The Skiffy and Fanty Show #2.3 -- Interview w/ Lauren Beukes is Live!

South Africa is on the literary attack. This week we talk to Lauren Beukes about her novel, Zoo City, which was recently released in the United States. Tune in and enjoy!

No question of the week this time around, but do feel free to shoot us an email at skiffyandfanty [at] gmail [dot] com! You can also leave a comment on our website or follow us on Twitter.

Note:  I'm going to post a review of Zoo City pretty quick.  It's a damn good book, though.  Read it.

Libraries, Socio-economics, and the Ten Million People March

Plenty of big name folks have come out in defense of libraries lately.  For example, the wonderful Wil Wheaton has talked briefly about his love of libraries here and author Philip Pullman has written an extensive defense and political rebuttal here.  They're certainly no the only ones talking about the problem libraries are facing in the U.S. and the U.K.  Massive budget cuts in the U.S. have left many libraries struggling to keep doors open or services available; the same seems to be true of U.K. libraries (though I willingly profess my ignorance of the U.K. library system and will refrain from speaking directly about their services in this post).  The one thing I don't see people talking about, however, is the socio-economic problem that library closures and cuts represent.  Most defenses have given a nod to the value of libraries to middle class and poor families, but

Top 6 SF/F Soundtracks of 2010

Last year was by far one of the best years for movie soundtracks, not just in terms of "good music," but also in terms of experimentation on the part of composers (as some of my choices below will show).  The year prior, of course, was a good year too, but 2010 really grabbed me, with some composers playing a greater role in the merger of source material with musical material.  I don't know if this is a "new" thing, but it sure is something I haven't noticed in past years from major pictures (the experimentation on the part of composers seems to have been centered on "blockbusters" in 2010; whether that means anything is up to the music critics to figure out).

Here are my top five picks for 2010 (in no particular order)(after the fold):

The Skiffy and Fanty Show #2.2b is Live! (The Beauty of SF and Her Sisters, Part Two)

And now for the conclusion to our discussion on the beauty of SF. Tune in and enjoy!

Oh, and our question of the week is:

What do you think makes science fiction (or other genres) beautiful?

Feel free to shoot us an email at skiffyandfanty [at] gmail [dot] com! You can also leave a comment on our website (http://skiffyandfanty.wordpress.com/) or follow us on Twitter (http://www.twitter.com/skiffyandfanty).

Thanks for listening!

Are Zombies People? -- The Morality of Zombies

An unusual question rings its ugly head.  Earlier this week, I had a discussion with a guy who believed that morality in a post-zombie-apocalypse world was absolute.  That is that the lines are clearly drawn:  zombies are bad, humans are good, and "killing" zombies is not a moral issue.  There are huge problems with this line of thinking, not least because it ignores the problems with "killing" zombies that arise in many zombie films and stories.  It is also disconcerting, since the very rhetoric used to justify this pure moral position is the same rhetoric used to justify slavery and discrimination against minority groups.

To start, I think it's important to note that many zombie films/books do not subscribe to a purist moral model.  There are often huge conflicts between the act of "killing" a zombie and the people

Video Found: Lazy Teenage Superheroes

(Thanks to SF Signal for the discovery).

Amateur video meets Kick-Ass meets Heroes meets teen comedy.  Throw in some fantastic visuals and you end up with a pretty awesome short movie!  I'm so jealous...

Here's the video (after the fold):

New Poll: If you had super powers, how would you use them?

The new poll can be found on the left (third widget down).  It is divided into the following fun categories:

• For good!
• For neutral purposes!
• For evil!

Detailed answers are much appreciated, of course, but since polls make it hard to do that, I decided to test your morality (in the poll) and give you an open comment thread (on this post) to discuss the correct use of super powers (in detail).  Have at it, folks!

As for me:  neutral all the way.  Why?  Because I definitely wouldn't save everyone.  Say what you will, but that's how I roll.

Poll Results: Do you think SF/F is going to have a good year in 2011?

The results are in (obviously), and they are overwhelmingly optimistic.  Is that a good thing?  I sure hope so.  It's early in the year, but I'd like to think that 2011 will be a year without someone proclaiming the genre dead (or something like that).  We'll see how those thoughts pan out in six months.

Here are the results of the poll:

• 55% said "yes"
• 22.5% said "maybe"
• 22.5% said "no"

The no votes came pretty late in the poll (well after the corresponding post had disappeared from the homepage), so the big question I have for those individuals is this:  why do you think SF/F isn't going to have a good year in 2011?  

I'm defining SF/F beyond its marketing boundaries (the SF/F shelves in your bookstores); for me, then, I see the genre as having a great deal of room to keep pushing outward in very powerful/interesting ways.  I'm hoping we'll see more experimentation in SF/F novels, but I am also cautious about the genres because it's really easy to get burned by hype.  We do have some excellent works of literature coming out, though (or what appear to be excellent works).  We'll wait and see.

Anywho!

A new poll will be up later today, so look out for the post announcement.

New Weird and Scifi Strange: Part Three -- The Existence of Unsure Things

(Read Part One and Part Two)

III.  The Strange is Coming?


When I initially began work on the series of which this is a part, I had always intended to end with a post about Scifi Strange.  I thought I would write a long, definition-based post about Scifi Strange and its problems.  But then it occurred to me that I've technically already done the definition thing elsewhere--i.e., for a conference.  Why rewrite the same basic information if you can simply update the language and add little bits where necessary?  With that in mind, below is an updated version of the Scifi Strange piece of a paper I wrote and presented in the Summer of 2010 (for a conference in England):

Whether Scifi Strange is actually a new movement or subgenre is probably not apparent at the

Video Found: Kevin Bacon Plays Himself (Tremors References Abound)

My good friend Loopdilou (who I do the Skiffy and Fanty Show with) pointed me to this amusing video of Kevin Bacon playing an obsessed Kevin Bacon fan (who is advertising for the Logitech Revue).  What follows is a brilliant and unusual meta-something.

Here it is (after the fold):

Movie Review: Tron: Legacy (Strange Horizons)

In case you missed it, the fine folks at Strange Horizons have published my review of Tron: Legacy.  The review is focused on the worldbuilding, rather than the general quality of the film.  Hopefully you all find it interesting.  Do leave a comment there!

You also might want to see my brief, general review of Tron: Legacy here (where I put my score of the film, which isn't in my review at Strange Horizons).

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go jump up and down with excitement for an hour.

P.S.:  I don't suspect you could have missed my review, since it went up today.  But it's fun to say "in case you missed it."

All Your Literature Are Belong to Us: Interpretation/Reception and Ownership

I've become interested in the last few months with the idea of intellectual ownership of written materials.  In part this is because of the ways some fiction authors (and others) have responded to criticism and interpretation in the last few years elsewhere and on this blog.  Setting aside instances where someone intentionally spams a book's page with negative reviews, it seems to me that for some authors there is a critical disconnect between the act of creation and the life as the creator.  That is that these individuals believe they have ownership over interpretation after the moment it leaves their hands and becomes a publicly accessible (purchasable) object.  As a writer, I can understand the impulse to want to avoid negative criticism and even to say "I am not X," but responding to criticism or interpretations is not usually a skill writers have learned how to do (or that they can learn how to do without stepping on toes).  They become "problems."

I think it's important for fiction authors--published or otherwise--to understand that they don't

The Skiffy and Fanty Show 2.2a is Up! (The Beauty of SF and Her Sisters, Part One)

This week's episode features part one of a pretty intense genre discussion. We talk about what we think makes science fiction beautiful and how it relates to other genres. You can check out the episode here, or look us up on iTunes.

Thanks for listening!

Adventures in Real-Time Story Collaboration: Day Two (Plot Problems)

Adam and I have made enormous progress on our collaborative story.  How much?  Day one ended at about 850 words, which is certainly nothing to scoff at; day two, however, ended at about 4,000 words, which seems to me to be an impressive amount of writing for anyone.  To be fair, I wrote close to 2,500 of that, since Adam skipped out for 45 minutes to take care of some business.  That means it's his turn to add a substantial chunk to the story though.

In any case, some very interesting problems arose as we started work on the project again.  Plotting, for example, proved difficult for both of us, since we couldn't decide where to take the

Adventures in Real-Time Story Collaboration: Day One (Google Docs)

The Internet is an amazing thing.  I'm sure of it now.  Yes, it's full of stupid people making stupid comments on YouTube that make dyslexic people wonder if everyone else is dyslexic too, but after what happened last night, I have to say that the Internet is the single greatest human invention (next to bread and John Williams).

My friend Adam and I have been doing our best to do what are called Word Wars every single day.  This is in part because Adam is the crazy "write 5 billion words a day" type and because he knows that the last four to five months have been a veritable hell for my writing; I suspect he's using my lighter load this semester and his persuasive abilities to get me back on track.  In any case, a

Is Science Fiction in America Unique?

(This post is technically the last half of the post I started here, though it has diverged from a discussion of Alan Moore.)

What is it about America and science fiction? We seem to have a love affair with the stuff as a society, with most of what we watch somehow associated with the genre. It is one of the largest and most influential genres in the country, secondary only to religious texts and, perhaps, fantasy. While the literary side of things may be lagging behind in terms of sales, its film side, for better and for worse, has controlled the market for the last ten years--with the exception of 2010, which has been heavily oriented towards fantasy titles (specifically, sequels to major franchises). We're not the only country interested in SF, of course, but America is not exactly like other countries. I'm not suggesting that we're "better" by pointing out America's uniqueness, nor I am suggesting, as Alan Moore does in "Frankestein's Cadillac," that there might be something

Magazine Review: Residential Aliens #4

I am new to Residential Aliens.  Last year they published one of my stories, being the first place to publish anything I've written.  The publication was a fluke.  Mr. Perry, the regular editor of the online and print magazine, responded to one of my tweets about a story I was having trouble placing, and I decided then to send it his way.  Clearly he liked it.

Issue #4 of the magazine is a special edition, though.  Not because it includes anything I've written, which would represent a conflict of interest on my part for this review, but because John Ottinger, the infamous blogger at Grasping for the Wind, stole the editor's seat for this one issue,

Viking and Amoebae and RPGs, Oh My!

A bit of random fun that you all might enjoy.  I'm hoping to one day make a card game out of this insanity.  Thoughts anyone?

Video Found: Ghostbusters/Inception Mashup Trailer

What do you get when you take the trailer for the original Ghostbusters and re-cut it with the music from the trailer for Inception?  A couple minutes of pure awesome.

See for yourself:


Awesome, no?

The Skiffy and Fanty Show #2.1 is up! (The Muslims Are Coming and January Movie Weirdness)

We're back after a short vacation.  This week's show steps right into the thick of the new controversy of 2011.  Fancy that.  We're not even a month into the year and something crazy has already happened!  Tune in and hear what it's all about here.

Expect a lot of really awesome things from us in the future, including interviews with the Lauren Beukes and others!  And our first Torture Cinema feature of 2011 will tackle The Last Airbender, which, we're told, is the worst movie of 2010.

Thanks for listening!

The 2010 WISB Awards!

The WISB Awards are going to be a bit different this year. I’m adding about a half dozen categories. Some of these are logical inclusions, such as categories for film and television, but others move away from genre into categories that are obviously not typical of this blog. I’ve included these because I feel that a number of truly fantastic things have appeared in the last year that may be vaguely related to genre or may not be related at all, but are still wonderful enough to deserve recognition (such as this year’s Best Non-Genre Television Show winner). I don’t expect this to be a problem, but we’ll see.

Note:  Technically, all of the awards are open to things produced before 2010.  The WISB Awards are for things I read/experienced in the last year.  This year is rather 2010 heavy, though.  I should also note that I have not seen or read everything, so there may be some gaps in what I've selected due to that.  If you think I've left something off, don't hesitate to let me know.  It's possible that I just didn't read/see it, and I'm not opposed to considering things I should have experienced anyway.

You can view previous years at the following links: 2009, 2008, and 2007.

And without further adieu, here are the winners for 2010 (after the fold):

Hugo Nominations? They're Not the Only Ones

Everyone seems to be in plug mode for the Hugos, and so I'm going to join the game and let you all know a few of the things I've done in the last year that one can nominate for a Hugo:

1. I am apparently eligible for Best Fan Writer for the work I have done on this blog.
2. My short story, "To Paint the Kingdom Red" (Part One and Part Two), is eligible for the Best Short Story.
3. The Skiffy and Fanty Show is eligible for Best Fanzine, since it is a podcast, and such things are now a-ok in the Hugos.  (The second season starts this Sunday, by the way.)
4. Crimethink:  Politics and Speculative Fiction is eligible for the Best Related Work category.  My essay, "Political Allegory: Receptions and Their Implications in V and District 9," was published there alongside essays by Nisi Shawl, Jay Lake, Gary Westfahl, and others.  It's a damn fine collection that deserves a nomination.

If you'd like to nominate me (or anyone else, for that matter), you can do so here.

P.S.:  This is the first year I've ever been eligible for a Hugo, by the way, with the exception of the Best Fan Writer category, which I've been eligible for since 2007 (I feel like this year I might actually be deserving of it, though, since last year was a very intense year for WISB).  Overall, though, it feels good.

Movie Review: Tron: Legacy (A Brief Review)

And by brief, I mean really brief.  I'm currently working on a late review for Strange Horizons, which will be my take on the worldbuilding.  However, since I quite enjoyed the film, I wanted you all to have my scores for the various aspect of the films, which I usually do at the end of every review.  I'll post a very brief explanation under each.

Directing: 3/5

Kosinski gets okay performances out of the cast, but his new director shoes are definitely showing.  I hope his work on The Black Hole remake is better (the same guy who wrote The Clash of the Titans is attached to the project, though, so I don't have high hopes).  It would suck something awful to remake a classic and give us, well, room temperature scifi water.  He's not a terrible director, like Uwe Boll, but hopefully we'll see improvement from here on out.

Cast: 3.5/5

The case is decent.  Bridges is not at his best, but nobody is awful in this movie.  That's a plus.  It's not bad casting, but they're not used well.  The fellow behind Castor is brilliant, though, even if he is insanely eccentric.

Writing: 3.75/5

Yes, the plot is simple, but since worldbuilding is a part of the writing, they get a huge bump up for creating a really brilliant world, and a plot that actually makes sense.  Simple may not be what people want, but it's better than creating an overcomplicated mess.  Legacy isn't a mess.  It's logical.  All of it.

Visuals: 4.75/5

Overall, the visuals are amazing.  They've done a fine job weaving the world together.  The only flaw I think is worth mentioning is that sometimes young Bridges looks a little too computerized.  They're still impressive effects in general, but there are moments where things aren't where they should be.

Adaptation: N/A

It's not an adaptation of anything, per se.

Overall: 3.75/5

Value: $9.75 (based on a $10.50 max)(this number is based on movie ticket value)

I loved the film.  I'd recommend science fiction fans to see it with the intention of watching a fun movie.  Don't go into this expecting Inception or Sunshine.  It's good cyberpunk fun!

The Anime/Manga Adaptation Invasion: Why We Love It and Why It's Here to Stay

The anime/manga-invasion has been building for the last twenty years.  With live-action films for Death Note, Dragonball, Speed Racer, Transformers (not anime; Jordan Lapp has destroyed my childhood), and over forty other adaptations behind us, and at least a dozen others (U.S. and Japan based) on the way, it seems like anime and manga have a stranglehold on the film and television market.  Of course, both have been hot commodities in the U.S. for several decades.  There has been significant growth in the last ten to fifteen years alone with the syndication and dubbing of dozens of anime franchises, many crossed over directly from

Promo Bits: Gantz (Live Action Film) Premieres on the Jan. 20th,2011!

I recently received an email about this event and decided that, since I'm planning to go, you all should know about it so you can go too.

Here's the info (after the fold):

New Poll: Do you think SF/F will have a good year in 2011?

The new year is here and it seems like a good idea to have a poll about what you all think the year will be like for the genres we love.  The question is in the title and poll can be found on the left.  Comments, of course, are always welcome!

Top 10 Blog Posts in 2010 and from 2010 (Because They're Different)

I've been tweeting my top ten most popular posts in 2010 and it occurred to me that maybe I should put that list here, along with a list of the most popular posts written in 2010, since the lists are actually quite different.  So, here goes:

Top 10 Blog Posts in 2010

1. Top 8 Most Ridiculous Moments in Science Fiction and Fantasy Film in the 21st Century
2. Werewolves and Misconceptions About Science Fiction
3. Top 10 Cats in Science Fiction and Fantasy
4. Top Ten Fantasy Movies
5. Misconceptions About Star Wars
6. Movie Review:  Star Trek (Why It Sucks and Why Abrams Needs to Stop)
7. Top 10 Most Ridiculous Moments in Science Fiction and Fantasy Film in the 90s
8. What If Dragons Were Real?
9. Top 7 Fiercest Dragons
10. J.J. Abrams' Star Trek:  An Addendum (to my review)

I suspect that a lot of these views have been from old links or images, since a great deal of the posts above are at least a year old.  Still, it's interesting to see what is getting the most attention this year.

Top 10 Blog Post from 2010

(Note:  Google Analytics stopped working at around the time that I updated the blog, so the list below is based on post statistics that I have available to me--half from Google Analytics and half from Blogger's new Stats feature, which doesn't let me see deep enough to focus on content written in 2010.  Some of my selections are guesses based on data I have and the number of comments received.)

1. Top 8 Most Ridiculous Moments in Science Fiction and Fantasy Film in the 21st Century
2. Top 10 Most Ridiculous Moments in Science Fiction and Fantasy Film in the 90s
3. J.J. Abrams' Star Trek:  An Addendum (to my review)
4. Fiction Narratives:  The Forgotten Strand?
5. A Brief Linking to the Manifesto of No-Consequence
6. Why Science Fiction is Important to the Third World (Part One)
7. The Book Habits Meme (Reboot)
8. Movie Review:  Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Part One)
9. Haiti and Pat Robertson:  Slavery is A-OK
10. Self-Publishing Lies and Myths:  Deception and Unethical Practices

The differences between these two lists are pretty obvious.  The former is largely comprised of lists, which seems to prove that such things are traffic producers (which I've read is true, but have never done for the purposes of getting traffic, with the exception of #2 in list two).  I don't know what to make of that.  I only do top # lists because they're fun, and it's starting to feel as though I've covered most of the topics that are reasonable enough to do.  But maybe new idea will spring up in 2011?  Who knows?

Now the big question is this:  what are your favorite posts of 2010?