SF
drorzel | December 6, 2007John Scalzi is talking a big game:
I was just taking one of those Internet tests to see how much of a geek I am, when I suddenly thought, what the fuck am I doing? I'm a published science fiction writer. Do not pass "go," do not collect $200, you know? Just go straight to the geek win.
That's right, I win at geek. Tell me I'm wrong.
All I have to say is, "Enjoy it while you can, Heinlein boy."
I'm writing a book based on talking to my dog about quantum physics. Scalzi holds the title for the moment by virtue of actually being published, while my book is still pending.
But he's just keeping…
drorzel | December 4, 2007Physics World has an interview with Alastair Reynolds, who was trained as an astrophysicist but is now a full-time SF author:
How does your physics training help with your writing?
Less than people imagine. I think the most important attribute for a science-fiction writer is to be fascinated by science -- in all its manifestations. It's not necessary to be able to understand all the details, but just to be inspired and stimulated. Most of the ideas that have fed into my writing have come from reading popular articles on subjects far away from my own very limited specialization, such as…
drorzel | November 25, 2007A couple of months ago, I embarked on an experiment to read some SF magazines, and see if I was really missing out on the wonderful stuff that people are always haranguing con-goers about. I bought paper copies of Analog's November issue and the October/ November Asimov's, and commented on them here. I was unable to find paper copies of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, apparently due to their obnoxious return policy, but Kate got me an electronic version of the October issue, which I read slowly on my Palm over the next month or so. I finished it a while back, but never got around…
drorzel | November 10, 2007Because I'm a bad person, there follows a list of all the notable people I talked to at the World Fantasy Convention. You can feel free to assume that they all thought that I was brilliant, and offered to co-author important publications with me.
Kate and I had dinner with Sarah Monette Thursday night.
I chatted briefly with Scott Westerfeld at the Australian party Thursday night.
Kate and I went to the Zombies Need Brains party Friday, hosted by Joshua Palmatier, Patricia Bray, S.C. Butler, Barbara Campbell, Jennifer Dunne, and C.E. Murphy. I helped hand out door prize tickets briefly, and…
drorzel | November 10, 2007Matthew Fisher buys a blog topic:
I thought I'd throw in a request for another post on Steven Erikson. Specifically how his Malazan books either conform to, or subvert standard epic fantasy tropes. I've been a fan of his for quite awhile, and I'd like to think his stuff is different from Goodkind/Jordan/Eddings stuff (but that might just be elitism).
I held off on this one for a little while because Erikson was at World Fantasy Con last weekend, and I figured there was a chance that he might say something relevant in the panel on "Taboos in Fantasy," which Kate just wrote up. He did say…
drorzel | November 7, 2007I really, really did not like Glasshouse, Charlie Stross's Hugo-nominated novel from last year. I enjoy his "Laundry" books, though (The Atrocity Archives and The Jennifer Morgue), and at Worldcon I had a conversation with Robert Sneddon, who recommended the forthcoming Halting State as closer in tone to those, so I picked it up a few weeks ago.
Halting State carries back-cover blurbs from three people: 1) Vernor Vinge, 2) John Carmack, lead developer of Doom and Quake, and 3) Bruce Schneier, the noted security expert. That pretty much tells you what you're going to get right there: a highly…
drorzel | November 5, 2007I realized that last week's scavenger hunt posts neglected half of my favorite genre fiction, so here's a post to make up for that:
What items should appear on a Science Fiction Novel Scavenger Hunt?
Some suggestions to get things started:
One Big Dumb Object
One improbably brilliant genius scientist who is able to both invent a new Theory of Everything and use it to build a time machine/ star drive/ whatever in his basement lab
One book offering a "scientific" explanation for some "paranormal" phenomenon
One alien planet consisting of a single ecosystem
One reference to special relativity…
drorzel | November 4, 2007Here's a picture of the haul from the World Fantasy Convention:
(We got two of the bright blue bags with the odd aspect ratio, but I only put one in the picture.)
The small pile on the left is a collection of samplers and free magazine issues (if I read them all, I'll have a really good idea of whether I should subscribe to F&SF). The pile in the middle is stuff from the bag of free books that you get for attending WFC. The pile on the right is stuff we bought in the Dealer's Room.
We may need to reinforce the office floor one of these days...
Contents of the piles, for those who care.…
drorzel | October 28, 2007Back in August, somebody from Night Shade Books contacted me and asked if I would like a review copy of the forthcoming book by Nathalie Mallet, The Princes of the Golden Cage. I almost never turn down free books, so I said yes (actually, both Kate and I were contacted, and she replied first, so we just got the one copy sent to her). I then proceeded to spend two months not gettingaround to reading it, despite carrying it to Japan and back.
The book is a quasi-Arabian fantasy novel, set in the "Golden Cage," the palace where the adult sons of the Sultan of Telfar are kept in luxurious…
drorzel | October 6, 2007It's as good an explanation as any for this:
I'm not sure what this particular bit of Engrish is advertising, but I like the poster. It was hanging on a wall in Kamakura when we visited there in the pouring rain.
The original image, and 140 other pictures from Kamakura, can be found in this Flickr photoset.
drorzel | September 24, 2007The current edition of Asimov's is a double issue, for October and November. This is apprently an annual thing, but whatever the reason for it, I got a magazine with twice as many stories as usual, which probably creates a false impression of the worth of the magazine. I'll have to check out a regular-size version in the future.
This is also probably the end of the Magazine Experiment, because I can't find anywhere to buy F&SF around here: their return policy is sufficiently obnoxious that the local SF specialty store won't carry it, and neither Borders nor Barnes & Noble had any…
drorzel | September 18, 2007At the recent Worldcon, there were several rounds of the usual Save the Magazines Chorus: short fiction is the lifeblood of the genre, it's where we get our new writers, etc. With the usual subtextual implication that I am a Bad Person because I don't read or subscribe to any SF magazines.
(The most annoying version with a rant-by-proxy at the Hugo Awards. This bugged me all the more because the author in question didn't make the trip, and it really doesn't seem right to make somebody else deliver your mini-tirade about the state of the short fiction market. If you can't make the ceremony,…
drorzel | September 17, 2007James Oliver Rigney, better known to the world by his Robert Jordan pseudonym, has passed away after a long illness. I didn't know him personally-- I met him very briefly once, at a signing-- but the Wheel of Time books were ridiculously important in my life. I met a great many friends through Robert Jordan fandom on Usenet, which helped keep me sane during graduate school. And Kate was among the people I met there, so I really owe him more than I can easily express.
Making Light has more, including links to a number of other tributes. Whatever you may think of the books (and this is neither…
drorzel | September 15, 2007Speaking of science explanations in SF, or at least science explained by SF authors, there's a very nice history of dark matter at SFNovelists.com by Mark Brotherton (via Tobias Buckell):
The story of dark matter starts back in the 1930s with Fritz Zwicky, a brilliant but difficult Caltech astronomer, who was studying galaxy clustering. Galaxies group together, apparently under the force of gravity, and between Newton and Einstein, humans seem to have a pretty good idea of how gravity works. There's a very general relationship between gravity, speed, and size, that governs everything from the…
drorzel | September 15, 2007In a comment to my Worldcon wrap-up, "fvngvs" asks a question following up on the science in SF panel:
So Chad, now that you've had some time to think about it, can you think of a list of books/stories with a really good treatment of science concepts?
It's a good question, and deserves a full post in response. It also probably deserves better than to be posted on a Saturday morning, when nobody's reading, but oh, well.
Anyway, the question stems from a question posed during the panel, asking for books or stories that do a particularly good job presenting some science concept or another. I…
drorzel | September 14, 2007Discussing Isaac Asimov's non-fiction a bit yesterday reminded me of my absolute favorite panel at Worldcon, Saturday's "Mundane or Transcendent?" with Cory Doctorow, Patrick Nielsen Hayden, Charlie Stross, and Robert Silverberg as moderator. They're all really smart people, and they're all good at turning phrases on the fly, so it was terrifically entertaining.
Some of the best stuff on the panel involved Cory Doctorow talking about Isaac Asimov's fiction, and putting it in a very different light. He argued that Foundation is really a story about the New Deal, and that the Laws of Robotics…
drorzel | September 12, 2007Before it slips too far into the mists of memory, I should probably post some summary thoughts about Nippon 2007, the World SF Convention in Japan that Kate and I attended last week. To some degree, this will be inside-baseball stuff, but if you're not interested in fannish stuff, rest assured, there is some good, weighty physics stuff coming later. Also, some utter fluff. We aim to please, here at Chateau Steelypips.
So, the Worldcon in summary. Basically, I think it was an enjoyable experiment, and while I wouldn't call it an unqualified success, I'd be in favor of doing it again, several…
drorzel | September 1, 2007If you really care about the winners of the 2007 Hugo Awards, you probably don't need me to tell you this, but the winners of the 2007 Hugo Awards were announced last night. The ceremony went off pretty well, and clocked in at just over two hours, so it was much better than the Academy Awards.
As for the actual results, I'm pretty happy. The fiction prizes went to works that I'm at least OK with-- I didn't vote the McDonald novelette first, but I didn't hate it. John Scalzi gave Dave Langford a really good run for "Best Fan Writer," but Langford got more second and third-place votes than John…
bergman | September 1, 2007The Principles proprietor is currently at WorldCon where the Hugo awards are given out. This year's winners are available (among many other places, I'm sure) at Patrick and Teresa Nielsen Hayden's blog. I wasn't a huge fan of Rainbows End myself. I did like "The Girl in the Fireplace", a Doctor Who episode. The writer, Steven Moffat, also wrote "Blink", this season's best episode.
drorzel | August 16, 2007A little while ago, James Nicoll posted about the shifting subject areas of SF:
In fact, a fairly consistent pattern in SF is to retreat away from areas that have come under the light of scientific examination. When probes began to visit the planets, SF retreated to the stars (There are very few novels these days set in the solar system). In fact, Trouble on Titan starts off with an essay by Nourse explaining that the attraction of Titan for him was that so little was known about it that he could set almost anything there and not have to fear contradiction from scientists.
It's the same…