Reviews and Criticism

BOOK REVIEW: Fast Forward 2, edited by Lou Anders

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Fast Forward 2 by Lou Anders, ed.

Pyr Books, October 2008; 360pp; $15 RRP – ISBN13: 9781591026921

The first thing I’m going to mention about Lou Anders‘ second Fast Forward anthology is the John Picacio cover artwork, which is a real Zeitgeist catch. Below is strife, carnage, religious angst; thrusting upwards is bionic monkey-man, his chains broken asunder, transcending mundane squabbles for the promise of space and rationalism (bubble chamber tracks?). The religious discord is heightened by the DNA motif, explicitly repeated in the exhaust blast of robomonkey… if you wanted to encapsulate the hope for a triumph (or at least secession) of a rational worldview, I think you’d struggle to make a more arresting and vivid image in the process.

So, how does Fast Forward 2 match up to this thrusting visual metaphor? Continue reading BOOK REVIEW: Fast Forward 2, edited by Lou Anders →

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Erotic science fiction and fantasy flash fiction advent calendar?!

We get email… some of which is unprintable, naturally, but some of which is more… well, I think I’ll just let this one speak for itself:

‘Tis the season for gift-giving and independent publisher Circlet Press is in the spirit. Each day of December up to the 23rd, a free story will appear at circlet.com in what the publisher calls their “Erotic Sci-Fi Advent Calendar.”

Just like the advent calendars which deliver a chocolate treat each day, circlet.com will have one delicious short story of erotic fantasy or erotic science fiction. Stories will only be up for 24 hours, though, so visitors must return each day to collect their next gift.

The selection will be as eclectic as the publisher, including all sexualities and orientations, and a range of science fiction and fantasy topics from vampires to artificial intelligence. Some of the stories will be from Circlet’s new line of ebook publications, others will be drawn from anthologies the publisher has produced over the past 16 years.

There you have it, folks. I swear this season gets weirder every year…

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George Monbiot unimpressed by climate report

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Environmentalist and activist George Monbiot is unimpressed by the the British Committee on Climate Change’s latest report, entitled Building a Low Carbon Economy, claiming it doesn’t go far enough in what it demands:

[The] report, published yesterday, is long, detailed and impressive. It has the admirable objective of trying to cap global warming at two degrees or a little more. This, it says, means that greenhouse gas pollution in the UK should fall by 80% by 2050 and by 31% by 2020.

But there’s a problem. There is no longer any likely relationship between an 80% cut and two degrees of warming. This gets a little complicated, but please bear with me while I explain why [the report’s] proposal is about as likely to stop runaway climate change as the Maginot Line was to hold back the Luftwaffe.

The key findings and suggestions of the report are summarised here. Monbiot believes further action than is suggested in the report is necessary, including raising the top rate vehicle excise duty from £400 to £3000, and reducing the number of airline landing slots in the UK to 5% of current capacity.
[image from kevindooley on flickr]

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Switzerland approves legal heroin program but keeps marijuana under control

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drug injection paraphenaliaSounds a bit topsy-turvy, doesn’t it? But it’s quite true – in a national vote last weekend the Swiss decided to make a controversial legal heroin program a permanent part of the country’s healthcare infrastructure, but rejected decriminalising cannabis. [image by Todd Huffman]

It’s a mixed blessing, I suppose. Hell knows the ‘war on drugs’ in the UK and the US has done absolutely nothing to eradicate the problem, and I guess if people are going to take smack then I’d rather they weren’t burgling my stuff to pay for it (as has happened). But it seems odd that people who can see the pragmatism in that idea seemingly can’t see the logic behind abandoning attempts to control the cultivation and consumption of a slightly psychoactive plant.

What say you, readers – should it be “no victim, no crime”, or should the law do its best to protect people from their own potentially self-harming choices?

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Addiction clinic founder says computer games not addictive after all

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dualshock Playstation controllerThe headline says it all, though the recanting of video game addiction specialist Keith Bakker comes with qualifiers:

“…the more we work with these kids the less I believe we can call this addiction. What many of these kids need is their parents and their school teachers – this is a social problem.”
…
“This gaming problem is a result of the society we live in today,” Mr Bakker told BBC News. “Eighty per cent of the young people we see have been bullied at school and feel isolated. Many of the symptoms they have can be solved by going back to good old fashioned communication.”

It’s easy (and very tempting) to fall back on sarcasm here, but let’s just be thankful he’s learned something and will now stop putting loner kids through some sort of twelve-step program.

Incidentally, Bakker’s findings concur with those of the National Institute of Media and the Family, which for the first year ever has used its annual MEDIAwise ‘video games score-card’ to praise the gaming industry rather than excoriate it. Times are a-changin’. [image by William Hook]

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