had with a book in long time, crazy Matrix action, cyborg-on-elf sex, blood sugar sex magick and rock'n'roll. I've not gasped for air in sheer delight at anything like this since Michael Swanwick's Darger and Surplus tales, and I've not seen anyone before exhibit the brazen chutzpah in takes to write total Power Rangers-style action sequences with such a straight face. And being Justina Robson, there's also a lot of brilliant speculation amid the fun and genuine troubled-girl angst. Think Robocop asking "Do I look fat in these jeans?" Whereas Adam, who has absolutely astounded me since I first read On, who is one of the smartest individuals it has ever been my priviledge to know, and who writes big concept SF of the Arthur C Clarke variety only filtered through a level of literate prose & multi-layered narrative that would do Theodore Sturgeon or Samuel Delany proud, has written a birth-of-a-nation epic that may be his finest achievement to date. Gradisil succeeds on both the macro and micro level, presenting a very convincing portrait of the decades just passed our current wave of non-NASA space exploration, where every dot com billionaire has his own rocket program, to the end of the 21st century when near-earth-orbit becomes a practical destination for people to go en masse, coupled with a very personal tale of revenge threaded through one family tree. Political satire and Greek tragedy. What's not to love? So yes, if you live in the UK or thereabouts, go pick up the Gollancz versions now with my blessing.

But if you live here in North American, can I ask you a favor, on behalf of myself, Pyr, and both of these authors? Please wait for our edition. I didn't used to think that it mattered. Sometimes I liked the UK cover better than the US, or I wanted a hardcover when the US publisher only brought the book out in trade paperback or mass market. Or I didn't want to wait. So yes, if you went through my own library, you'd see a few UK editions acquired in years past. But now I know better. There are a long list of deserving British and Australian authors that you don't see over here. There are others that you don't see here any more. Science fiction is not such a big market that the few hundred editions that slip through the specialty shops, or get shipped from Amazon.co.uk don't make a difference. Oh, if you collect the UK versions of Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels, you probably aren't really going to make a dent in his sales, but for a lot of these writers, particularly of hard, literate SF, it does matter. This is Adam's first book in the US - something that many people, not just Yours Truly - think is long overdue, and how our edition of Gradisil does will very substantially effect whether his next work of sheer genius comes out in the US or not, either from Pyr or someone else. We're very fortunate to have Ian McDonald's magnificent River of Gods, which, unless you've been living under a rock, you know is being touted everywhere as being a monumental, landmark work, one of those once-in-a-decade achievements, a "must read," but Ian is an example of a writer who was out of the US market for several years before finding his way back in. He's very glad to be back, and we are priviledged to have facilitated his return. So my long-winded point is, if you admire these writers, and you want to see more of their work over here, please show your support for the US editions. Every person makes a difference. And hey, I'm not just talking about our authors and pimping our own books. This applies across the board. Go buy Bantam's edition of Jon Courtenay Grimwood's masterpiece; go pick up the Night Shade edition of the latest Iain M. Banks; get the Del Rey edition of that Hal Duncan book you've heard so much about. If you're a collector, and you've got to have that UK first edition - if the work means that much to you - consider buying both. Hey, I've got all three of China Miéville's Bas Lag novels in their original UK hardcovers, absolutely, but I've got the Del Rey trade paperbacks too.

I appreciate your indulgence with this post. I've seen enough people posting on blogs lately, asking "Why can't I buy the UK version? Why should I wait?" You can make up your own mind, but I think a lot of people don't actually know the impact of buying outside their territory, and I wanted to set the record straight. And for those of you who've been supporting us when we bring you overseas talent, my deep and sincere thanks. There's a lot more where that came from.

That Skiffy Smell

I have to say this: I really, really liked Scott Edelman's recent SciFi Weekly editorial, "Erasing the Smell of Sci-Fi." Scott tracks all the recent tv personalities, producers and actors, who have been bending over backwards in interviews to SciFi.com to distance their obviously science fiction-themed shows from science fiction, on the basis that it's not SF because it's good. Or about characters. Or what have you.

He quotes Carlton Cuse, show runner and executive prodcer of Lost, who understands that genre does not inherently dictate quality or lack thereof, but is a form, into which quality writing can fit, as well as it can fit anywhere:

"No matter what genre you write in, ultimately the stories are reducible to stories about the human condition. And I think people forgot that you could do that in the science-fiction genre. Stephen King is a great example of someone who writes books, for instance, that are very high-concept, and maybe they're horror or fantasy, but when you get right down to it, it's really about the people that populate those books. That's what's engaging about him as a writer. ... You could do that in a hospital show. You could do it in a law show. You could do it in a cop show. But hey, you could also do that in a science-fiction show. And they seem to think that you couldn’t until this show came along."

Format-prejudice is ugly. There are moments of real beauty and insight on Sesame Street. And I have seen some terrible Shakespeare in my time. The muse can strike anywhere, and most of any genre (including the "genre" of mainstream literature) is bad, with only a tip at the top of the iceberg that is truly something to behold.

I don't like the move right now to make "science fiction" a dirty word, to repackage science fiction books to look bland and nongenre, and I don't think people should be embarrassed about liking SF. Oddly, it seems similar to the way people (especially in the media) are embarrassed by the tag "liberal" these days. I want to scream that it was liberals that freed the slaves, emancipated women, enacted child labor laws, ended segregation.... Just as it was the vision of science fiction writers that built the world we live in today, because you have to imagine something before you can begin figuring out how to put it together. We are embarrassed by its most forward-looking thinkers, when we should be celebrating them.

Update: Can I just add how much I am starting to like the blog Meme Therapy? It's mix of science and science fiction is spot-on important. Here, a quote from geologist Robert Peckyno, supports what I'm trying to say above:

" I think that science fiction is critical to progress in science. Visionaries who radically change the world are often thought of as crackpots and fiction has been the inspiration for many great ideas. Tsoilkovsky, Goddard, Oberth, Von Braun and Korolev are collectively the foundation of rocketry today - every one mentioned being inspired by the Jules Verne story 'From the Earth to the Moon.' Arthur C. Clarke suggested orbiting relay satellites allowing world wide communication in 1945 - decades later it arrived. Go to any NASA facility and you will find desks with model 'Enterprises' and 'Starfuries.' Science fiction helps to provide the dreams and puzzles that todays engineers and scientists try to bring to life."

Second Update: The wonderful Louise Marley has posted some thoughts on her journal that dovetail nicely with what Scott Edelman is saying. Louise points out that perception does matter because:

"...our genre only gets seven per cent of the market. That's why fine books like The Time Traveler's Wife and Wicked aren't marketed as science fiction at all, but as mainstream. It's a matter of perception by the reader. But how do we address this, and why is it this way? All of us who publish in our little ghetto of genre have had the experience of someone who doesn't normally read sf/f picking up one of our own works because of friendship, and being surprised at how much they like it. You know, that familiar sentence that begins, 'Well, I don't normally read science fiction . . . ' My thesis is that, actually, they do, but they don't know it. "

Of Possible Interest: Sci-fi book signing planned at Oread Books

From J-W Staff Reports:

Thursday, June 15, 2006

Kansas University’s Oread Books plans a book signing featuring 10 noted authors of science fiction and fantasy on July 8.

The authors attending the book signing will include Lou Anders, Robin Wayne Bailey, Bradley Denton, James Gunn, Kij Johnson, Frederik Pohl, Pamela Sargent and George Zebrowski. They will be joined by two additional authors, the to-be-announced recipients of the 2006 John W. Campbell and Theodore Sturgeon Awards.

The book signing takes place in conjunction with the annual Campbell Conference and its John W. Campbell and Theodore Sturgeon Awards. The Campbell Conference is the concluding event of the yearly Writer’s Workshop and the beginning of the Intensive English Institute on the Teaching of Science Fiction, through the Center for the Study of Science Fiction at KU.

The event begins at 12:45 p.m. in the Oread Books lounge in the Kansas Union. It is free and open to the public.

Look What Just Appeared in the Inbox

Now this looks interesting....

SIX SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY WRITERS
FORM DEEPGENRE BLOG

June 13, 2006 — Six award-winning fantasy and science fiction authors have started the group blog DeepGenre. Located at www.deepgenre.com, the blog will explore multiple aspects of the reading and writing of genre fantasy and science fiction.

"Science fiction and fantasy, like the broad umbrella that is mysteries, performs in more areas than 'escape' and 'entertainment,' though we’re big on entertainment, too," writes Kate Elliott on the blog. "SFF engages with ideas. We’re looking to discuss this on all levels, from the practical concerns of authors writing fiction, to the interplay of life with art and art with life, to the ways in which the NFL can be used as a model for early medieval band warfare."

Current Contributors

The current contributors to DeepGenre include:
· Constance Ash has written and edited SFF, including the Nebula-nominated Flower Kiss and the Philip K. Dick award-nominated anthology Not of Woman Born. She uses her skills as a professional researcher for herself and others by digging into history, past and present.
· Carol Berg is the author of Geffen Award winner Transformation, and the other Books of the Rai-kirah – Revelation and Restoration – as well as The Bridge of D’Arnath Quartet and the 2004 Colorado Book Award winner Song of the Beast. Carol is a former software engineer who took up writing epic fantasy when her three sons started to need less of her time.
· David Louis Edelman is the author of the SF business novel Infoquake. Over the past ten years, he has programmed websites for the U.S. Army and the FBI, taught software to the U.S. Congress and the World Bank, written articles for the Washington Post and Baltimore Sun, and directed the marketing departments of biometric and e-commerce companies.
· Kate Elliott is the author of Spirit Gate, coming in October 2006. She has also written Crown of Stars, a seven volume fantasy novel starting with King’s Dragon, and The Novels of the Jaran, and has co-authored The Golden Key with Melanie Rawn and Jennifer Roberson.
· Katharine Kerr is well known on both sides of the low, meandering stone wall that separates High Fantasy from Science Fiction. Her epic Deverry series has won her millions of fans around the world. Her SF novels include Snare, Polar City Blues, and Resurrection. Her latest Deverry novel, The Gold Falcon, is now available in the UK and will be published in the USA in July.
· Lois Tilton's fiction has been nominated for the Nebula, Sturgeon and Sidewise Awards. She is known for a number of vampire novels, including DarkSpawn, and for dozens of short stories that cross the boundaries of science fiction, fantasy, horror and historical fiction.

For More Information
For more information about DeepGenre, contact blog administrator David Louis Edelman via e-mail at dedelman (at) gmail.com. The DeepGenre blog can be found at www.deepgenre.com.

Crossover about to Cross Over

I just blogged about this over at the Pyr site, but I'm tickled pink enough to mention it here too. Publishers Weekly has just reviewed Joel Shepherd's Crossover, and I'm very happy with what they have to say. Joel's book has enough kick ass action sequences, sex, and neat SFnal concepts to be a nice commercial hit, but it's layered, nuanced, and savvy enough to put it above the usual girl-robot run-of-the-mill norm. Joel's got a knack for describing the complexities and realities of politics, whether its on an interplanetary scale, between departments or coworkers in a government office, or between people in romantic entanglements. He's great with characters, stacks the book full of strong women. And he's also the first writer I've seen to really internalize and reprocess the kind of constant back and forth telepathic communication that wireless technology will soon make possible and which you see in Mangas like Ghost in the Shell. He's got the chip-in-the-head future down, in a smart, fast-paced, sexy, meaty, multicultural, military SF/police procedural and I can't wait to unleash it on the U.S. this August. Meanwhile, here is what PW has to say:

Set in the far future, Australian author Shepherd's energetic debut introduces Cassandra Kresnov, an experimental killer android-with-a-heart who has defected from her League Dark Star special ops assignment. Graced with a yen for human art almost as insatiable as her libido, Kresnov first tries to melt anonymously into Tanusha, the sybaritic capital of Callay, a planet of the League's galactic archenemy, the Federation. But Cassandra can't leave her martial past behind when she's caught up in a heroic struggle to protect the Callayan president from assassination by Federal forces. Shepherd's intriguing heroine and strong female characters bode well for this projected series. Lacing Cassandra's search for identity and acceptance with plenty of hand-to-hand combat and racy sexual exploits, Shepherd also convincingly presents vividly realized ethical dilemmas: what happens to soldiers when the war is over? can a culture that opposes the artificial manufacture of life accept its creations? Shephard grapples with some genuinely thought-provoking questions on the nature of humanity."

The New Who Review - "The Impossible Planet"

For years, I have maintained that the only difference between the 4th Doctor episode, "The Ark in Space" - in which a lone insectile alien is feasting upon and laying eggs in a colony of humans held in suspended animation on a vast space station - and James Cameron's Aliens is special effects and a few one liners, that the former would be as terrifying as the latter if it had the same budget and didn't have monsters unfortunately made of green bubble wrap. I've always wanted to see a quirky British man thrust into helping a crew of space roughnecks fighting a H.R. Gieger monster. Doctor Who has always been properly sci-horor, but it's amazing the effect you get when you take the old Cthulhu evil entity that the silly humans can't help but let loose from his aeons long imprisonment and you combine that with the set designs and acting from something out of Aliens or (the lamentable but appropriately gritty) Event Horizon or films of that ilk. You know, a crew of marines or criminals or prospectors who all wear grey tshirts and camo pants and work in some drag, largely metal environment with a lot of corridors with the pipes showing. Add in one wandering Time Lord and you get something that is paradoxically very much in the tradition of all the old and overdone Bug Eyed Monster plots - so overused in the old Who (and subsequent books, and audio plays, and spin offs) - and yet which feels almost nothing like anything that has come before tonally. My what a difference a budget makes! This is classic Who rendered as only your imagination could have done so before, when it took active participation to fill in the holes in the wobbly sets and to make Sutek or Azal genuinely scary.

Never mind how could Satan have been imprisoned for an eternity AND woven into the fabric of earth (long range telepathy?), or how something that's only 500 (light?) years away from earth can be outside the TARDIS' knowledge (but maybe that's just cause it's past the event horizon of the black hole, not that it's distant), I'm totally into seeing the Doctor injected into a Ridley Scott sci-horror cinema. I'm so behind this! More please, more!

And I love how all the old cliches - he shows up, they automatically trust him - are totally sold by the strength of the writing and Tennant's acting. And he may look like Peter Davison with the young mug and the tennis shoes, but he's really somewhere between Tom Baker (for alien wackiness) and Sylvester McCoy (lonely god). Tennant could easily become my fav if he sticks around long enough, (but I am easy and I love them all).

Oh and Tardises are grown? Written language is translated as well as spoken words? Once again they've gone and confirmed some fan-speculation/books continuity. Never in a million years would I expect the new television show to be so respectful of continuity or to be able to work so much of it in without overburdening the new viewers. I'm really impressed.

So many things are finally being done right - Batman, Who, Lord of the Rings, Battlestar Galactica. Almost makes one wonder if Hollywood (and the BBC) isn't evil anymore. Of course, there's always X-Men III to restore my lack of faith.