April 10, 2005
SF
This one makes me itchy; I'm scared to read it too closely: Science Fiction/Fantasy Authors of Various Faiths: a list of sf authors, great and small, categorized by religion. No category for "no, thanks, I already ate" (from BoingBoing).
What I don't want for Xmas: 46-volume edition of Robert Heinlein's works.
Suzette Suzette Haden Elgin, author of the foundational Native Tongue series, has a series of sobering posts on marketing, sales, the decline of feminist sf, and how a publisher won't take an excellent new novel of hers unless she agrees to publish it under another name. Words fail me.
Farah Mendlesohn posts about Orientalism in sf.
Compelling review of Alex Shakar's The Savage Girl at The Pinocchio Theory. I am thinking of doing a course on sf and shopping, and this sounds perfect. No, really, think about it: Gibson's Pattern Recognition, Tricia Sullivan's Maul, this one ... it would be great!
Two new Canadian sf television series: Charlie Jade, debuting this month, and Ice Planet, slated to air in 2006 (via The Website at the End of the Universe).
Three links from SFSignal: first, 62 Quotations about Science Fiction from Bartleby1; second, Classic SF Covers; finally, links to SF Lists from the The Speculative Literature Foundation. Some useful lists, like Recommended Children's SF and Fantasy and Recommended Reading List from Hypatia's Hoard for Back to Sex Toys of the Future, but the categorizations seem a little strange: why is the Alternative Sexualities in Fantasy and SF Booklist in a different section than the Lambda Sci-Fi Recommended Reading List of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender themed SF? But perhaps I'm being picky; anyway, there is some good stuff here.
And finally, the final scene from Seven, acted out by stuffed animals. The choice of the Kevin Spacey toy is inspired (via Bibi).
1 A "somewhat shady sub-genre with a few first-rate books to its credit, science fiction." Susan Sontag, The Pornographic Imagination (1967).
Scribbled at April 10, 2005 11:17 PM AST | Hmmm? (4) | TrackBack (0) | Link Cosmos | More? sfIf you're going to do something on SF and shopping take a look at James Lovegrove's Clarke shortlisted DAYS (1997). One day in the life of a giga-store. It's a wonderfully wry take on consumerism taken to a logical extreme. Have to admit bias though as I published it.
Scribbled by Simon at April 12, 2005 11:09 AM | PermalinkIf you're going to do something on SF and shopping take a look at James Lovegrove's Clarke shortlisted DAYS (1997). One day in the life of a giga-store. It's a wonderfully wry take on consumerism taken to a logical extreme. Have to admit bias though as I published it.
Scribbled by Simon at April 12, 2005 11:09 AM | PermalinkThanks, Simon. I think I may even have read it; it sounds like a novel I've been wracking my brains trying to remember, about a huge store, accessible by invitation only, with charge cards of various levels. A woman lost her credit and was lurking in the store, afraid that if she left she would never get back in, and she got caught for pilfering some contact lens solution.
(If this is not the novel, I must sound mad.)
Scribbled by mj at April 12, 2005 09:56 PM | PermalinkLet me save you from madness - that is, indeed, the one.
As long as it also had a store detective losing his sense of self, a war between the computer and book departments and major characters that shared names with characters from other novels that took place over just one day, of course . . .
Scribbled by Simon Spanton at April 13, 2005 08:09 AM | Permalinkhttp://webteam.unb.ca/cgi-bin/MT-2.21/mt-tb.cgi/1508
Here's what others have to say about SF: