Hugo Awards Finalists (Plus Preliminary Commentary)

I'm too lazy to offer a proper introduction, so I'm just going to dive in (give me a break; I walked over five miles today).  The only thing I will say is that most of these are preliminary, most-likely-haven't-read-it thoughts.  For the most part, I will have nothing to say about a work except why I didn't pick it up during hte year.  The sad truth is that most of the stuff I nominated this year (my first nominating year) didn't make it.

Here goes (Hugos):

The SF/F and Related Blogs You Read

I follow a bunch of genre-related blogs, but I always have this feeling that I'm missing something.  And so this post is about that.

What are your favorite SF/F and related blogs?  I want to know.  Leave a comment with links and maybe I'll find something new!

That's it.  Nothing more exciting than that!

Poll: The Retro Nostalgia Film (#7) -- Vote Time!

You know the drill:  vote!

Retro Nostalgia: Mars Attacks (1996) and Its Detached Timestamp

Long-time viewers of science fiction film will likely recognize Tim Burton's homage to 50s/60s SF cinema.  How could they not?  From the narrative undertones of the Cold War's nuclear fears to its borrowing and twisting of the narrative structure of H. G. Wells' War of the Worlds and its 1953 adaptation, which helped solidify a developing SF cinematic aesthetic (the Orson Welles radio drama certainly stuck Wells' terrifying tale of alien invasion in the public consciousness beforehand), the film is in every way a mockery of the 50s and 60s.*  But it's not simply the politics or the narrative that make the 1996 alien invasion comedy Mars Attacks! an amusing bedfellow of or foil to the 1950s (and 60s).  Rather, its visuals are an at times direct parody/assault on the material and social logic of the era, despite having no clear temporal placement of its own -- after all, the film is neither set in the 1950s, nor the 1990s, and instead

RIP: Chinua Achebe (1930 - 2013)

If you haven't already heart, Chinua Achebe passed away last Thursday (March 21st).  While not a genre writer, Achebe various works have had a profound impact on English-language literature.  He is probably best known for Things Fall Apart, which appears from time to time on American high school English curriculum.  However, he also wrote four other novels, numerous short story and poetry collections, and a number of essays.  If you've never read anything by him before, I recommend you do.

My first introduction to his work was in a graduate-level course on African literature.  And, as per usual, the work in question was Things Fall Apart.  Since then, I've read short stories, poems, and other novels by Achebe.  Most of them I have enjoyed immensely.

He was a great writer, to say the least.  And he will be missed immensely.

You can read more about Achebe and his death here and here.

ICFA (Are You Going?) and Disappeared Shaun (Temporary!)

Two things:

1. I am presenting at this year's ICFA (International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts).  That means I will be rather busy this week with, well, paper stuff, conference stuff, and stuff stuff.  However, if you are attending ICFA and would like to get together, send me an email or leave a message or something.  Should be fun!
   
   (FYI:  I'm presenting a paper on the adaptation of Cloud Atlas.  I'm also creating a list which will include that film.  Mwahaha.)
   
2. Due to #1 and to some PhD stuff I need to finish, I am putting the blog on a temporary hiatus.  And I mean temporary.  At most, I'll post nothing new until the end of next week.  However, I strongly suspect I'll be back at my old games on Sunday or Monday.  In any case, that means all the stuff I had planned to post this week is getting moved until later, including the Retro Nostalgia feature.  I just don't have the time to put my heart into it right now (PhD stuff, conference stuff, and teaching stuff = super busy Shaun).
   
   Again, this is temporary.  I am not disappearing.  This blog will fill up with my nonsense before the end of the month.  Promise.

And that's that.

Tolkien and Martin Don't Have Much to Answer For (Or, Hey, Bad Arguments About Fantasy)

Apparently A.J. Dalton doesn't care for J.R.R. Tolkien or George R.R. Martin.  Here's the moment when I stopped reading:

They have both come to dominate the genre in which I write, that’s what. All fantasy gets compared to them. They are the standard. They are the definition of fantasy. Anything too different to them doesn’t get recognised as fantasy, as it doesn’t contain enough of the required motifs and conventions.

Anyone who can make that argument with any seriousness has no idea what they are talking about.  Really?  Anything that doesn't look like Martin or Tolkien isn't considered fantasy anymore?  Really?  So apparently N.K. Jemisin doesn't write fantasy.  Good to know.  Diana