Cora Buhlert's Blog, page 92

Indie Speculative Fiction of the Month for February 2017

[image error]It’s that time of the month again, time for “Indie Speculative Fiction of the Month”.

So what is “Indie Speculative Fiction of the Month”? It’s a round-up of speculative fiction by indie authors newly published this month, though some January books I missed the last time around snuck in as well. The books are arranged in alphabetical order by author. So far, most links only go to Amazon.com, though I may add other retailers for future editions.

Once again, we have new releases covering the whole broad spectrum of speculative fiction. This month, we have urban fantasy, epic fantasy, a whole lot of space opera, military science fiction, post-apocalyptic science fiction, dystopian fiction, science fiction romance, alternate history, Cyberpunk, LitRPG, horror, dragons, aliens, werewolves, cyborgs, supersoldiers, galactic empires, FBI witches, Appalachian monsters, zombie insects, revenge of nature, The King in Yellow and much more.

Don’t forget that Indie Speculative Fiction of the Month is also crossposted to the Speculative Fiction Showcase, a group blog run by Jessica Rydill and myself, which features new release spotlights, guest posts, interviews and link round-ups regarding all things speculative fiction several times per week.

As always, I know the authors at least vaguely, but I haven’t read all of the books, so Caveat emptor.

And now on to the books without further ado:

[image error] After the End – Stories of Life After the Apocalypse by Cora Buhlert

When the apocalypse has come and gone, life still goes on for the survivors struggling to adapt to the new normal.

In a drowned world, the descendants of surface dwellers remember the cities that were lost, the inhabitants of ocean floor colonies cling to outmoded customs and scavengers search the flooded ruins for anything that might be of use. In a world ravaged by droughts, two college students come face to face with how the other half lives. A lone explorer traverses the icy wasteland that used to be Europe. A group of children travels across a zombie-infested America in search of shelter and safety. After a robot uprising, a police officer is assigned to clean-up duties and finds an unexpected miracle among the ruins. And in a world blasted by electromagnetic solar storms, a nineteenth century technology suddenly becomes the sole means of long distance communication.

This collection contains eight stories of life after the apocalypse of 24500 words or approximately 85 print pages altogether.

[image error] Chronicles of the Last Days by Amelia Smith:

Myril doesn’t need prophecy to see that her world is going to end – the city is sinking before her eyes. Foreign ships fill Anamat harbor, bringing traders bent on pillaging the city’s treasures – with help from the governor – as its people flee to hostile lands.

Her guildmaster calls on her to help save the Chronicles of Anamat from the pillagers. Meanwhile, her old friend Darna needs healing, Iola wants to go to her death in the dragons’ realm, and the Defenders are airing their secrets at just the wrong time.

How will any of them survive when the waters rise again?

[image error] Duchess of Terra by Glynn Stewart

When Terra knelt to an alien Imperium

They guaranteed our safety and our future

But now their enemies are coming for us

To preserve humanity’s survival and freedom in a hostile galaxy, Annette Bond tied her world to the A!Tol Imperium, taking on the mantle of Duchess of Terra to rule humanity in the Imperium’s name.

The A!Tol have provided technology, ships, and money to uplift the new Duchy of Terra, but those gifts come with strings attached. The Imperium has their own plan for Terra—but Bond has tricks of her own.

With enough time, she can build Earth a place in the galaxy. But as Bond’s many enemies gather their forces, the clouds of war threaten not only the recovering Terra but the entire Imperium.

Send to Kindle

More 2016 Nebula Awards Reactions.

For starters, the nominees for the 2016 Bram Stoker Awards have been announced as well and some very fine works they are, too, including an anthology we featured at the Speculative Fiction Showcase last year.

Meanwhile, further reactions to the 2016 Nebula Awards are slowly trickling in. The G. responds to my reaction post from yesterday to clarify his tweets about the lack of near future speculation on the Nebula ballot:

@CoraBuhlert …that if SF doesn’t speculate on plausible futures based on current conditions, it loses something important. But…

— The G (@nerds_feather) February 23, 2017

@CoraBuhlert …the stuff that is rigorous in that way isn’t being read anymore.

— The G (@nerds_feather) February 23, 2017

Afterwards, the discussion took a turn towards 2016 works that qualify as plausible near future speculation that weren’t nominated for some reason. Infomocracy by Malka Older is the most obvious contender in the novel category, while Everything Belongs to the Future by Laurie Penny and Brushwork by Aliya Whiteley in the novella category would be possible contenders as well. All three are on the Nebula suggested reading list. Other 2016 works along the same line include the novelette Loser by Matthew Hughes (a longshot, because it was published on the author’s website) and the entire short story output of Terraform, which specialises in near future speculation. However, Terraform got off to a bad start with the SFF community, since their launch announcement suggested that they were completely unaware of the existence of a broad range of online markets for short science fiction and they also keep themselves separate from the wider SFF community. I must admit that their “too cool for fandom” attitude put me off at first (and the blog post linked above didn’t help either, since I habitually disagree with that particular critic) and I found their fiction a mixed bag, though they score highly with regard to author diversity and some of their stories like this one are pretty good. However, for some reason I keep forgetting that Terraform exists and I suspect I’m not the only one. At any rate, I only found two Terraform stories on the Nebula suggested reading list.

So in short, near future speculation is out there, even though much of its seems to have moved to short fiction, but for some reason, none of it got nominated for the Nebulas this year in spite of some strong contenders. It might be a fluke, it might be a trend or it might be that the political situation has driven people towards other subgenres that hit less close to home.

In other news, Ryan Britt’s lament that the Nebula Awards totally failed to recognise his two favourite SF novels of 2016, which I linked to yesterday, has caused a lot of eye-rolling all around such as in the comments on this post at File 770. John Sclazi also issued a reminder that there is no such thing as an automatic awards nomination and that good works are ignored all the time, since there are more possible awards contenders than nominee slots for every award out there. What is more, tastes differ and what I consider one of the best works of the year is not necessarily what the next person considers one of the best.

Meanwhile at Inverse, Ryan Britt shoots back and declares that the Nebulas and all of the other genre awards are bullshit anyway. The Nebulas, Hugos and other genre awards are too much of an insider thing and don’t carry a whole lot of weight outside SFF publishing (that must be why publishers regularly emblazon “Winner of the Hugo or Nebula Award” on the cover of the respective books), they are useless as a guide to newcomers to the genre regarding what to read (even though countless of new fans have used them exactly for that purpose), they often ignore SFF works that aren’t published in traditional SFF venues, they ignore near future speculation in favour of space opera and epic fantasy (Didn’t we just have that discussion?) and they ignore popular science fiction novels like The Martian (probably an eligiblity issues due the being originally self-published), Death’s End and Babylon’s Ashes.

In many way, Britt’s post feels like a greatest hits album of genre award criticism. The points he makes are all things we’ve heard dozens of times before, both from the puppies and from awards critics at the anti-nostalgic end of the spectrum. Not that there isn’t a kernel of truth to some of those arguments, i.e. the Nebulas and the Hugos really aren’t all that great at recognising SFF works not published by traditional SFF imprints, unlike the Clarke Award, though they occasionally do so, e.g. with The Yiddish Policemen‘s Union by Michael Chabon, which was nominated for the Pulitzer and Edgar Award and won both the Hugo and Nebula.

The argument that most genre awards are too insider focussed also contains a kernel of truth, for this year, it is notable that several nominees in the short fiction categories require a certain amount of genre knowledge, and are aimed at insiders, e.g. The Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe and The Ballad of Black Tom probably won’t make much sense, if you’re not familiar with Lovecraft. And indeed, my Mom remarked, when I told her about the Nebula Award nominees, that there seemed to be a lot of stories this year that were references to/retellings of previous works and that she prefers stories which can stand on their own and don’t refer back to other stories. And my Mom is a member of WorldCon 75 and therefore a 2017 Hugo nominator and voter, so it will be interesting to see how she reacts to e.g. Every Heart a Doorway or The Ballad of Black Tom, should they show up on the Hugo ballot.

But while some of Ryan Britt’s points are valid individually, taken together they don’t make a whole lot of sense. At any rate, I have zero idea where Ryan Britt is coming from. On the one hand, he laments that literary science fiction like Gary Shteyngart’s Super Sad True Love Story or The Flame Alphabet by Ben Marcus were ignored by the Nebulas, on the other hand, he complains that the Nebulas fail to recognise fairly commercial core genre works like The Martian, Death’s End or Babylon’s Ashes. Of course, it’s entirely possible that someone might enjoy all of those books, but finding all of them on the same nomination ballot would be rather unlikely. And I also have no idea what Ryan Britt even wants beyond seeing his personal favourites on the Hugo or Nebula ballot. And that’s something everybody wants to some degree.

Meanwhile, from the puppies we hear… resounding silence, while they twist themselves into increasingly complicated pretzel shapes to defend Milo Yiannopoulos. Strange, it’s almost as if they never cared about SFF at all.

Comments are still off – safer with this sort of topic.

Send to Kindle

Reactions to the 2016 Nebula Award Nominees

I already posted my comments on the 2016 Nebula Award nominees in this post, so let’s take a look at some other reactions from around the web:

Rich Horton is generally pleased with the 2016 Nebula nominees, for even though not every nominated work is a personal favourite, he does not find a single poor story among them.

Camestros Felapton shares his thoughts on the 2016 Nebula nominees and is generally pleased with the works nominated and the diversity of the nominees, though he is also flabbergasted by how much of the nominated short fiction he still hasn’t read.

Talking of the Nebula nominees in the three short fiction categories, Rocket Stack Rank offers an annotated list with links to the stories themselves, mini-blurbs, reviews and more.

So far, most reactions I’ve seen to the 2016 Nebula nominees have been positive. I did see some grumblings, mostly on Twitter, that the Nebula shortlist contained for fantasy than science fiction and that the science fiction that was nominated is not the “right sort” of science fiction, i.e. it’s not hard enough or not political enough or whatever. Here are some exmples:

Do any of the Nebula nominees for best novel involve speculation on plausible futures? Haven’t read any so this is an honest question.

— The G (@nerds_feather) February 21, 2017

@ian_sales @ApeInWinter …pretty weird to me that there isn’t a single book that imagines plausible near/medium-term futures.

— The G (@nerds_feather) February 21, 2017

I feel a bit mean for singling out The G. like this, especially since most grumblings along those lines seemed to come from the same crowd involved with the Clarke Award shadow jury. However, Twitter makes embedding whole conversations difficult and The G. simply stated the point in the most succint way.

As for the point, the Nebula shortlist does seem rather fantasy dominated this year with only one explicit SF novel (Ninefox Gambit), two edge cases (The Obelisk Gate, Everfair) and two explicit fantasy novels (Borderline and All the Birds in the Sky) nominated. Last year, we had three SF novels and one edge case out of seven, in 2015 we had five SF novels out of six, in 2014 four SF novels out of eight. However, in 2013 there was only one explicit SF novel out of six nominees (which promptly won in spite of being the IMO weakest book on the ballot), so a fantasy dominated Nebula ballot is not exactly unusual. Besides, SFWA stands for Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America these days, so fantasy novels are perfectly legitimate Nebula nominees, unlike e.g. the Arthur C. Clarke Award which is explicitly for science fiction.

This year’s lone science fiction nominee is a far future space opera, rather than a near future novel. This isn’t actually unusual for the past few years, since most SF nominees of recent years were not near future speculation, but space opera (Ann Leckie, Yoon Ha Lee, Jack McDevitt), military SF (Linda Nagata, Charles Gannon) or far future post-apocalyptic and post-human SF (Lawrence M. Schoen). The recent Nebula nominees that come closest to plausible near future speculation are The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin, 2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson, Annihilation by Jeff VanDerMeer and We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler, though that one is more literary fiction with some speculative bio-technology thrown in.

As for why near future speculation seems to have fallen out of favour recently, at least with novel length SF, one explanation might be that the world is currently changing so rapidly and in unexpected directions (Brexit, the Trump election) that speculating about the near future is extremely difficult and near future fiction is likely to be made obsolete by reality. I recall that Charles Stross once said that he had to scrap a novel, because reality had made it obsolete. Given what a time investment writing a novel is, I can understand why authors would not be willing to take that risk. Never mind that near future SF tends to age very badly, e.g. a lot of Cyberpunk classics like Neuromancer are horribly dated only thirty years later.

Finally, the accusation inherent in some of the complaints about the lack of near future speculation on the Nebula shortlist, namely that science fiction has become apolitical and ceased to care about the future, is just plain wrong. For there is more than one way of being political and a lot of the works, both on the 2016 Nebula shortlist as well as those nominated in previous years, are definitely political, just not in the way certain people seem to want. Also, there is a notable contingent mostly among British critics who seem to be almost personally offended by the existence of epic fantasy and space opera, both of which are deemed as too escapist.

Meanwhile at Inverse, Ryan Britt complains that two of his favourite SF novels of 2016, namely Death’s End by Liu Cixin and Babylon’s Ashes by James S.A. Corey were snubbed by the Nebula Awards. Now for starters, my favourite SF novels of 2016 were also snubbed by the Nebula Awards – it happens, especially if your tastes don’t align with the genre mainstream. And while I have to confess that there are some titles I expected to see on the Nebula shortlist that didn’t make it – Too Like the Lightning by Ada Palmer is the most obvious one for me (and coincidentally, it was snubbed by the Locus Recommended Reading List as well) and A Closed and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers also comes to mind, though others have also suggested City of Blades by Robert Jackson Bennett, Undergroud Railroad by Colson Whitehead and Underground Airlines by Ben Winters – neither Death’s End nor Babylon’s Ashes were the first or even the fifth titles that came to mind.

Now a Nebula nomination for Death’s End would not have unduly surprised me, since the first book in the trilogy, The Three Body Problem, was nominated for a Nebula and Death’s End was on the Nebula recommended reading list, though it did not make it in the end. But Babylon’s Ashes is a really long shot. For starters, it’s the sixth book in an ongoing series and later installments of ongoing series rarely show up on genre awards ballots. Besides, Babylon’s Ashes is nowhere in sight on the Nebula recommended reading list and none of the previous five books in the Expanse series were nominated for a Nebula Award either (and no episode of the TV adaptation shows up on the recommended reading/watching list, let alone among the nominations for the Ray Bradbury Award), all of which would seem to suggest that The Expanse, whether in book or TV form, simply isn’t to the taste of the Nebula voters.

In general, those grumblings about the Nebula Awards nominations I have seen largely boil down to “My favourites didn’t get nominated”. Which isn’t actually all that different from what we see every year. What is more, quite a few people seem to be suffering from genre awards fatigue, as Abigail Nussbaum and Ian Sales point out.

So what about everybody’s least favourite award contrarians, the Sad and Rabid Puppies? So far, the major and minor puppy blogs are conspicuously silent on the matter of the Nebula Award nominations. Of course, the Puppies never really focussed on the Nebula Awards in the first place, since the Nebulas are less easy to influence than the Hugos or the Dragon Awards, especially considering that most big name puppies are not SFWA members. Nonetheless, they used to complain about the wrong books by all the wrong people getting nominated. This year, however, we get outraged posts about this Washington Post article on YA authors employing “sensitivity readers” (I’m stunned how much anger that article caused and not just among puppies either, KBoards also exploded over it), whiny posts about how mean the left is and how those leftist meanies forced them to vote for Trump and a lot of folks twisting themselves into truly impressive pretzel shapes about that Milo thing (Link goes to a round-up of the best bits courtesy of Camestros Felapton). Of course, it was pretty obvious to everybody with half a brain that most of the concern the various puppies showed last year over alleged and actual pedophilia (three cases, mostly decades old) in the SFF community was never genuine, but just a handy weapon to use against those they perceived to be their enemies.

Besides, I suspect that both sets of puppies may be suffering from genre awards fatigue as well, especially considering that they got thoroughly trumped every time they tried to influence anything but the Dragon Award, whereas they feel empowered in the real world due to trumping the opposition (puns totally intentional).

Comments are off.

Send to Kindle

Some Thoughts on the 2016 Nebula Nominees, the Shadow Clarke Award and some other awards

Yes, it’s that time of the year again, genre award shortlist time.

In the past few days, the nominees for the 2016 BSFA Award, the 2016 Aurealis Award, the longlist for the 2017 David Gemmell Legend Award and the winners of the 5th annual SFR Galaxy Awards have all been announced and a brand-new award, the Salam Award for Imaginative Fiction by Pakistani authors, has been created.

The shortlist for the 2017 Arthur C. Clarke Award has not yet been announced – though we have a complete list of all books submitted – though there already was a minor uproar when some overwhelmingly British critics from the anti-nostalgic end of the SFF fan spectrum formed a so-called “shadow jury” for the 2017 Clarke Award. Apparently, shadow juries for established awards are a thing in the UK, but not elsewhere (the rest of us doesn’t form shadow juries, just informally complains about awards shortlists and winners), which led to some confusion and bad feelings. However, the Clarke Award shadow jury does not want to take over the award itself, it’s just some people talking about books. I’m unlikely to pay much attention to their pronouncements, because the shadow jury includes several critics with whose reviews I almost always disagree, but I don’t have any problem with the existence of this shadow jury and more discussion about books is always a good thing. You can find out more about the Clarke Award shadow juries and its members at the page of the Anglia Ruskin Centre for Science Fiction and Fantasy.

Today then, the nominees for the 2016 Nebula Awards have been announced and promptly had to be corrected, because one nominee on the novelette shortlist, “Red in Tooth and Cog” by Cat Rambo, turned out to have dropped below the minimum novelette threshold of 7500 words during edits and was therefore ineligible. The story could have been nominated in the short story category, but would have knocked three other stories off the shortlist due to a three-way tie, therefore Cat Rambo, being a class act, withdrew the story from consideration.

Meanwhile, Bogi Takács has helpfully compiled links to all Nebula nominated works that are free to read online. The novelette replacing “Red in Tooth and Claw”, “The Orangery” by Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam, may be found here, by the way.

The Nebula shortlist itself looks very good, but then I’ve found that the Nebula Awards tend to reflect my personal tastes better than the Hugos, even before puppy interference. It’s also a nicely diverse shortlist with plenty of women, writers of colour, LGBT writers and international writers, including several who belong to more than one of those categories.

Let’s take a look at the categories: All the nominees in the novel categories got a lot of buzz last year. We have the debut novels by two accomplished and award winning short fiction authors, the sequel to last year’s Hugo winner and Nebula nominee in the same category, a long awaited novel by an award winning author and a debut that got a lot of buzz. All worthy books, though only one is also on my personal list.

In the novella category, what’s notable is the dominance of Tor.com Publishing’s standalone novellas, since four of the five nominees are Tor.com novellas and only one “The Liar” by John P. Murphy is from another source. Interestingly, this was also the only novella on the list that I’ve never heard of before. Tor.com Publishing is certainly good at spreading awareness of their novella line, even if I have read only two of the novellas on the list, A Taste of Honey by Kai Ashante Wilson and Runtime by S.B. Divya.

There recently was a discussion at File 770 where some posters expressed concern that Tor.com Publishing would eventually come to dominate the novella shortlists for the Hugos and Nebulas and that novellas published in print magazines would find it harder to get noticed. The 2016 Nebula Awards shortlist would certainly provide fuel for such concerns. However, one also shouldn’t forget that until the rise of e-books, the novella was considered a dying form, since it was difficult to find any markets willing to take novella length stories. E-publishing has revitalised the novella form with Tor.com at the forefront, but various small presses and indie writers (including your truly) have gotten into the act as well. And besides, Tor.com Publishing does excellent work. Even those novellas which don’t interest me personally tend to get good reviews.

The novelette shortlist is more varied. Tor.com Publishing is represented yet again with its sole standalone novelette, The Jewel and the Lapidary by Fran Wilde, but we also have novelettes from Lightspeed, Uncanny, F&SF and Beneath Ceaseless Skies. Alyssa Wong’s novelette “You’ll Surely Drown Here If You Stay” is excellent. Sarah Pinsker has been showing up on awards shortlists with increasing frequency of late, though I haven’t read this particular story. I haven’t read the two Beneath Ceaseless Skies novelettes – for some reason I don’t read that magazine all that often, though I usually enjoy their offerings when I do. Once again, the F&SF novelette is the lone unknown factor.

On to short stories: Once again, we have a nice mix of very different stories from different markets, both magazines and anthologies. “Our Talons Can Crush Galaxies” by Brooke Bolander was one of my favourite stories last year and Brooke Bolander is an author whose stories I consistently enjoy. Sam J. Miller is another author whose stories I consistently enjoy and “Things With Beards”, his take on The Thing, is no exception. Alyssa Wong is another author whose fiction I always enjoy, though I missed “A Fist of Permutations in Lightning and Wildflowers” for some reason, even though it’s a Tor.com story. I have also enjoyed the stories by A Merc Rustad I’ve read, though again I haven’t read this particular story. I did read Caroline M. Yoachim’s medical SF horror story in Lightspeed and found it interesting, though I didn’t enjoy it quite as much as others apparently did. I haven’t read the two anthology stories, though Amal El-Mohtar is another author I look out for, because she writes consistently good work. Barbara Krasnoff is the only author who’s unknown to me.

When looking at the short fiction nominees in general, it’s notable that Tor.com and online magazines dominate, whereas of the “Big Three” print magazines only F&SF is represented at all, whereas Asimov’s and Analog haven’t managed to place a single story onto the Nebula shortlist this year. This trend has been happening for a while, but it was rarely more notable than this year.

On to the Ray Bradbury Award for best dramatic presentation: There are three solid and popular choices, Rogue One, Arrival and Doctor Strange, though I’m a bit surprised Captain America: Civil War a.k.a. The Avengers in Schkeuditz (my late great-aunt Metel lived in Schkeuditz, so I got a kick out of seeing the Avengers there, even though they mostly just smashed Halle-Leipzig Airport) is missing. I have zero interest in the Westworld TV series, but it’s popular and therefore, I’m not surprised to see an episode nominated. Zootopia, on the other hand, is yet another CGI animated movie for kids that tends to end up on genre awards shortlist for reasons unknown. Kubo and the Two Strings, which to my shame I’ve never heard of, is another animated movie.

On to the Andre Norton Award for young adult fiction: At least, the nominees mostly are the sort of YA books actual teenagers would read and a pretty good selection it is, too. The Lie Tree by Frances Hardinge won the Costa Award in the UK, which is an impressive achievement. Arabella of Mars by David Levine got a lot of buzz, as did The Star-Touched Queen by Roshani Chokshi and Railhead by Philip Reeve. Delia Sherman and Kelly Barnhill are both established and popular authors. Unfortunately, I have never heard of Lindsay Ribar, though I love the title Rocks Fall, Everybody Dies.

Now a lot of the works on the Nebula shortlist are not works I would personally have nominated. Mostly this is due to issues with the theme. This year’s shortlist contains two more or less explicit Narnia references, which rarely do it for me, since I never read the Narnia novels at the age where one should read them, so the impact is lost on me. There also are at least two Lovecraft retellings, both from the POV of protagonists (a woman and a black man) H.P. Lovecraft would not have had any room for. Now I did read Lovecraft at the right age and I did enjoy it at the time, but not enough that I want to read umpteen retellings (and there have been a lot of Lovecraft retellings of late). Finally, I tend to avoid fairy tale retellings, because my personal bar for such stories is extremely high. Basically, if it’s been done and better in thirty to forty year old Czech TV movies, I don’t really want to read it. Finally, I don’t like CGI animation and therefore don’t care for what I call the Pixar movie of the year (occasionally, so I’ve been informed, not even made by Pixar) at all.

However – Puppies take note – just because many of the stories on the Nebula shortlist wouldn’t be my personal choices, that doesn’t mean they’re unworthy. Quite the contrary, I think pretty much every nominee on the 2016 Nebula shortlist is extremely worthy with the possible exception of Zootopia and that’s largely because my personal bias against Pixarish CGI animated films is extremely strong.

Send to Kindle

Rest in Peace, Richard Hatch, the original Captain Apollo

2017 seems to be determined to continue where 2016 left off by slowly killing off the heroes of our youth.

The latest casualty is actor Richard Hatch, who died yesterday aged 71. Richard Hatch was best known for playing Captain Apollo in the original Battlestar Galactica and a character named Tom Zarek in the reboot. File 770 has a tribute, while Bleeding Cool collects tributes and rememberances by friends and colleagues.

The original Battlestar Galactica is (unfairly IMO) dismissed these days, but it looms large in my personal SFF canon. For back in the 1980s, growing up in Germany with three TV channels and parents who felt that buying a VCR or getting cable TV was a waste of money, there was very little in the way of filmic science fiction, especially if you were deemed too young to watch what SF films there were in the cinema. The original Star Trek, Raumpatrouille Orion, Time Tunnel and Space 1999 had all been rerun sometime in the late 1970s/early 1980s and eventually became hopelessly entangled in my memory. The Third Programs, haven for weird and offbeat programming back then, would sometimes broadcast 1950s B-movies or old Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon serials. Very rarely, you could also see SF movies on the two TV, usually late at night and inevitably the dystopian SF films from the 1970s. And even those were not safe from criticism. A TV broadcast of Logan’s Run caused a protest storm in Germany in the mid 1980s, because the film was deemed ageist and allegedly violated human dignity. Uhm, that was kind of the point, but I guess even dystopian SF went over the heads of the usual pundits back then.

And then there was Battlestar Galactica. One of the three public TV channels had somehow acquired the rights and broadcast the pilot as well as the edited together feature film versions of several of the episodes (I didn’t see the series proper until a couple of years later) in a late Saturday night slot. And though it was well after my bedtime, I snuck out of bed and watched. And was promptly stunned and so riveted to the screen that I literally bled onto the floor. If you look closely, you can still see the stain, long faded by now, on the carpet in my parents’ living room.

Of course, it wasn’t Star Wars. Even as a kid I knew that much. However, Battlestar Galactica was as close to Star Wars as you could get (intentionally so), if you didn’t have a VCR and could neither rent nor buy videos. And while Star Wars would never be on TV (some administrative bigwig said so in an article I clipped from the TV Guide) and we would never have a VCR*, Battlestar Galactica was as good as it would get.

I think those who sneer at the original Battlestar Galactica have no idea what TV science fiction was like pre-Star Wars. Even the better made shows like Star Trek or Space 1999 looked distinctly cheap, the sets obviously spray-painted cardboard, plants and spaceships obviously dangling on strings. We looked past those deficiencies, because we had to as SFF fans who needed their fix. Battlestar Galactica, however, was lightyears away from that. The pilot looked almost as good as Star Wars, and indeed many of the same people were involved to the point of lawsuits. And coincidentally, Battlestar Galactica was the most expensive TV show ever at the time, a record that was only broken in the early 2000s.

Battlestar Galactica was also remarkable in other ways, because the pilot violated any story expectations you might have. It starts off with Dirk Benedict and pop star Rick Springfield, who were obviously destined to be the stars of this show, since they were – like – famous (and considering I saw the pilot a couple of years after it originally aired, both Dirk Benedict and Rick Springfield would have been even better known by that time). But then, about ten minutes into the show, Rick Springfield’s rookie pilot is dead, killed by the Cylons while on patrol. Another five minutes and most of humanity is wiped out as well.

In this age of grimdark entertainment, where Game of Thrones and The Walking Dead are killing off lead characters left, right and centre, the first fifteen minutes of the original Battlestar Galactica aren’t particularly remarkable. But to audiences back in 1978, killing off the supposed star (though Rick Springfield’s Zac is a classic redshirt lead, a character who looks like they’ll be part of the main cast, only to get killed off in the pilot) and most of humanity (as well as Boxey’s dog, the original Muffet – and we all know what a no-no killing dogs is on US TV) within the first fifteen minutes must have been utterly shocking. And coincidentally, the reboot completely bungles those shock moments by keeping Zac’s death off screen and reducing the destruction of the twelve colonies to a series of explosions on a planetary surface seen from space.

Of course, the survivors of the twelve colonies pick themselves back up again – much faster than I did in front of the TV, in fact – form a rag tag fleet and set off in search of Earth, the Cylons always hot in pursuit. At this point, it also becomes clear that the real star (disregarding Lorne Greene for now) of Battlestar Galactica is not Rick Springfield’s Zac, but Zac’s older brother Apollo as played by Richard Hatch.

My younger self developed an immediate crush on him (and indeed it is striking how many of my early crushes appeared in SFF of some kind). Not only was Richard Hatch stunningly handsome, his character Apollo was also everything a hero should be, suitably dashing and brave and noble and loyal and kind. Indeed, what probably attracted me most about Captain Apollo was that in a time when most heroes were loners, Apollo was a family man. He is close to his father Commander Adama and to his siblings Athena and Zac with Starbuck** almost a surrogate brother. After the destruction of the Twelve Colonies, he also finds a family of his own, when he takes Boxey, a traumatised little boy, under his wing and falls in love with and eventually marries Boxey’s mother Serina. Serina dies soon thereafter – another thing that simply did not happen on TV in those days to characters who weren’t one-off love interests and especially not to characters played by Jane Seymour (what was it about the original Galactica and killing off characters played by then famous actors?). After Serina’s death, Apollo suddenly finds himself a single father and it doesn’t matter at all, neither to Apollo nor his family, that Boxey isn’t his biological son. Even as a young girl, I realised that Apollo wasn’t just stunningly handsome, he was also the sort of supportive partner and loving parent you should seek out. Come to think of it, Mikhail from my In Love and War series was probably influenced at least a little bit by Captain Apollo.

And of course, the new Battlestar Galactica had to mess up that most important aspect of Apollo’s character as well. The new Apollo, now called Lee Adama, is estranged from his father over the death of his brother Zac. Coincidentally, this was when my Mom stopped watching the new Galactica, maybe fifteen minutes into the pilot, because “This would never happen. The real Commander Adama would never have allowed himself to grow estranged from his son like that. Can we switch this crap off now?” In the new Galactica, there is no Boxey and there is no Serina. Lee Adama is just another of TV’s many unattached white men, who later enters a relationship with a female bridge officer and pines after Starbuck who’s female now, so it isn’t even canon slash.

In the old blog, I expounded my views regarding the new Battlestar Galactica at length, but most of those posts are lost to time now. Here is one that survived. In short, I disliked it intensely, because it took away everything I had loved about the original Battlestar Galactica and replaced it with grimdarkness and faux relevant discussion about the war on terror, the legitimacy of the president and religious debates, so many religious debates. Oh yes, and the new Galactica was also grossly sexist, erasing all the female characters from the original and giving its new female characters only one of three storylines: Get pregnant, get tortured and raped or get breast cancer. In fact, I disliked the new Battlestar Galactica so much that I referred to it as “Battlestar Craptastica” and got into fights with people I considered my friends about it (I quickly learned that they weren’t). You know how some Star Wars fans hate the prequels so much that they accuse George Lucas of having raped their childhood? That’s how I felt about Ron D. Moore and the new Battlestar Galactica.

Coincidentally, I also predicted at the time that in ten years, the new Battlestar Galactica would feel more dated than the old one, because it was so focussed on what were considered the issues of the day in the US/UK in the early 2000s. The people who liked the new Battlestar Galactica and called it the best show on television vehemently disagreed, of course. However, time has proven me right. Because the mantle of “the best show on television” was passed on to The Wire, Homeland, Breaking Bad and whoever has it these days (Westworld, maybe?). As for the new Battlestar Galactica, when was the last time you heard anybody discussing that show? It still gets invoked occasionally to advertise a new space opera type show as “the next Battlestar Galactica“, which usually reduces my desire to watch said show to near zero. I still haven’t watched The Expanse, because everybody was so eager to compare it to the new Battlestar Galactica. But the world has changed since the new Battlestar Galactica first aired, the thinly disguised “ripped from the headlines” plots that once made the show feel so relevant seem quaint now.

I think I watched maybe five full episodes of the new Battlestar Galactica altogether, though I fell asleep halfway through one of them. I do remember tuning in when Richard Hatch showed up, because I wanted to know what he looked like. Even at sixty, he still was handsome, much more handsome than Jamie Bamber who played the new Apollo. Coincidentally, I have also forgiven Ron D. Moore for ruining Battlestar Galactica, since he has done a really good job with adapting Outlander since then. I never really held a grudge against any of the actors involved, especially since many of them have done good work elsewhere before and since.

That’s not to say that the original Battlestar Galactica was without problems, cause it certainly had more than its share. And in fact, I suspect that if I had been older when I first saw it or hadn’t been so starved for any kind of SF, I probably wouldn’t have loved it as much as I did.

While the original Galactica certainly made laudable attempts at worldbuilding and at presenting a society that was alien, yet recognisable, those attempts often fell flat when the characters landed on a planet that was clearly the Universal backlot dressed up with Christmas lights (quite literally in one of the “space western” episodes) in the cheap filler episodes. And indeed, I find that I often skip the backlot filler episodes, when I watch my Battlestar Galactica DVD boxset.

As with many TV shows pre-1990, the internal continuity is often messy, though the original Galactica at least attempted to have some sort of internal continuity and a plot arc, when that sort of thing was still extremely rare. In spite of the fine actors, both regulars and guest stars, emotional scenes often fall flat. I think I grieved more for Zac and Serina than their respective families. And Boxey grieves more for his dog, the original Muffet, than for either of his biological parents. As it was, my mind often filled in the emotions that were lacking – I did this with cartoons, too. I even wrote fanfiction about Zac somehow surviving and desperately trying to rejoin his family.

The politics of the new Battlestar Galactica were blatant and often hugely problematic, which infuriated me, because I didn’t recall that the original Galactica had much in the way of political content at all. This is wrong, because rewatching the original Galactica as an adult, it’s obvious that it was full of politics and just as problematic as the old one. For starters, the original Galactica is very much an anti-disarmament polemic. The anti-disarmament message in the original Galactica is as blatant as the “war on terror” parallels in the new one. After all, the initial Cylon attack happens just after the Twelve Colonies have signed a disarmament and peace treaty. And indeed, Soviet journalist Melor Sturua got the message just clear and criticized the original Battlestar Galactica as “anti-Soviet hysteria”. Meanwhile, my younger self totally failed to see any of this, because a) the Cylons really were a threat, unlike the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact, which I mostly associated with East German relatives, who sure as hell were no Cylons and not remotely threatening, and b) the idea that anybody could be against nuclear disarmament was absolutely inconceivable to me, since everybody was against nuclear weapons (the 1980s were the time of the great anti-nuclear weapons protests in West Germany) except for a handful of politicians and most of those were probably manipulated by a tiny number of genuinely evil politicians.

The anti-disarmament message is front and centre in the original Battlestar Galactica, but there is another problematic political message to be found in the show. For in the original Battlestar Galactica, the military as represented by Commander Adama and Colonel Tigh is inevitably right, whereas the civilian government as represented by the changing rooster of veteran actors who make up the Council of Twelve, is inevitably wrong. Interestingly, this is one of the few aspects of the original that the new series kept, though here the conflict between the military and the civilian government is reduced to a conflict between the characters of the new Commander Adama, as played by Edward James Olmos, and President Laura Roslin, as played by Mary McDonnell. Come to think of it, the original series also moved in that direction towards the end of its run by contrasting Commander Adama with a female member of the Council of Twelve, played by Ina Balin. They made a very shippable couple.

But in spite of its problems, the original Battlestar Galactica remains highly watchable and entertaining even almost forty years after it was made. A large part of the reason are the likeable characters (unlike the new series, where absolutely no one was even remotely likeable) and the actors who played them who managed to smooth over many of the problems. And Richard Hatch as Captain Apollo was very much the heart of the original Battlestar Galactica, along with Dirk Benedict’s Starbuck and Lorne Greene’s Adama (extra shout-out for Terry Carter as Colonel Tigh, who was always my Mom’s favourite).

Richard Hatch also showed up in other TV shows during the 1970s and 1980s. I vividly remember him playing a creepy stalker who harrasses Connie Seleca in an episode of Hotel. And of course, he also starred in The Streets of San Francisco, after Michael Douglas left. But while I was always happy to see him on TV, I knew next to nothing about Richard Hatch, the person. According to the tributes and obituaries, he seems to have been as nice a person in real life as he was on screen as Apollo. He also was an acting coach and teacher, which is probably why you saw less of him on TV after approx. 1990.

So rest in peace, Richard Hatch, the one and only Captain Apollo.

*Indeed, both happened within approx. three years. We got private television via our aerial, the Star Wars films finally came to German TV and we also finally got a VCR.

**The producers obviously expected female viewers to fall for Starbuck, but while I like both Starbuck the character and Dirk Benedict, the actor, I never found him remotely attractive. Coincidentally, I felt the same way about Dirk Benedict’s other famous role, Templeton Peck a.k.a. Face from The A-Team, whom I once again liked, but never found remotely attractive.

Send to Kindle

Indie Speculative Fiction of the Month for January 2017

[image error]It’s that time of the month again, time for “Indie Speculative Fiction of the Month”.

So what is “Indie Speculative Fiction of the Month”? It’s a round-up of speculative fiction by indie authors newly published this month, though some December books I missed the last time around snuck in as well. The books are arranged in alphabetical order by author. So far, most links only go to Amazon.com, though I may add other retailers for future editions.

Once again, we have new releases covering the whole broad spectrum of speculative fiction. This month, we have urban fantasy, epic fantasy, Asian fantasy, space opera, military science fiction, post-apocalyptic science fiction, dystopian fiction, science fiction mystery, paranormal romance, fantasy romance, aliens, werewolves, robots, UFOs, intergalactic traders, FBI witches, magical source-fixers, mutant assassins, murdered gods, monsters in the woods and much more.

Don’t forget that Indie Speculative Fiction of the Month is also crossposted to the Speculative Fiction Showcase, a group blog run by Jessica Rydill and myself, which features new release spotlights, guest posts, interviews and link round-ups regarding all things speculative fiction several times per week.

As always, I know the authors at least vaguely, but I haven’t read all of the books, so Caveat emptor.

And now on to the books without further ado:

[image error] Dick and Henry and the Temporary Detective by Kenneth Buff:

Space is full of adventure. And danger too. Fresh off their last case, Captain Dick Shannon and his harvest bot, HN-R3 report to Station 2 for reassignment, only to find the station in the middle of an attack that threatens the lives of everyone on-board. Now, Dick and Henry must work together with a mysterious woman, hopping from planet to planet in search of clues in order to save themselves and bring the monsters responsible for the destruction of the station to justice before it’s too late.

 

[image error] Hunted Wolf by Stacy Claflin:

Her fiancé’s family wants her dead. And they won’t stop until she is.

Victoria and Toby have faced one trial after another since falling in love. Now they must face Toby’s old pack—a cruel traditional group opposed to anyone refusing to follow the old ways. Toby will do anything to protect Victoria, even to the point of separating from her. He sends her to a fierce bear shifter colony, where she will be hidden and protected.

Life with the werebears begins to take its toll, and Victoria’s worries get the best of her. She fears for Toby and her pack, but her thoughts are torn—she also fears her sister is in danger. Victoria is compelled to find and protect her, so she leaves the sanctuary of the werebear colony and sets off in search of her.

Victoria encounters so much more than she could have imagined once she embarks on her quest. Will she be able to find her sister before Toby’s old pack finds and kills her?

[image error] The Cost of Business by Zen DiPietro:

Cabot Layne has unintentionally become the owner of someone else’s problem. In order to get free of it, he’ll need to use every bit of his trader cunning. If he does it just right, he might stay out of prison. With a little luck, he’ll even manage to turn a profit.

 

 

 

[image error] Murdered Gods by Marina Finlayson:

Lexi didn’t set out to steal a god’s ring, but when a magic artifact starts trying to talk to you, what’s a girl supposed to do? She’s always had the ability to talk to animals, but this new development amps up the crazy. Now she’s afraid her power is out of control and she’s losing her mind.

The only person who could possibly reassure her that she’s not going mad is her mother, who has always refused to discuss the source of Lexi’s strange ability. Now that the jewellery is getting chatty, maybe she’ll finally spill the beans.

Unfortunately, going home means a trip back to the human territories, and Lexi only just made it out of there alive last time. She’s hoping for a quick visit, but with a god hellbent on retrieving the ring and a fireshaper she might have accidentally betrayed on her tail, life is about to get horribly complicated—for her and everyone she cares about.

[image error] Alien Tales and Lore by G.J. Gundersen Jr.:

Strange messages from alien visitors start to appear in the newspapers. A young farmer dares to visit a mysterious pyramidal hill that, according to village legends, was built by aliens. A lowly researcher at a government installation finds a fully functional alien spacesuit …

These are just some of the stories included in Alien Tales and Lore.

Gundersen’s entertaining stories are told in a folkloric or fairytale style, but they are unashamedly set in a modern age where odd occurrences may often be brought about by alien technology. The tales included in this volume are by turns enchanting, surreal, and troubling. But as with all fairytales and folktales, they offer an insight into human nature. Gundersen writes a new tradition for an age of alien contact!

[image error] Source-Breaker by Kyra Halland:

After twenty-seven years in the trade and with a string of failures behind him, Kaniev the Source-Fixer is ready to go home and take up fishing. First, though, one more repair job lies ahead of him – the magical Source Chaitrasse is experiencing problems. Kaniev’s depleted finances and self-confidence demand that this time, he get the job done right.

Fransisa, once presumed to be the next High Priestess of Source Chaitrasse and now displaced by a young Chosen, the natural heir to the position, is struggling to hold on to her authority at Chaitrasse when a wandering tradesman appears, telling her the Source has a problem and he’s the one who can fix it. Though he looks more like a wandering brigand than a powerful wizard or wise scholar, Fransisa decides it can’t hurt anything to let him take a look.

Kaniev’s ill-fated attempt to repair Source Chaitrasse leads to a sorcerer who is conducting dangerous experiments with magic. Caught in the sorcercer’s schemes, Fransisa and Kaniev must overcome their past failures and their differences to stop him before the Sources of magic and all the lands around them are destroyed.

[image error] Songs of Insurrection by J.C. Kang:

The Empire of Cathay teeters on the brink of rebellion, and only the lost magic of Dragon Songs can prevent the realm from descending into chaos.

Blessed with an unrivaled voice, Kaiya dreams of a time when music could summon typhoons and rout armies. Maybe then, the imperial court would see the awkward, gangly princess as more than a singing fool.

When members of the emperor’s elite spy clan uncover a brewing rebellion, the court hopes to appease the ringleader by offering Kaiya as a bride.

Obediently wedding the depraved rebel leader means giving up her music. Confronting him with the growing power of her voice could kill her.

[image error] Chameloen Assassin by B.R. Kingsolver:

Libby is a mutant, one of the top burglars and assassins in the world. For a price, she caters to executives’ secret desires. Eliminate your corporate rival? Deliver a priceless art masterpiece or necklace? Hack into another corporation’s network? Libby’s your girl.

Climate change met nuclear war, and humanity lost. The corporations stepped in, stripping governments of power. Civilization didn’t end, but it became less civilized. There are few rules as corporations jockey for position and control of assets and markets.

In the year 2200, the world has barely recovered the level of technology that existed before the ice melted and the subsequent wars. Corporate elites live in their walled estates and skyscraper apartments while the majority of humanity supplies their luxuries. On the bottom level, the mutants, the poor, and the criminals scramble every day just to survive.

Urban Fantasy set 200 years in the future.

[image error]

By popular demand, here is the annual Oscar reflections post.

I wasn’t actually sure whether I would be watching live this year or not, because of the time differences the Oscars tend to start in the middle of the night and generally last into the early hours of the morning. Besides, I wasn’t feeling all that well (that inflamed aphthous ulcer is somehow affecting my entire system and makes me feel tired all the time). Besides, as usual, I care very little about most of the nominated films and actively loathe several of them.

In the end, I decided to start watching and go to bed, once I got too bored or too angry to continue. Once the endless red carpet interviews were finally over (yes, the gowns are pretty, but do we need to spend approx. two hours of repetitive interviews to gawk at the same gowns on the same attractive women) and the show proper began, my first reaction upon seeing the host was, “Who the fuck is that guy?” Because I had honestly no clue who the earnestly grinning fellow was.

A quick glance at the TV guide revealed that this was one , comedian and creator of the Family Guy adult cartoon and writer of Ted, last summer’s comedy about a very rude teddy bear. A look at IMDB also reveals that Mr. MacFarlane has loads of voice acting and writing credits for cartoons, mostly stuff like Dexter’s Lab, Johnny Bravo and Cow and Chicken, neither of which I ever liked. Oh yes, and he had a small part on Star Trek Enterprise. Still, with such credits you’d expect an Oscar host who knows what he’s doing and who would probably even manage to be funny. Unfortunately, Seth MacFarlane, in spite of his impressive credits, was no such thing.

Honestly, Seth MacFarlane is probably the worst and the rudest Oscar host I ever recall seeing. Because Mr. MacFarlane’s idea of humour is to be as offensive as possible. Honestly, we had racist jokes, we had anti-semitic jokes, we had ageist jokes, we had misogynist jokes galore. The man accused George Clooney of being a pedophile, for fuck’s sake. He made jokes about domestic abuse. He called Jennifer Anniston a former stripper. He made a crack about Jean Dujardin’s (last year’s winner of the best actor award for The Artist) lack of Hollywood success (Jean Dujardin has an active and distinguished career going in France. Not everybody wants a Hollywood career). He asked Daniel Day-Lewis, who apparently subscribes to the method type of acting, whether he had gotten so deep into Abraham Lincoln that he tried to free African-American actors like Don Cheadle when he met them at the studio. He accused Denzel Washington of substance abuse (which in retrospect may have been a reference to Washington’s movie Flight, which I have not seen, but wherein Washington apparently plays a pilot with a substance abuse problem). He made jokes about the supposedly incomprehensible accents of Selma Hayek, Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz. He compared Ben Affleck to one of the Kardashian sisters (apparently that was a joke about facial hair – Affleck’s or the Kardashians’). He made jokes about Amy Adams never winning an Oscar. He had his Ted character talk about the supposed Jewish conspiracy that rules Hollywood – honestly, I was waiting for the Ted character to pull out a copy of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. He tried to hit on Sally Field – dressed up as the Flying Nun. He sang a song about the boobs of actresses, a song that sounded like something my 6th graders would come up with. And because that wasn’t offensive enough, several of the films with boob exposure he listed were films about rape and sexual violence (Monster, Monsters’ Ball and The Accused, probably more). Uh right, because the gang rape scene in The Accused is so stimulating that you can’t think of anything other than Jodie Foster’s breasts. Honestly, this guy was going for the full offensiveness bingo. About the only -ism he left out was fatphobia, which was notable considering that there were several women with non-Hollywood typical figures (Melissa McCarthy, Octavia Spencer, Adele, who has a surname, Atkins) on stage.

After about five minutes of MacFarlane’s brand of humour – long before the worst of it – I was ready to strangle the guy and was waiting for someone else to do it for me. In fact, whenever MacFarlane came on stage I was waiting for him to spot a black eye, because someone had hit him, unimpressed by his brand of humour. I was waiting for someone to brain him with an Oscar on stage.

Eventually, someone did show up to inform Mr MacFarlane that “Hey, dude, you’re not even remotely funny.” And not just anyone, but Captain James T. Kirk (actually William Shattner stuffed into an admiral’s uniform and the Enterprise command chair) supposedly come back from the future to warn MacFarlane that his unfunny comedy was alienating the audience so badly that he would be labeled worst Oscar host ever. iO9 has a video of the Captain Kirk bit, though it doesn’t work, at least not for me.

Me: “What, you mean he’ll get even worse?” and “Why did they have to send overweight Admiral Kirk back from the future? Why couldn’t we get the original series version?”

And yes, he got worse, for the boob song came during the Kirk bit (presented as a “recording” from the future). And Flight, reenacted by sock puppets. And Seth MacFarlane, dressed as the Flying Nun, trying to hit on Sally Field.

Once Kirk showed up, I screamed at the screen, “Oh, just phaser the guy and save us all the pain. Or beam him to Mars. Or beam down a squad of fully armed Klingons onto the stage, after having told them that Mr. MacFarlane had just mortally insulted the whole Klingon Empire.”

Of course, this was still the Oscars, not Star Trek IV and a half – Saving the Oscars, so none of that happened and MacFarlane just continued to be offensive. When Chris Pine and Zoe Saldana from the travesty that is J.J. Abrams rebooted Star Trek showed up on stage to present an award, I was hoping for the real Kirk to come back and blast the pretender Kirk to smithereens.

Apparently, I’m not alone in my sheer disbelief at the offensiveness of Seth MacFarlane. The Guardian has a summary of MacFarlane’s unfunny jokes here, while Sarah Hughes comments on the general misogyny of MacFarlane’s jokes, complete with a video of the boob song in all its awful glory, also at the Guardian.

The worst thing about Seth MacFarlane is that the man has obvious talent. I mean, the man can sing, the man can dance – just look at those dance numbers. And if he had only been singing and dancing – well, I would have been impressed. It was only a pity that he had to talk.

That said, there was one joke of Mr MacFarlane’s that had me laughing out loud, even though it was as offensive as the rest of them. For when talking about the best actor nominees, MacFarlane mentioned that Daniel Day-Lewis was not in fact the first actor to be nominated for an Academy Award for playing Abraham Lincoln, Raymond Massey had also been nominated for playing Lincoln sometime in the 1940s.

“But…”, said Mr MacFarlane, “…there was only one actor ever who really got into Lincoln’s head and that was John Wilkes Booth.”

Resounding silence in the auditorium – the sort of silence where you could have heard the proverbial pin drop – while I was quite literally bent over laughing. Whereupon Seth MacFarlane added, “Too soon, you say. It’s been 150 years, for heaven’s sake, and it’s still too soon?”

So why did I laugh at that joke, even though it was as offensive as the rest of them? I think it’s a matter of distance. Because Abraham Lincoln is very much an icon for Americans, an inviolable, untouchable icon. While the whole issue of the Civil War and slavery is still very much a taboo topic even 150 years later (see Mr MacFarlane’s “too soon” comment). It was quite stunning that this year we had two nominated films (Lincoln and Django Unchained) which deal with the subject of slavery without any of the romanticizing of Gone with the Wind, Raintree Country, North and South and a dozen others in the same vein – and that 150 years after the event. Americans are really slow about coming to terms with this particular aspect of their past.

So why was a crack about Abraham Lincoln and John Wilkes Booth funny to me? It was funny for me, precisely because I recognized it as skewering a sacred cow (Lincoln) and addressing a subject that’s still very much taboo in the US (the Civil War), but yet I had sufficient distance from the subject not to be personally offended. It’s the same reason why e.g. Pope jokes are funny when you’re not Catholic – because the skewering of other people’s sacred cows can be funny.

And yet I was familiar enough with the history of the Civil War and the position of Lincoln in the American consciousness to recognize that there was a sacred cow being skewered here. Because the Germans I talked to today didn’t really get the Lincoln joke at all, not without laboured explanations. And indeed, I have met several otherwise well educated people (several Germans and one Chinese) in recent times who were very impressed by the Lincoln movie and inevitably said, “Wow, I didn’t know anything about that.” And I inevitably thought, “How can you not know?” But then, I’m hardly typical. After all, I studied English at university, which includes British, North-American and Commonwealth history. And I spent a year of my life attending a kindergarten in Biloxi, Mississippi, where they had portraits of all American presidents up to that point (which would have been Jimmy Carter) on the wall* and where Jefferson Davis hung right next to Lincoln. And they probably would have taken Lincoln down and thrown him into the trash, if they had been able to get away with it. Meanwhile, the US Civil War or the subject of slavery for that matter barely figures in history or English textbooks in Germany at all. I tend to at least mention it in the appropriate context in my classes, but the curriculum does not back me up there. So yeah, of course a lot of people don’t know anything about Abraham Lincoln.

When Seth MacFarlane was not on stage, th show suddenly became a lot more tolerable. There was a tribute to fifty years of cinematic James Bond, which managed to condense the Bond movies into one series of explosions, fights, car chases, gadgets and cheesecake – well, that’s not so far off the truth, though I’d also add in Ken Adam’s wonderful production designs, followed by Shirley Bassey singing “Goldfinger” and being just plain awesome. Though it was a bit mean towards Adele, who performed her own Bond theme song later on and would inevitably be compared to the best Bond theme songs of all time now (though she did go on to win). There was a tribute to Hollywood musicals with songs from Les Misérables, Chicago and Dreamgirls, probably because those were the only Hollywood musicals whose casts are still alive and still look like they used to when making the films in question. Though Chicago and Dreamgirls and even Les Misérables are not the first or even the fifth thing to come to mind when thinking of “great Hollywood musicals”. And since Chicago happened to win the Oscar for best picture exactly ten years ago, there was yet another tribute reuniting the cast of that “landmark musical” (said Seth MacFarlane) on stage, while I was left wondering in what parallel reality Chicago was a landmark musical, because in mine it was viewed as a “Let’s pick something inoffensive, since the Iraq war just started” compromise winner and – by some of our more pessimistic pundits – as a sign for the cultural decline of Hollywood.

Robert Downey Jr. appeared on stage again in his Tony Stark persona (or maybe Tony Stark regularly attends the Oscars, pretending to be an actor named Robert Downey Jr.), this time accompanied by four of his fellow Avengers. They were responsible for the other good joke of the evening, when Samuel L. Jackson was fumbling with the envelope and said, “Typical, five superheroes and we can’t even open a single envelope.” Now if the combined might of the Avengers had only been able to do something about Seth MacFarlane.

The appearance of five Avengers castmembers (But why only guys? Why no Scarlett Johansen?) also addressed a problem that’s all too common. The Avengers was the most successful film both in the US and worldwide last year and one of the better offerings in the superhero genre and yet it only received a single Oscar nomination in the special effects category, where it promptly lost out to Life of Pi. Of course, it’s also worth noting that the other most successful film of 2012 (it beat out The Avengers by a mile in most of Europe), the French film Intouchables, was not nominated at all, not even for a foreign language Oscar, even though it was a far more typical Oscar-winning film than The Avengers.

So on to the winners: They should just rename the best feature length animated film award the Pixar award and be done with it, because once again the Pixar entry du jour, Brave, won against far more interesting films such as Frankenweenie or Paranorman. Now I’ve said before that whatever magic Pixar exerts – and it obviously does, considering that so many people love their movies – it does not work for me nor for any other German person I’ve ever met.

Daniel Day-Lewis won the best actor award for his portrayal of Abraham Lincoln, which was really quite inevitable, because – as explained above – Lincoln is an American icon. I for one was backing Hugh Jackman, but then Daniel Day-Lewis certainly deserves the award for his performance (though his babbling after winning was hopeless – he said to Meryl Streep, “We both won an Oscar for playing heads of state, me Maggie Thatcher and she Abraham Lincoln”. Now I really would have loved to see that). Apparently, this is Daniel Day-Lewis’ third Oscar win, a true rarity. I only recalled his win for My Left Foot in 1990, though apparently he also won for There Will Be Blood in 2008, a fact I had completely forgotten. But then, There Will Be Blood is rather forgettable – sorry, Upton Sinclair.

Anne Hathaway won the best supporting actress award for her portrayal of Fantine in Les Misérables. Again, this was a pretty obvious decision. A popular movie, good actress and good singer and Anne Hathaway’s mother apparently played the part on stage. Plus, Sally Field already has an Oscar. Though apparently, plenty of people hate Anne Hathaway, because she’s young and pretty and thin and was wearing no bra under her gown and – horror of horrors – committed the cardinal sin of showing visible nipples under her gown. An adult woman has nipples, now that’s a scandal.

Jennifer Lawrence won the best actress in a lead role award for her part in Silver Linings Playbook and promptly stumbled in her gown with its ridiculously long train. The gown reminded me so much of Katniss Everdeen’s infamous fire-catching gown in The Hunger Games that I expected it to burst into flames any moment. Now this was a win I did not call. I expected this award to go to Emanuelle Riva, who is after all 86 years old, and won’t have that many more chances to win an Oscar, or to Jessica Chastain, because Zero Dark Thirty had more buzz. Besides, everybody seems to be mad at Jennifer Lawrence these day, because she supposedly snubbed Meryl Streep at the Golden Globes. What is more, Silver Linings Playbook seemed to be more of a romantic comedy from what little I know about the film, which isn’t much – I pretty much dismissed it out of hand, because the presence of Bradley Cooper and the word “playbook” in the title suggested a sports movie, probably about American football, and I don’t care for those.

But my favourite to win in this category was Quvenzhané Wallis, the 9-year-old star of Beasts of the Southern Wild. In fact, Beasts of the Southern Wild was the only movie nominated in the major categories that I really cared about. It was also my favourite for best picture. But of course it did not win, because it’s a fantasy film about people of colour, played by people who weren’t actors before they made this film, living in the swamps of Louisiana – which is about as far as you can get from what is considered relevant in Hollywood. Plus – unlike Django Unchained, Lincoln and (presumably, since I haven’t seen it) Flight – there was no white saviour figure in sight. Even worse, in Django Unchained, Christoph Waltz (more on him later) won an Oscar for playing the white saviour figure, while the black lead actor wasn’t even nominated. And while it was encouraging to see quite a few people of colour on stage doing presentations, the nominees in the major categories are still overwhelmingly white, whiter than in other years in fact. The only exceptions were Quvenzhané Wallis and Denzel Washington in the acting categories, neither of whom won, and Ang Lee (who did win) in the directing category.

N.K. Jemisin has more on the disgraceful treatment of Beasts of the Southern Wild in general and Quvenzhané Wallis in particular. Now personally I viewed Seth MacFarlane’s nasty comment more as a jab against George Clooney (and a really awful one at that, since MacFarlane basically accused Clooney of being a pedophile) than at Quvenzhané Wallis, but then MacFarlane still turned a 9-year-old, a rather young and small looking 9-year-old at that, into a sex object. As for the Onion and the person who wouldn’t vote for her, because they couldn’t pronounce her name (What does that voter do in the foreign language category? Not vote, because he cannot pronounce anybody’s name?), I have no words. And how could anybody at the Onion ever think it would be okay to use the c-word in a public tweet about any Oscar nominated actress, much less a 9-year-old girl?

Which brings us to the bit about this year’s Oscars that is most discussed in the German language media, namely the “triumph of the Austrian film” with Christoph Waltz winning his second Oscar as the best supporting actor in Tarantino’s Django Unchained and Michael Haneke winning the best foreign film Oscar for Amour. Hereby commentators in both Germany and Austria or always quick to point out that this is in fact a triumph of the Austrian film and that the Germans have nothing to do with it, even though Haneke was born in Munich to Austrian parents and Waltz holds a dual German-Austrian citizenship (which shouldn’t even be possible according to German law, but I guess such things don’t apply to white, non-muslim movie stars). My answer to this is, “Folks, you can keep them both and Ulrich Seidl, too, for all I care. You’re welcome to them, cause we don’t want them.”

There are many talented actors and filmmakers working in the German speaking world (i.e. Germany, Switzerland and Austria) today (and Austria’s 2008 Oscar win for The Forgers was well deserved). However, Christoph Waltz** and Michael Haneke are not among them. Christoph Waltz had a lengthy acting career in Germany and Austria before Quentin Tarantino discovered him – however, he was not even remotely memorable. Waltz himself says it’s because he simply wasn’t offered good parts in Germany and Austria, but that’s bunk, because among a lot of trash like The Roy Black Story (Waltz plays sappy “Schlager” singer Roy Black) and run-of-the-mill TV productions like Tatort, Polizeiruf 110 and Rosa Roth, he was also in a few films that were really good like the historical drama König der letzten Tage (King of the Last Days) and the remake of Die Zürcher Velobung (Engagement in Zurich), one of the best German films of the 1950s and probably my favourite romantic comedy ever. Honestly, Waltz got to play Büffel in Engagement in Zurich and complains that there are no good roles in Germany for him? Go on and play Nazis for Tarantino then.

As for Michael Haneke, I already disliked him intensely before most Americans had even heard of him. The Piano Player, Caché, The White Ribbon and now Amour – they’re all horribly depressing films which sadly match Hollywood’s idea of what a foreign language film should be like, namely grim and depressing. It doesn’t help either that Amour is in the popular new genre (in Germany and Austria at least) of dementia melodrama, i.e. films about old people in the grip of dementia. Because dementia is such an important subject in an aging society and we are apparently refusing to address it – well, maybe because most families already have one or more very ill elderly relatives in their lives (I have four at the moment, though only one has dementia) and don’t want to watch films and read books about sick elderly people. Though – and it pains me to say this – Haneke’s Amour is far from the worst of the dementia melodramas. There are some pretending to be documentaries which feature actual dementia patients and chronicle their illness in great details, though those patients are unable to consent.

Which only leaves us with the main prize, the Oscar for the best film of 2012. I totally did not call this one, since I expected a race between Lincoln and Zero Dark Thirty with maybe Les Misérables as an noncontroversial compromise. Instead, Argo won, much to my surprise, and gave us the chance to see George Clooney and Ben Affleck (But what’s with the beards?) on stage accepting Oscars as producers. Clooney was really classy to stand back and let Ben Affleck and the non-moviestar producer do the thank you speeches BTW. He was also classy not to punch out Seth MacFarlane.

I don’t really have much of a beef with the win for Argo, though it’s not a film I’m personally interested in. Besides, Argo winning best picture royally pissed off Iranian officials (well, it is kind of embarrassing for Iran to have fallen for a ploy as stupid as that), which means it can’t be all that bad. Here’s a report from the Washington Post and, for balance’s sake, from the Iranian news channel Press TV.

Is Argo propaganda? It probably is, but then so is Zero Dark Thirty and I know which film I prefer. Besides, being propaganda has never stopped any film from winning an Oscar. In that context, I saw a really interesting interview with Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek on TV, wherein he called Argo “feel-good propaganda for the CIA” and “probably a worse film than Zero Dark Thirty“, which he dislikes. But unfortunately, that interview is not online, more the pity.

Here is the full list of winners, by the way.

*My parents say that I could recite the names of all presidents and point out the correct portrait at the age of five, though I have no real memory of that and I certainly couldn’t do it now. I can still recite the Pledge of Allegiance (with “under God”), though, and sometimes demonstrate it to my students.

**Since everybody and their brother are bashing Oscar nominated actresses today, I think I can say something not quite flattering about Christoph Waltz.

" data-medium-file="" data-large-file="" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-6197" src="http://pegasus-pulp.com/wp-content/up..." alt="Inwards Bound by Jim Rudnick" width="188" height="300" /> Inwards Bound by Jim Rudnick:

Tempted by the dissolution of the huge empire inwards, Duke Scott and the Baroness and the Caliph join forces to send a ship inwards bound, to find new planets for the expansion of the RIM Confederacy—led by the new captain, Bram Sander. Making a mind-reader a ship’s captain means more than one might expect, and Bram has to worry about the issues that arise.

Broken now into smaller Warlord realms, the first thing to do is to find allies and that becomes a major thrust in the RIM Confederacy ships first voyage inwards—and that leads to various new allies and antagonists too. One Warlord wants to join the Confederacy and one wants to take it over by force and the chances of that happening are real.

As the new secret mine for Xithricite is found by the Confederacy who now mines the red ore in secret, the Warlord fomenting war sends declarations to the Confederacy ship and Bram must respond. Aided by his own red ship and the Leudies gifts, he foists the Confederacy wishes on the Warlords—and the battles begin…

[image error]Send to Kindle

A handy guide to all SFF-related posts of 2016

I don’t normally do eligibility posts. I’m not opposed to them on principle, but I feel incredibly awkward making one, so I don’t.

However, someone added my name to the 2017 Hugo Nominations Wiki (thanks, unknown reader) and I’ve noticed some traffic coming from there. There are some links at the Hugo Nominations Wiki, but in case you’re interested in what else I write, here is a handy overview of SFF-related blog posts I’ve written in 2016. The posts are in chronological order, from January to December of 2016.

BTW, the 2017 Hugo Nominations Wiki along with the Hugo Spreadsheet of Doom and Rocket Stack Rank is a great resource for anybody looking for Hugo recommendations.

At this blog:

SFF, Romance and Abuse Narratives
Two Literary Deaths and Some Thoughts on the 2015 Nebula Nominees.
More Reactions to the 2015 Nebula Award Nominees.
Yet more reactions to the 2015 Nebula Award Nominees.
Rest in Peace, Sir Ken Adam.
J.G. Ballard, High-Rise and Butalist architecture as instant dystopias.
More on J.G. Ballard, High-Rise, Brutalism and Architectural Horror.
Hugo Season 2016: The Return of the Puppies.
Of Star Wars and Mary Sues.
The obligatory 2016 Hugo Shortlist Post.
2016 Hugo Shortlist: More Thoughts and Reactions – and the Clarke Awards.
Yet more Hugo debate 2016 – and a bit about the Clarke Awards.
And even more Hugo links – and the Locus Awards.
The 2015 Nebula Awards, the Bram Stoker Awards, the Eurovision Song Contest… and a bit about football.
Cora guest-blogs elsewhere – and some thoughts on dialogue as characterisation.
Alarm für Cobra 11 and the Lester Dent Pulp Fiction Masterplot.
The July Short Story Challenge Revisited – 31 Stories in 31 Days.
Of Retro Hugos and Dragons.
The 2016 Hugo Awards or Fandom 2 : Puppies 0.
More 2016 Hugo Awards Reactions.
Yet more 2016 Hugo Award Reactions.
Of Hugos, Puppies and WorldCon 2016 – and a bit about the Clarke Award.
Even More Hugo and Clarke Award Reactions.
Why we celebrate that so many women and writers of colour won Hugos this year.
The 2016 Dragon Awards or Participation Trophies for Puppies.
More 2016 Dragon Award Reactions.
The Three Fractions of Speculative Fiction.
Rücksturz in die Zukunft – “Raumpatrouille Orion” at Fifty.
“Bullet Holes” and the Creativity Pressure Cooker.
Ruminations on the series finale of Mad Men or The world’s longest Coke commercial.
Rest in Peace, Carrie Fisher and George Michael, and Fuck 2016.
Twelve editions of Indie Speculative Fiction of the Month.

Elsewhere:

Guest post at Sarah Ash’s blog.
I also contribute to the Speculative Fiction Showcase, a group blog focussed on indie SFF.

Fiction (SFF only):

Valentine’s Day on Iago Prime , short story.
Lovers’ Lane , short story.
Double Feature , novelette.
The Death of the American Dream , short story.
Conspirators , novella.
The Three Quarters Eaten Dessert , short story.
Dreaming of the Stars , novelette.
Graveyard Shift , novelette.
Courting Trouble , short story.
Bullet Holes , short story.
Southern Monsters , short story collection.
The Cursed Arm of Driftwood Beach , short story.
Liquid Muse , short story.
“The Reanimated Reunion Tour” in Monster Maelstrom, edited by George Donnelly, short story.

Send to Kindle

Photos: Snow 2017

2017 started just like 2016 ended, with mild weather. However, by the end of last week, winter finally arrived in the form of storm Egon.

Here in Northern Germany, we weren’t hit nearly as badly by Egon as some other regions, though Egon certainly made his presence felt, as the following photos show:

[image error]

Overnight, Egon brought a layer of fresh snow and swirling snowflakes.

[image error]

The streetlight neatly illuminates the swirling snowflakes.

[image error]

Not modern art or a camera defect, but the gale force winds of Egon turning snowflakes into streaks of white.

After Egon had blown through, the temperatures dropped and so the snow Egon had brought stuck around, joined by hoarfrost. The result was icy cold, but very pretty indeed.

[image error]

Snow and frosted trees along our street.

[image error]

Yet more frosted trees in the other direction.

[image error]

The oak tree next to the house is covered in hoarfrost.

[image error]

One last look up the street with frosted trees and snow-covered houses.

By the time dusk was falling, the already magical scenery became even prettier, because in addition to snow and frost, we also got fluffy pink clouds.

[image error]

A pink evening sky above a snow-covered world.

I have been busy these past few days, but I did find the opportunity to go hiking in the woods for an hour today. Of course, I also took some photos and with a better camera, too. I hope to post those tomorrow, but for now enjoy these smartphone photos of winter in North Germany.

Send to Kindle

Multi-Author Speculative Fiction Promotion

Fantasy author Andrea Pearson has organised a huge speculative fiction multi-author promotion from January 10 to January 14.

Over seventy authors are participating, with works ranging all across the speculative fiction spectrum, from epic and urban fantasy via paranormal romance all the way to horror and science fiction, so there’s sure to be something for every taste.

And best of all: All books are only 99 cents!

You can find a full list of all participating books here, including one title that may seem familiar to some of you.

So what are you waiting for? Go and buy some books!

Send to Kindle

New Year’s Day 2017

I spent a quiet New Year’s Day.

In past years, I have occasionally gone to a gathering with some family friends in the Teufelsmoor region just north of Bremen on New Year’s Day. But they always invite a guy who sprouts a lot of racist and xenophobic nonsense and I’ve had my fill of that.

So I stayed at home, slept in, wrote a bit on the next In Love and War story and did my bimonthly taxes (which I have to hand in on Monday).

And since I missed the meeting at a (pretty good) restaurant, I treated myself to a really nice meal. And since I love Cajun food and can’t get it in Germany, unless I cook my own, I made Venison Sauce Piquante.

Now many Sauce Piquante recipes use some very unusual (outside Louisiana, that is) meats like alligator, snapping turtle or armadillo, all of which are pretty much unavailable in Germany, unless you raid the local zoo (and I’m pretty sure ours does not have snapping turtles or armadillo). However, I came across a recipe using deer, which is readily available in Germany during the winter months. Better yet, I still had some leftover deer in the freezer from Christmas. So Venison Sauce Piquante it was.

Here is the venison sauce piquante simmering on the stove. You can barely see the meat for sauce and vegetables, but it is in there.

And here it is on the plate, served with rice.

The result was absolutely delicious. I’ll definitely be making this again.

Send to Kindle