Question: What do you look for in a review?

(Note: I am still working on another post on the whole New Weird/Scifi Strange thing. I've been busy, and those posts tend to take a lot of time that I currently don't have. Derrida is killing me. The next post will be up this week, though.)

Jeff of Genre Reader has a post up on his blog about reviews and what we look for when we read them.  Part of his blog contains a series of questions intended for his listeners, but because I think the questions are worth addressing among readers everywhere, I thought I would post them here along with my answers.  Here goes:

The Skiffy and Fanty Show #15 is Live! (Literary SF vs. Literary F and Torture Cinema One)

Another episode has gone live. This week we discuss the difference between the literary science fiction and literary fantasy "fields" and review the dreadfully awful film, In the Name of the King. It's one part serious, one part hilarity, and two parts fun.

You can download or listen to the episode here.  You can also do the same on iTunes!  If you like the show, please give us a review or let us know via email (skiffyandfanty[at]gmail[dot]com), voicemail (206-203-1686), Twitter, or the comments section on our Wordpress page.

Thanks for listening!

Surprise Aside: The Oddly Genre-Heavy Alachua County School Reading List

While I was at Barnes & Noble yesterday, I noticed that there was a table for the reading list for Alachua county's public schools.  I'm usually quite curious about what teenagers and kids are reading in school, largely because I think schools should spend more time fostering a love of reading than forcing students to learn about books they'll never read again and that will likely ruin them as readers.  I'll be honest in saying that I expected the table to contain no genre titles except those that have been on reading lists for decades (1984 by George Orwell, Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, and Brave New World by Aldous Huxley).  Boy was I surprised.  Yes, a number of staples appear on the list of forty-eight books, but also a whole lot of newer titles.  Of those forty-eight, nine are either science fiction, fantasy, or related in some way to either genre.  Those titles are:

New Weird and Scifi Strange: Part One -- Placing New Weird in the Aesthetic Moment

Adam Callaway has been talking about New Weird and Scifi Strange lately in response to Jason Sanford's recent fictive table of contents for an anthology of Scifi Strange stories.  One of the things that I find most interesting about discussions of genres, specifically subgenres, is how often readers and writers quickly dismantle the genre by spreading it thin.  While I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing, it does have a tendency to destroy genres or reduce them to vague descriptions and definitions.  Two primary examples of this are science fiction (in general) and cyberpunk.  The former has always been too large to accommodate everyone with a definition, resulting in the continued debate over what defines science fiction (conventional wisdom would suggest that the assumed, but unofficial definition, is a catch-all for pretty much anything that

Climate Change Science Fiction: Making a List

While I was in England earlier this year, I had the opportunity to meet a fellow who was working on a climate change fiction project.  We got to talking one day and he asked me if I knew of any science fiction works that dealt with climate change, either explicitly, or as a background element (post- or pre-change).  I named a few and told him I'd do some more research when I got home.  Since then, I've emailed him a long list of post-nuclear science fiction and a few things I've read or read about that deal with something akin to what scientists are talking about today.

Now I'm looking for a little help from the science fiction community.  I'm looking for science fiction that deals specifically with climate change brought on by global warming.  The climate change need not be central to the plot, but it does need to have a presence in some way within the text (as background is fine).  The only stipulation is that the climate change be a result of global warming (CO2).

So, have you read any books or short stories that fit into this theme?  Let me know in the comments, and please spread the word about this post.  The more texts I can throw at this fellow, the better.  He's working on a huge project, and having more science fiction in his list will help diversify what he's talking about.

Thanks for your help.

Haul of Books 2010: Stuff For Review v.4

Have you read anything by Karen Miller before? If not, then you should. She's amazing with dialogue and she knows how to tell a good epic fantasy story. I've read two of her novels (both of which are set in the same world as the books below) and loved them.

Lucky me, I get to review a few more of her books! Then again, I'd probably read them anyway...

Anyway, here are the books (after the fold):

A Walmart Fail: A First For Me, or How Books and Girlie Things Are Related

Today was supposed to be an amazing day.  Last week I ordered a new bookcase from Walmart after discovering I could fit one more in my apartment and move some of my books from the tops of bookshelves and the floor to an appropriate place (I also ordered a pair of pillows, but there's nothing interesting about that).  This morning I checked Fedex, saw that my package was being delivered today, and suddenly grew very excited.  Bookshelves do that to me.  But when I opened the package, this is what I discovered (after the fold):

Book Review Up: The Left Hand of God by Paul Hoffman

It's been a while since I last posted a review, but I'm back at it and clearing out my "review pile."  This week was a little disappointing, though.  You can read my review to find out why.

Haul of Books 2010: Stuff For Review v.3

It almost seems like I'm always buying stuff for myself, rather than receiving things for review.  Well, that's not true!  You know how I know?  Because the following book arrived in my mailbox from the far away and extremely exotic land of Australia.  It came in an envelope made of kangaroo fur, and when I opened it, the sweet sound of didgeridoo's playing "Down Under" by Men At Work wafted into my living room, followed by a floating can of Vegemite.

Okay, so none of that is actually true, except the part about it coming from Australia.  But it's still cool to get stuff from far away lands, no?

Here's the image (after the fold):

The Skiffy and Fanty Show #14 is Live!

I am insanely excited to announce episode #14 of The Skiffy and Fanty Show (the podcast I've been doing for the last few months).  Why?  Because of this:

Author Jason Sanford, a two-time Interzone Reader's Poll award winner and recent Nebula Award finalist, joins us for one heck of an interview!  We discuss the state of genre short fiction, literary short fiction, scifi strange, and much more.

Excited, no?  If you'd like to hear the episode, you can find it here.  And don't forget to answer the question of the week!

The Michio Kaku Meme: Thoughts on the World of Science Fiction

Over and Big Think, Michio Kaku has posted a bunch of questions he wants fans to answer for a project he's working on. I don't know what the project is, but if Michio Kaku is involved, then it's bound to be awesome. So, considering that his questions are blog worthy, I thought I'd start a little meme. If you'd like to participate, all you have to do is steal the questions for yourself and answer them. Make sure to link here, and, if you want, post the link over at Big Think so Mr. Kaku can see what you wrote. Simple enough, right?

Here we go:

A Final Answer to the Question of Questions: Is Science Fiction Dying?

No, it is not.  Now shut up already.  The next person who raises this question, even if they're going to say "no" in their response, will get an unwelcome at-home meeting from me and my polystyrene robot.

Yes, the robot has a ray gun, and before Adam comes along and tries to tell me that a ray gun isn't science fiction without an explanation for its power source, I'm going to say that it is powered by the tears from everyone who said George Lucas ruined their childhood with the prequel movies.  That's about as science fictional as you can get.

That is all.

A Scifi Strange Anthology? Publishers, Pay Attention!

Jason Sanford recently posted the table of contents for a dream anthology of scifi strange stories that you all need to see.  The list mostly contains stories available online (primarily because Sanford is calling it an online anthology) and is perhaps one of the most comprehensive and diverse ToCs I have seen in a while.  It includes stories by Rachel Swirsky, Eugie Foster, Nnedi Okorafor, Ted Chiang, Jason Sanford, and many more.  You should definitely check out the post to see what he's picked, and if any publishers are paying attention out there, you should consider publishing this anthology!  Seriously.

If you're unfamiliar with scifi strange, then you should check out Sanford's two posts on the subject:  here and here.  Sanford also has a list of links to other places where the term has been discussed.

Now I need to do some reading...

Question for Readers: How did you find your favorite books?

We all know there are too many books for any one person to read each year (except for Larry Nolen, who reads about nine books a second and shoots laser beams from his eyes), but one thing that I don't think we talk about enough is how we discover the books that we read.

So, I'm going to throw some questions out to you, the readers:

• How did you find your favorite books?
• What process do you use to find new books?
• How do you know if a book you've discovered is a book you're going to buy?  Is it the cover?  The back cover text?  The secret code words on the first page used by publishers to send subliminal messages to their assassins?

Tell me!  I really want to know.

Why Science Fiction is Important to the Third World (Part One)

A little over a month ago, one of my professors asked me a question that, at the time, I was unable to answer.  That question has haunted me since, largely because I really should have had a good answer at the time.  The question was:

Why do you think science fiction and other "fantastic" literary forms are important in the third world?

A simple enough question, don't you think?  Or is it?

Questions like this are rarely applied to other forms of literature, specifically those works which are published as "general" or "literary" fiction.  Only fantastic forms of literature seem to have to defend themselves in an academic context.  I doubt my professor meant it as an attack,

The New Template: Changes Around These Parts

If you're one of my RSS or email subscribers, you might have missed that this blog has been going through a design overhaul.  The old template was, understandably, very "old school," and did not fairly represent the best of WISB's potential.  So, I set out to create a new template using Blogger's template designer (a handy little thing, if you ask me), and came up with something I think works quite nicely.

What's new on WISB now that I have a different design?  Here's a list:

Video Found: Exodus (Short Film)

Alexander Lehmann, who worked as a digital artist on District 9, has released a high-octane science fiction short film called "Exodus."  It features some amazing visuals, a fascinating concept, and a very unique musical score that also doubles as a sound effects track--think of Disney's Fantasia, but in the age of D&B, techno, and other electronic music forms.  If I had some sort of ridiculous star system, but for Awesome Points instead of stars, I'd give this four and a half Awesome Points.  But I don't have such a system, so you'll have to deal with me simply stating that this video is frakking awesome.

Here it is (after the fold):

In Response to Sarah Palin's Questions to the President

I don't generally get into politics on this blog--at least, not the non-literature kind--but I feel compelled to go there this time around primarily because Sarah Palin's recent Facebook note is too problematic to ignore.  Palin's note is a series of questions to Barack Obama about his recent "endorsement" for the construction of a mosque near Ground Zero in New York.  I put "endorsement" in quotes intentionally, because the President never said he was "for" the mosque, nor that he "approved" or "disapproved" or anything of that nature.  He simply said, as he rightly should have, that the Muslims have every right to build a mosque on private land.  But we'll get into that with my response to Palin's questions:

The Skiffy and Fanty Show #13 is Live!

A mini-reunion episode this time around. Weirdside joins the show again and we discuss the oldest university in the history of planet Earth, mutant boars, whether readers or writers should read outside of their typical genres, science fiction subgenres, the end of the Best American Anthology series, and much more. Tune in and enjoy!

Don't forget to answer the question of the week!

10 Gut-wrenching Songs From Science Fiction and Fantasy Movies/Shows

Anyone who knows me well enough to call me their best friend also knows that music destroys me emotionally. Not all music, just some music. Certain songs have something that hits me at some strange emotional core, shaking my innards in just the right way, like striking that perfect note on a cello or violin. These are the kinds of songs that I listen to over and over, but also take breaks from, because they really do get my emotional side reeling (which helps a great deal when it comes to writing). Now that you all know this, you can call me your best friend.

Before I get into the list, I need to make one thing clear: some of the movies listed below are not science fiction or fantasy in a traditional sense, but are still part of one or both of those genres in some way.

With all that in mind, I present to you my list of the ten most gut-wrenching songs from science fiction and fantasy movies or television (in no particular order):

A Quick Note About WISB: New Design Coming (Comments Welcome)

I wanted to let all of you know that over the next couple days (starting tomorrow), there will be a lot of changes happening on WISB. I'm updating the design, which will take a while to set up, since I'm not as HTML/CSS savvy as I would like to be. This means that some things might suddenly be broken on the site, you might see a post or two pop up with very little in them (as a test), and so on. The new design is not a huge difference from what I already have, but the HTML is different, things are getting moved off of the sidebars, and so on. There will also be fewer sidebars, new pages (with an actual navbar), an updated header image (kind of), and so on.

I should be done with most of the important tweaks by Monday. If not, then you can assume I broke something and spent Sunday night trying to fix it...

Thanks for your patience. If you want to see what the new design will be, you can see it here. I am still taking comments, criticisms, and suggestions, if you have them. If there's something you can't stand about the new design, please let me know.

Thanks!

The Best Liars: Self-publishing and My New Dilemma

I've become tainted against self-publishing. That is probably clear to those of you who read this blog, since I've written a number of posts about self-publishers (see this label for others), but it has now become clear to me on a different level. I've said numerous times in the past that there are good self-publishers out there who produce good books, have honest production practices, and are friendly. But they are an astronomically small minority when set against all of the rest who are effectively some of the best liars and manipulators of any stripe (they give FOX News a run for their money in the spin department); the good folks are like the Maldives in a global warming world--the more the sea keeps rising, the more likely those tiny little islands are going to get buried under water. (Bear with me on this. I'll get to my fully-developed point towards the end; I need context first.)

For me, this is a huge problem, because I want to be able to trust that self-publishers can all be honest people. My experiences, however, have shown that the opposite is true. I've been approached too many times to count by people claiming to be traditionally published,

Opinions Wanted: A New Template in the Works

Those of you who use Blogger might have noticed that they introduced a new template design feature and the ability to add "pages," much as you can on Wordpress. As a user of Blogger for almost four years now, I've been hoping and praying for this feature to appear, since it is one of the few things that makes Wordpress so appealing (the only thing that kept me on Blogger was the fact that I could do just about anything to my template without having to pay a fee to access the CSS). Last night I decided to really play with the feature on a test blog to see what I can do about making WISB look even better.

That's where you come in. I'll be honest in saying that I am not much of a design guru. I don't have much of an eye for it when it comes to webpages,

5 Things the Government Can Learn from Bio-Disaster Films

I've been watching a lot of bio-disaster films lately, particularly ones involving a virus or mutated bacteria that infects and kills people instead of turning them into zombies or vampires or whatever. These films are actually quite interesting, because they're usually low budget, but also strangely much more fascinating than a lot of zombie films in terms of character development and the examination of the human condition.

In watching all of these films, however, I've discovered that there are quite a few repeated themes that indicate the incompetency of authority in a time of crisis. This acknowledgment led me to create a list of the five things that governments today can learn from bio-disaster films to survive a serious infection. Here are those five things:

Don't treat people like filth, especially when they're infected.
Almost every bio-disaster film I have seen has made this point painfully clear:

Inception, An Addendum: Musicology (Part Two)

Not long ago I posted the first part of an analysis of the music in Christopher Nolan's film, Inception. Before that I had analyzed the film's emotional over- and under-tones and had reviewed the film (giving it a glowing review, actually). Now, I present to you the second part of my analysis of the score for Inception.

The Musicology of Inception: A Simple Score, or Musical Genius? (Part Two)

II. A Layered Cake of Musical Notes

While much has been said about Christopher Nolan's and Zimmer's attempt to make the music of Inception a character in the narrative of the film via "No Regrets", very little has been said about Zimmer's attempt to make his score reflect a key element of Inception's novum:

The Skiffy and Fanty Show #12 is Live!

Another episode of the science fiction and fantasy podcast I'm doing with a friend is now up! You can episode twelve here.

This week we discuss why we think fantasy is so popular today, the newly announced shows coming to SyFy, and something nifty that Google did. Tune in and enjoy!

Haul of Books 2010: Stuff For Me v.19

You might recall that I was in England at the start of July for a conference and some "me" time. Being overly obsessed with the printed medium, I made time to peruse the bookstores while I was in Lincoln. And boy did I find some nice stuff! I have a gift for finding awesome stuff when I go book shopping, apparently (or so I think).

Here's what I found (after the fold, hopefully):

Video Found: Video Game Songs With Lyrics

YouTube is both the best and worst thing ever invented. There are days when I'm on there and I think to myself, "this is the land of degenerate people with nothing better to do than spout crazy nonsense in grammatically incorrect English and caps." And then there are days when I see the following video and am reminded that without YouTube, I would never see this.

So, thank you YouTube. Once in a while your greatness outweighs your inability to control trolls.

Here's the video (after the fold):

Inception, An Addendum: Musicology (Part One)

(You can read my review of Inception here and my other analytical post about the issue of emotion in the film here.)

(Note: Because this particular post has become far longer than I had originally intended, I'm going to split it into two parts.)

The Musicology of Inception: A Simple Score, or Musical Genius? (Part One)

Perhaps one of the most intriguing aspects of Inception that can be easily externalized pre-DVD-release is the musical score composed by Hans Zimmer. Much of the discussion over Zimmer's score has centered on two positions: an ingrained hatred for Zimmer's work,

Haul of Books 2010: Stuff For Me v.18

Once again I have things that have arrived in my mailbox that I think you all might be interested in, not simply because some of the items listed below will become part of a giveaway I will be running soon. But you'll just have to wait to find out about that.

Now for the image (after the fold, hopefully):

Haul of Books 2010: Stuff For Me v.17

I've got an interesting story to tell about the books below. Both were won by me for separate reasons: one for something amusing I did and one for something nice I did for someone else. And perhaps more importantly, both books have received considerable buzz within the fantasy community for, I presume, being quite good. I haven't read either, so I can only hope that the fans are right.

So, without further delay, here are the books (after the fold, hopefully):

The Skiffy and Fanty Show #11 is Live!

And yet another episode of our still-developing podcast is up for your enjoyment: episode eleven. This week we talk about a lot of movies, particularly Christopher Nolan’s Inception, the new Del Toro/Lovecraft vehicle, our favorite science fiction movies, Battlestar Galactica, and much more!

We'd love to hear from you if you're a listener. Pop us an email with your hateful messages or criticisms or general love for the show (or an answer to our weekly question). And, as always, if you have a second to blog about us or help spread the word, that would be all kinds of awesome.

Thanks for tuning in and see you next week with episode twelve.