Links for 2011-02-13

"I can understand the temptation - and seeing how widely used the phrase has become, clearly I'm not the only one. Being "the literature of ideas" gives science fiction the authority of science. Or broadening it out - it gives speculative fiction permission to speculate. Yours is the fiction of the kitchen sink, ours is the literature of the future. Your fiction cares only about petty, worldly things - Booker Prizes and the New York Times Book Review. Our fiction is concerned with more lofty matters - the future of the human race, or the farthest reaches of the imagination.

There is a triumphant poetry in its very use: "The Literature of Ideas."

This is, of course, complete bullshit"

"Let's pretend for a moment that zombies are real (as if half of you weren't already daydreaming about that very thing). Have you noticed how most zombie movies take place only after the apocalypse is in full-swing? By the time we join our survivors, the military and government are already wiped out, and none of the streets are safe.

There's a reason the movie starts there, and not earlier. It's because the early part, where we go from one zombie to millions, doesn't make any sense. If you let the creeping buzzkill of logic into the zombie party, you realize the zombies would all be re-dead long before you even got a chance to fire up that chainsaw motorcycle you've been working on. Why?"