Just in case you missed this everywhere else it’s been posted, Simon “Bloggasm” Owens has an article at MediaShift about the declining fortunes of the science fiction pulps. He interviews Sheila Williams, Gordon Van Gelder and The Scalzi, and poses the question “what do the pulps need to do to survive the internet age?”
To which the standard answer seems to be “I’m not really sure.” Bruce Sterling, however, would likely have spoken more bluntly:
Normally I save up free fiction links for our regular Friday round-up, but as this is something a little bigger than usual I think it warrants special mention. Filipino genre fiction mavens Charles Tan and Mia Tijam have co-edited an entire virtual anthology of speculative fiction written in English by Filipino writers – a great way to expose new writers to an otherwise hard-to-access market. Here’s the table of contents:
Thanks to SF Signal for the heads-up… If you take a look, let us know what you think.
The two things dearest to me would be science fiction and music with loud guitars in it, so what could possibly be better than something that blends them together?
That’s exactly the idea behind New Dawn Fades, a bi-annual print zine that aims to be “the crazed hillbilly father at a polygamist shotgun wedding between punk rock, science fiction, fantasy, horror, slipstream, surrealism, magic realism, and the sh*t that’s just plain weird.”
New Dawn Fades is a project of one Jason Heller, who wrote the rather superb story “Behold: Skowt!” that appeared on Apex Online recently – if they turn out to be of equal quality, he’ll be on to a winner. Although destined to be predominantly print, some material will apparently be overflowing onto the New Dawn Fades website, so keep an eye out.
It’s NaNo time ago, and I’m almost half-way through. I’m on pace with my word count, and things are looking positive.
While on the forums, I came across a particularly interesting thread regarding steampunk – which is coincidental considering Paul’s most recent post. I came to realize that there is a significant difference in my particular mindset on the way in which genre works and the mindset of those who are writing what they deem to be genre. I don’t think it’s necessarily a difference of one’s definition of genre, but a difference in the generation gap that lies between us. To me, such things as steampunk, cyberpunk, and even space opera are things born out of ideology: there was a reactionary, responsive feel to the works that originated these particularly specific sub-genres of speculative fiction. All of that seems to be lost, and there are other who agree (read Jeff and Ann Vandermeer’s anthology Steampunk, which has a foreword by Jess Nevins).
Once you’ve been in the industry as a writer or editor for any length of time, you begin to understand that the industry is both fickle and evolving. Some of it is to preserve the species, and some of it is to appease the public. What I notice in the change of ideology, however, is that it isn’t so much about either of these things as it is a matter of how the writers themselves, begin to become removed of the ideology and more interested in the trappings and the appearance.
What, then, is the ideology of today? What is the theme, the motif, that runs through speculative fiction that very well could produce a new sub-genre in the vein of these greats? Is it New Weird in the style of China Meiville? Is it Mundane SF after Geoff Ryman’s vision? Or is there some beast yet to rise that we haven’t quite caught a glimpse of?
The reluctant but charming crown prince of cyberpunk William Gibson got asked to write a piece for New Scientist on the future of science fiction.
The Future of Science Fiction? We’re living in it. Those “Future History” charts in the back of every Robert A Heinlein paperback, when I was about 14, had the early 21st century tagged as the “Crazy Years”. He had an American theocratic dictatorship happening about then. I hope we miss that one.
Amen. Go read the whole thing; it looks to be part of a “Sci-Fi Special” at New Scientist, including pieces from Stephen Baxter, Ursula K Le Guin, Kim Stanley Robinson, Margaret Atwood and Nick Sagan.
Interestingly enough, Ms Atwood mentions that she knew a young man whose opinion she asked “was sci-fi fan because he said he liked Oryx & Crake“. Y’know, that novel she swore blind wasn’t science fiction. 😉