Authors: edited by Andy Cox
Tags: #Science Fiction, #Fantasy, #Jonathan McCalmont, #Greg Kurzawa, #Ansible Link, #David Langford, #Nick Lowe, #Tony Lee, #Jim Burns, #Richard Wagner, #Martin Hanford, #Fiction, #John Grant, #Karl Bunker, #Reviews, #Gareth L. Powell, #Tracie Welser, #Suzanne Palmer
Interzone 251 (2 page)
TONY LEE
Movies about talentless amateurs making movies and/or people watching movies (or unusually grainy videos) have become such a bore lately, and are such a terrible waste of viewing time. From the conspiratorial weirdness of alien autopsy and all the run-of-the-mill frighteners copied from
Blair Witch Project
, the cult visionary formula is nowadays as rigidly fixed as the limitations of basic painting-by-numbers hobby sets. At the risk of sounding elitist, it now seems that little or no imagination is required on-screen to entertain a generation of undiscerning consumers raised on the generally feeble standards of YouTube content. Too many DVD releases offer scenes of running away in blind panic or cutting away from anything vaguely scary or unknown, and it means that any actually terrifying confrontation of evil forces or ghastly horror is not faced or depicted. What we get instead is avoidance or evasive action in mundane or nonsensical plots – of escape not conflict; overreaction and excessive emotion, not characterisation and performance.
Back in 1969, when David Cronenberg made his first feature
Stereo
using a drama-documentary style, with its voiceover narration of purposefully silent footage (it’s about telepathy and sex), genre cinema was still experimenting with formats and so
Stereo
remains watchable for historical interest, even if it is not quite mesmerising. David Blair’s groundbreaking
Wax
, or
The Discovery of Television Among the Bees
(1991) is another fascinating indie art video project that explores its quirky ideas with consummate skill and no shortage of inventive pseudocumentary technique in a form that enabled its early transfer online as hypermedia. Even comparatively recently, Jonathan Weiss’s
The Atrocity Exhibition
(2000), based on J.G. Ballard’s 1970 book, showed how, even in a belatedly millennial adaptation of a New Wave text, there are plenty of intriguing sketches and intellectual perspectives and dizzying surrealism to be found in the analytical material that’s based on challenging ideas and clusters of transgressive imagery, not on simplistic imitation of an existing popular cinematic style.
Don’t get me wrong. I like Michael Bay’s unfairly hated
Transformers
series and have enjoyed all of the recent superhero movies, but
Avengers Assemble
was undoubtedly a corporate product and genre cinema needs more than just fun blockbusters if it is to develop new 21st-century classics. If only the most imaginative writers/directors now entering the industry were to be encouraged to take more daring risks, especially with substantial budgets that permit the realisation of far grander unconventional anxiety-dreams by indie auteurs than we are used to seeing, instead of all the biggest gambles with vast fortunes being left to capitalist parasites like bankers. Unlike ‘failed’ artists, such individuals are summarily forgiven for all their disastrous failures, like repaired crash test dummies getting another chance, whereas novice filmmakers are so rarely granted any such opportunities.
It is true that Godfrey Reggio’s astounding Qatsi trilogy is the exception, not the rule. But why is artistic endeavour forced into the fringes? If, as Ballard observes, “we’re all in the movies”, are we looking outside or inside? The struggle for dominance between originality and mere revision goes on, but is the pace of narrative action (usually with a foregone conclusion!) really more important to modern audiences than a genuinely philosophical viewpoint, and pointed questions fielded without any ready answers?
DAVID LANGFORD
As Others See Us.
It must be true, it’s on the net: ‘John Clute and John Grant, as two of the forefathers of gaslight romance, commented that…’ (steampunk.wikia.com)
Brian Aldiss
, shrugging off a TIA in late 2013 and two heart attacks early this year, is writing another sf novel before his 89th birthday in August. ‘My career in SF is long and – so I’d imagine – pretty well unique.’
Awards.
Crawford:
Sofia Samatar,
A Stranger in Olondria
. •
Horror Writers Association Life Achievement:
Stephen Jones, R.L. Stine. •
James Tiptree Jr:
N.A. Sulway,
Rupetta
. •
Kitschies.
Novel: Ruth Ozeki,
A Tale for the Time Being
. Debut: Ann Leckie,
Ancillary Justice
. Cover Art: Will Staehle for
The Age Atomic
by Adam Christopher. •
Newbery Medal:
Kate DiCamillo,
Flora & Ulysses
. •
Red House Children’s Book Awards:
overall winner Rick Yancey,
The 5th Wave
.
World SF Convention.
The US bid to hold the 2016 event in Kansas City faces last-minute opposition from Beijing. Voting ends at the London Worldcon (loncon3.org) in August. Meanwhile, the Loncon chairs’ appointment of Jonathan Ross as Hugo Awards MC caused instant controversy which Ross detected: he swiftly withdrew.
Iain Banks
’s
Consider Phlebas
has a new German edition from Heyne, translated ‘Aus dem Amerikanischen’ (‘From the American’).
George Orwell
was spared the announcement that the 1956 film of
1984
is being remade as
Equals
, a ‘futuristic love story’. Kristen Stewart, playing the female lead, breathlessly comments: ‘It’s a love story of epic, epic, epic proportion … I’m scared.’ Is it she rather than the hapless Winston who at the end will really, really, really love Big Brother? (
US Weekly
)
Russell Brand
, described as ‘the usually liberal comedian’, tried to silence students’ uproar at the Cambridge University Union with ‘Shut up you Harry Potter p**fs.’ (
Independent
) Asterisks supplied by the newspaper, which shuddered at this ‘homophobic slur’; as distinct from, say, a geeks-who-read-J.K. Rowling slur.
Chang-rae Lee
’s
On Such a Full Sea
looks like dystopian sf, but the Minneapolis
Star Tribune
knows better: ‘Lee’s futuristic America is redolent of the post-apocalyptic worlds of J.G. Ballard; not science fiction, more the speculative fiction that Margaret Atwood occasionally dabbles in.’
The Weakest Link.
Host:
‘Dame Judi Dench played which character with a single-letter name in James Bond?’
Contestant:
‘I’m thinking D or E. [Pause] D!’ (BBC1,
In It to Win It
)
Publishers & Sinners.
Constable & Robinson, famed for many ‘Mammoth Book Of’ anthologies, was acquired by Little, Brown on 31 January. • Quercus, with its genre imprint Jo Fletcher Books, was put up for sale in January after a ‘significant trading loss’ for 2013.
Eldritch Spam.
‘The Lovecraft Reference Resource are a new religious organisation established to represent that which is Lovecraftian on the Internet into one place. Our idea is that the Lovecraftian is being established on the Internet as a growing artistic, literary and religious movement, and that if we can organise this towards one resource, then a more cohesed movement can be organised. […]’
As Others See Us II.
Russell Banks, author of ‘literary fiction’, knows what he doesn’t like: ‘Anything described by the author or publisher as fantasy, which to me says, “Don’t worry, Reader, Death will be absent here.”’ (
NY Times
) At a stroke the corpse-strewn Harry Potter saga,
Game of Thrones
series and Discworld became non-fantasy. Perhaps they’re literary fiction.
Novel Award Shortlists.
BSFA.
Kameron Hurley,
God’s War
; Ann Leckie,
Ancillary Justice
; Paul McAuley,
Evening’s Empires
; Gareth L. Powell,
Ack-Ack Macaque
; Christopher Priest,
The Adjacent
•
Philip K. Dick.
Anne Charnock,
A Calculated Life
; Cassandra Rose Clarke,
The Mad Scientist’s Daughter
; Toh EnJoe trans Terry Gallagher,
Self-Reference Engine
; Ann Leckie,
Ancillary Justice
; Jack Skillingstead,
Life on the Preservation
; Ian Whates, ed,
Solaris Rising 2
; Ben H. Winters,
Countdown City
. •
Bram Stoker.
Joe Hill,
NOS4A2
; Stephen King,
Doctor Sleep
; Lisa Morton,
Malediction
; Sarah Pinborough & F. Paul Wilson,
A Necessary End
; Christopher Rice,
The Heavens Rise
. •
Nebulas.
Karen Joy Fowler,
We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves
; Neil Gaiman,
The Ocean at the End of the Lane
; Charles E. Gannon,
Fire with Fire
; Nicola Griffith,
Hild
; Ann Leckie,
Ancillary Justice
; Linda Nagata,
The Red: First Light
; Sofia Samatar,
A Stranger in Olondria
; Helene Wecker,
The Golem and the Jinni
.
We Are Everywhere.
The kind of fellow who publishes sf news: ‘Langford, self-styled leader of the local vigilante group, shared the same basic mental genotype with playground bullies and third world secret policemen.’ (Zoe Sharp,
Riot Act
, 2002)
Bored of the Rings.
Tolkien imagery continues to delight US political pundits: ‘President Obama apparently lost his magic ring. The sun broke through the pall of Republican despair, the fires of Mordor ceased and the spell of buffoonery and pettifoggery that had plagued the elephant herd was miraculously lifted.’ (
Washington Post
) Oliphaunt herd, surely?
Thog’s Masterclass.
Dribbling Dept.
‘I followed him as he kicked his feet angrily in front of him, as if dissatisfied with their progress.’ (Antti Tuomainen,
The Healer
, 2010; trans Lola Rogers 2013) •
Eyeballs in the Sky.
‘Her eyes ran over me like mice.’ (Keith Laumer,
A Plague of Demons
, 1965) •
Dept of Gastrology.
‘He felt his stomach drop. Then it seemed to bounce, and cram itself halfway up his throat.’ (‘Richard Bachman’,
Blaze
, 2007) •
Precarious Dept.
‘The generosity of her breasts, like an overhanging cliff, magnetized his gaze; he seemed to expect a landslide.’ (Thomas Burnett Swann, ‘The Blue Monkeys’,
Science Fantasy
, 1964) •
Scandal at the Villa Diodati?
‘Mary Shelley streaked across the table.’ (Stephen Marley,
Doctor Who: The Missing Adventures: Managra
, 1995)
R.I.P.
Aaron Allston
(1960–2014), US role-playing game designer and author – mainly of
Star Wars
spinoffs, though with several non-franchise novels – died on 27 February; he was 53.
Bill Baker
, US publisher, comics historian and author of
Icons: The DC Comics and WildStorm Art of Jim Lee
, died in February at the age of 55.
Neal Barrett Jr
(1929–2014), US author who began publishing sf in 1960 and was named SFWA Author Emeritus at the 2010 Nebula Awards, died on 12 January; he was 84. His many novels include the Aldair and Through Darkest America series, contributions to several franchises, and some notable standalone titles.
Jon Bing
(1944–2014), Norwegian law professor and sf author/editor of international repute (a guest of honour at the 1997 UK Eastercon), died on 14 January: he was 69. With his close friend Tor-Åge Bringsværd he effectively founded present-day Norwegian fandom and provided its reading matter via many anthologies, the sf line of the leading publisher Gyldendal (1967–1980) and novels – Bing’s most recent being
Oslo 2084
(2004).
Erik Blegvad
(1923–2014), Danish-born artist who illustrated Mary Norton’s
Bed-Knob and Broomstick
(1957), his own translation of Hans Christian Andersen and other children’s fantasies, died on 14 January; he was 90.
Alan Burns
(1929–2014), UK author who used sf devices in such novels as
Europe After the Rain
(1965),
Babel
(1969, excerpted in
New Worlds
) and
Dreamerika!: A Surrealist Fantasy
(1972), died in December; he was 83.
Stepan Chapman
(1951–2014), US author – mainly of offbeat short stories following a 1969 debut in
Analog
– whose one novel
The Troika
(1997) won the Philip K. Dick Award, died on 27 January.
Frederick Fox
(1931–2013), Australian-born milliner to HM the Queen whose one foray into sf was designing the space-stewardess hats for 2001, died on 11 December; he was 82.
Janrae Frank
(1954–2014), US author, editor, journalist and fan who with Forrest J Ackerman and Jean Marie Stine edited
New Eves: Science Fiction About the Extraordinary Women of Today and Tomorrow
(1994), died on 12 January; she was 59.
Vic Ghidalia
(1926–2013), US TV publicist who edited and co-edited genre anthologies from
The Little Monsters
(1969 with Roger Elwood) to
Feast of Fear
(1977 solo), died on 28 May 2013 aged 87.
Martin Greenberg
(1918–2013), co-founder with David Kyle of Gnome Press in 1948 and editor of several early sf anthologies, died on 20 October 2013; he was 95.
Michael Hemmingson
(1966–2014), US author and journalist whose first novel
Minstrels
(1997) uses the sf device of an implanted camera converting the protagonist’s life into reality TV, died on 9 January; he was 47.
Mark E. Rogers
(1952–2014), US fantasy/horror author and illustrator whose work includes the 1980–1998 ‘Samurai Cat’ sequence, died on 2 February. His novella
The Runestone
became a 1990 film.
Bhob Stewart
(1937–2014), US artist, writer, editor and fan influential in early comics fanzines and acting as 1960–1963 art director for the Hugo-winning
Xero
, died on 24 February aged 76.