In the Plane of the Ecliptic

Partial Solar Eclipse of January 4, 2011

2011-01-06T14:45:00.013Z

Unfortunately I wasn't able to see anything in neck of the woods (Den Bosch & Waalwijk, The Netherlands) because of cloud cover. Here's a somewhat shaky iPhone picture of how it looked like for me:

Luckily, a lot of other people across Europe, Africa and Asia did see it, and here are a few of their pictures:

First one of somebody in The Netherlands who did see it (via the Guardian):

In Barcelona, it was visible both above this great city (via de Volkskrant):

Or in the hand of an unnamed Spaniard (via de Volkskrant):

Here's a picture from a colleague in Sweden at the day job:

But the most spectacular one is from the Malaga, Spain: a seagull flying right in front of the eclipse (via the Guardian):

The next partial eclipse is on June 1, 2011: this one will be just before dusk (unlike the January 4 one which was just after dawn). Not visible in The Netherlands, and I won't be going to north Scandinavia to see it.

The next annular eclipse is on May 20, 2012: sweeps over Japan, continues over the Pacificjust below the Aleutian Islands before it enters Caifornia and Arizona. Yes, right over the Grand Canyon! My solar eclipse friends and I intend to be there, near Page.

The next total solar eclipse will be on November 13, 2012: flies over far north Queensland, then south of New Caledonia, norht of New Zealand over the Pacific. My solar eclipse friends and I have already booked accomodation in Port Douglas!

Is Bruce Sterling Future-Shocked? Or: Michael Moore 1 -- Bruce Sterling 0

2010-12-24T10:56:00.021Z

Sometimes the mighty do fall. And as they fall, they cause others to fall in their wake. Even people that used to be some of their main critics. For those, it's a fall from grace, even if it's a fall in style: shrouded in pithy observations, perpetrated with sharp similes and suffused with the air and eloquence of a grandmaster. Beautiful to watch, but still a gracious fall from grace.

I'm talking about "The Blast Shack": Bruce Sterling's recent piece about Wikileaks. I've read through it several times, and can't escape the following two conclusions:

1): Bruce Sterling is effectively arguing against more transparency.

Price quote:

For diplomats, a massive computer leak is not the kind of sunlight that chases away corrupt misbehavior; it’s more like some dreadful shift in the planetary atmosphere that causes ultraviolet light to peel their skin away. They’re not gonna die from being sunburned in public without their pants on; Bill Clinton survived that ordeal, Silvio Berlusconi just survived it (again). No scandal lasts forever; people do get bored. Generally, you can just brazen it out and wait for the public to find a fresher outrage. Except.

It’s the damage to the institutions that is spooky and disheartening; after the Lewinsky eruption, every American politician lives in permanent terror of a sex-outing. That’s “transparency,” too; it’s the kind of ghastly sex-transparency that Julian himself is stuck crotch-deep in. The politics of personal destruction hasn’t made the Americans into a frank and erotically cheerful people. On the contrary, the US today is like some creepy house of incest divided against itself in a civil cold war. “Transparency” can have nasty aspects; obvious, yet denied; spoken, but spoken in whispers. Very Edgar Allen Poe.

All right, so protecting politicians from possible scandals is more important than the information that the Wikileaks cables have provided (so far)? Even worse -- see the next price quote:

And I don’t much like that situation. It doesn’t make me feel better. I feel sorry for them and what it does to their values, to their self-esteem. If there’s one single watchword, one central virtue, of the diplomatic life, it’s “discretion.” Not “transparency.” Diplomatic discretion. Discretion is why diplomats do not say transparent things to foreigners. When diplomats tell foreigners what they really think, war results.

Diplomats are people who speak from nation to nation. They personify nations, and nations are brutal, savage, feral entities. Diplomats used to have something in the way of an international community, until the Americans decided to unilaterally abandon that in pursuit of Bradley Manning’s oil war. Now nations are so badly off that they can’t even get it together to coherently tackle heroin, hydrogen bombs, global warming and financial collapse. Not to mention the Internet.

The world has lousy diplomacy now. It’s dysfunctional. The world corps diplomatique are weak, really weak, and the US diplomatic corps, which used to be the senior and best-engineered outfit there, is rattling around bottled-up in blast-proofed bunkers. It’s scary how weak and useless they are.

Do I read that right? Global warming and financial collapse happened as the nation couldn't tackle it because there was too much transparency? Global warming and the next financial bubble can be stopped by more “discretion” (read secrecy)? Talk about having it backwards.

This appalls me. And thankfully not just me: cue, for example, to Mark at comment #61:

Saudi Arabia put pressure on the US to attack Iran. Other Arab allies also secretly agitated for military action against Tehran.

Washington is running a secret intelligence campaign targeted at the leadership of the United Nations, including the secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, and the permanent security council representatives from China, Russia, France and the UK.

Small teams of US special forces have been operating secretly inside Pakistan’s tribal areas, with Pakistani government approval. And the US concluded that Pakistani troops were responsible for a spate of extra-judicial killings in the Swat Valley and tribal belt, but decided not to comment publicly.

The US ambassador to Pakistan said the Pakistani army is covertly sponsoring four major militant groups, including the Afghan Taliban and the Mumbai attackers, Laskar-e-Taiba (LeT), and “no amount of money” will change the policy. Also, US diplomats discovered hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to Pakistan earmarked for fighting Islamist militants was not used for that purpose.

The British government promised to protect US interests during the Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq war.

Russia is a “virtual mafia state” with rampant corruption and scant separation between the activities of the government and organised crime. Vladimir Putin is accused of amassing “illicit proceeds” from his time in office, which various sources allege are hidden overseas. And he was likely to have known about the operation in London to murder the Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko, Washington’s top diplomat in Europe alleged.

British and US officials colluded to manoeuvre around a proposed ban on cluster bombs, allowing the US to keep the munitions on British territory, regardless of whether a treaty forbidding their use was implemented. Parliament was kept in the dark about the secret agreement, approved by then-foreign secretary David Miliband.

One of the biggest objectives at the US embassy in Madrid over the past seven years has been trying to get the criminal case dropped against three US soldiers accused of the killing of a Spanish television cameraman in Baghdad.

The British military was criticised for failing to establish security in Sangin by the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, and the US commander of Nato troops, according to diplomatic cables.

Rampant government corruption in Afghanistan is revealed by the cables, including an incident last year when the then vice-president, Ahmad Zia Massoud, was stopped and questioned in Dubai when he flew into the emirate with $52m in cash.

The British Foreign Office misled parliament over the plight of thousands of islanders who were expelled from their Indian Ocean homeland – the British colony of Diego Garcia – to make way for a large US military base.

The US military has been charging its allies a 15% handling fee on hundreds of millions of dollars being raised internationally to build up the Afghan army.

Conservative party politicians promised before the election that they would run a “pro-American regime” and buy more arms from the US if they came to power.

The president of Yemen secretly offered US forces unrestricted access to his territory to conduct unilateral strikes against al-Qaida terrorist targets.

A potential “environmental disaster” was kept secret by the US last year when a large consignment of highly enriched uranium in Libya came close to cracking open and leaking radioactive material into the atmosphere.

Libya threatened UK with “dire reprisals” if the convicted Lockerbie bomber, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, died in a Scottish prison.

Ann Pickard, Shell’s VP for sub-Saharan Africa, claimed in Oct 2009 that the oil giant had infiltrated all the main ministries of the Nigerian government.

Two British civil servants, Dr Richard Freer and Judith Gough, contradicted Gordon Brown’s statement on reduction of the Trident fleet in conversations with US embassy officials in London.

The US ambassador in Kampala sought assurances from the Ugandan government in December 2010 that it would consult the US before using American intelligence to commit war crimes in the conflict against the LRA.

The pharmaceutical giant Pfizer paid investigators to unearth corruption links to Nigeria’s attorney general in an attempt to persuade him to stop his legal action against a controversial drug trial involving children with meningitis.

The pope intervened personally to ensure the Vatican’s increased hostility towards Turkey joining the EU.

The Vatican refused to allow its officials to testify at Irish inquiry into clerical child abuse and was angered when they were summoned from Rome.

BP suffered a giant gas leak in Azerbaijan 18 months before the Gulf of Mexico disaster.

Azerbaijan accused BP of stealing $10bn of oil and using “mild blackmail” to secure rights to develop gas reserves in the Caspian Sea.

US energy company Chevron negotiated with Tehran about developing an oilfield despite tight US sanctions.

Speculation that Omar al-Bashir siphoned $9bn in oil money and deposited it in foreign accounts could fuel calls for his arrest

Do you honestly think that US taxpayers should not know this information?

(Emphasis of last sentence mine.)

Indeed, as a concerned, tax-paying citizen (in my case of The Netherlands)(and I'm certainly no 'naturally sociopathic hacker' ) I also want to know if, for example:

our goverment let themselves be coerced into the war with Iraq;

our goverment let themselves be coerced into the war with Afghanistan: our previous coalition fell over the question of withdrawing our troops from Afghanistan;

Trafigura did indeed play some very dirty games in getting rid of chemical waste in Ivory Coast;

Shell does indeed play dirty games in Nigeria;

And more things I'm probably not aware of;

If that kind of transparency gives headaches to diplomats and politicians alike: then so be it. They should learn to deal with it, and--especially the politicians, but also big corporations--it should help prevent more outright lies, deceptions and skullduggery.

If Bruce Sterling is against that kind of transparency, then I greatly prefer documentary maker Michael Moore, who campaigns to free Bradly Manning:

"To suggest that lives were put in danger by the release of the WikiLeaks documents is the most cynical of statements," Moore said.
"Lives were put in danger the night we invaded the sovereign nation of Iraq, an act that had nothing to do with what the Bradley Mannings of this country signed up for: to defend our people from attack. It was a war based on a complete lie and lives were not only put in danger, hundreds of thousands of them were exterminated.
"For those who organised this massacre to point a finger at Bradley Manning is the ultimate example of Orwellian hypocrisy."

Amen to that. Or, in other words: Michael Moore 1 -- Bruce Sterling 0.

2): Bruce Sterling is failing as a futurist.

A large part of Bruce Sterling (professor of internet studies and science fiction)'s reputation hinges on his ability to explore the near-future: this is what Beyond the Beyond is majorly about. In that light, I find it quite disappointing that he does pinpoint the 'real issue':

That’s the real issue, that’s the big modern problem; national governments and global computer networks don’t mix any more.

But then, while he admitted he didn't quite see it (Wikileaks) coming:

But who cared about that wild notion? Why would that amateurish effort ever matter to real-life people? It’s like comparing a mighty IBM mainframe to some cranky Apple computer made inside a California garage. Yes, it’s almost that hard to imagine.

So Wikileaks is a manifestation of something that has been growing all around us, for decades, with volcanic inexorability. The NSA is the world’s most public unknown secret agency. And for four years now, its twisted sister Wikileaks has been the world’s most blatant, most publicly praised, encrypted underground site.

He doesn't see any solution to this problem, or fails to see the positive sides and effects of it:

The data held by states is gonna get easier to steal, not harder to steal; the Chinese are all over Indian computers, the Indians are all over Pakistani computers, and the Russian cybermafia is brazenly hosting wikileaks.info because that’s where the underground goes to the mattresses. It is a godawful mess. This is gonna get worse before it gets better, and it’s gonna get worse for a long time. Like leaks in a house where the pipes froze.

This is (intentionally?) missing the point: Wikileaks is, as Sterling mentions at length in his piece, *not* a sovereign state spying on another state: Wikileaks are showing the hidden data to the public at large.

So spying becomes easier for nations: well, they've been spying on each other since time immemorial. This is just business as usual. What has changed is that it is much more difficult for nations (and corporations) to hide their schemes from the public at large. And thus they try, desperately, to put the ghost back in the bottle. I hope they fail. I hope that nations--*any* nation--will be less able to wage wars based on disinformation, lies and deceit.

More openness, more abilities for concerned citizens to make informed choices. It seems that Bruce Sterling sees this as a bad thing, but he can't put the cat back into the bag, either.

What's the matter, Bruce? Future-Shocked?

UPDATE: Gabrielle Coleman on The Atlantic more or less makes the same point:

There is no denying that there is tremendous support for WikiLeaks among geeks -- although much of it came after the backlash against WikiLeaks; there is no denying that hackers will attempt to impact politics through technological means; there is no denying that WikiLeaks and Julian Assange deserve some critical scrutiny, which is what Sterling dished out. But I am less sold on the idea that the form of exposure so powerfully provided by WikiLeaks does not have some merit.
Personally I find myself sympathetic toward the purported mission behind OpenLeaks. They are seeking to do something similar to WikiLeaks but transforming it by injecting a dose of much needed transparency and accountability. And yet, due to the obsessive media spotlight on Julian Assange and WikiLeaks (including Sterling's piece) the public may be led to believe that there is only one way to spread leaks, when in fact WikiLeaks helped to usher a paradigm that can be tweaked and hacked to better serve democratic goals.

Excellent: like the age-old question -- "Who's watching the watchers?" -- Coleman points to OpenLeaks as the next step in transparency: keep the organisation that strives for more transparency transparent itself. Practice what you preach, and by doing so better serve democratic goals.

Now you can shoot me, but the 'old' Bruce Sterling -- say, the writer of Islands in the Net, Holy Fire and Distraction -- used to come up with such forward-looking visions himself.

The king is dead: long live the king!

Various & Sundry: Patrick Farley's Electric Sheep

2010-04-07T17:20:00.005+01:00

I pledged $50 to Patrick Farley's Electric Sheep:

And this purely because I love the 'Dicebox Aside: Don't Look Back' Comic he's doing (haven't checked out Electric Sheep yet).

So call me crazy. But I do like Kickstarter, and Patrick Farley.

NOTE: via BoingBoing.

Story Published in The Tangled Bank

2010-02-25T08:57:00.006Z

A quick mention of personal news:

Almost two weeks ago--February 12--THE TANGLED BANK: Love, Wonder & Evolution was released, electronicall only, so far, by editor/publisher Chris Lynch's The Tangled Bank Press.

It features stories by such writers as Sophy Adani, Anil Menon, Carlos Hernandez (and many others) plus my own "The Frog Pool". Complemented with poems, illustrations and an essay by Russell Blackford. Check out the Table of Contents.

Apropos Carlos Hernandez: he's on a roll. His story in Interfictions 2 (“The Assimilated Cuban’s Guide to Quantum Santeria”) is a doozy, and online you can check out "Homeostasis" (at Futurismic) and "Fembot" (at my own DayBreak Magazine).

Apropos Anil Menon: he's co-editing (with Vandana Singh) an anthology called "The Speculative Ramayana Anthology". Check it out, and if it inspires you, do send in a story!

Apropos Sophy Adani: Destination: Future--the anthology she co-edited with Eric T, Reynolds--has just been released (at least at Amazon) through Hadley Rille Books.

Apropos my own silence: I am (and will continue to be, at least until Summer) extremely busy, both in the day job and the SF editing in my spare time. Most of the action is now at DayBreak Magazine, where you can check out excerpts for the SHINE anthology, and upbeat SF stories, of which the latest is by my compatriot Paul Evanby: "A Thousand Trains Out of Here". A razor-sharp reversal of current Dutch sociological and political trends set in a sunnier future. Enjoy!

Should SF Die?

2009-12-25T14:37:00.005Z

(Cross-posted from the Shine website.)

There’s been a lot of musing about the fate of science fiction, lately. To be clear, I’ll be discussing *written SF* here (predominantly), not SF in movies, comics, video games or other media. To summarise (and this is far from complete, but I hope it touches upon the main points):

According to Ashok Banker, SF is morally and ethically bankrupt (to put it mildly: his interview at the World SF News Blog has been deleted on his request, because some idiot stalker is now threatening not only him, but his family and friends, as well);

According to Lavie Tidhar, SF — and fantasy, as well — is suffering from monolithic anglophone syndrome;

According to Mark Newton, SF is commercially dead, and fantasy is the (bestselling) future;

According to Athena Andreadis on the Huffington Post, SF has ditched science and has become, in effect, fantasy. Geoff Ryman (who recently edited When It Changed) and Ken MacLeod (who is involved with The Human Genre Project) seem to agree;

My viewpoint is that SF is becoming increasingly irrelevant, and that lack of relevance can be attributed to developments and trends already mentioned in the points above, and SF’s unwillingness to really engage with the here-and-now. That doesn’t mean that SF needs to die (actually, a slow marginalisation into an increasingly neglected and despised niche-cum-ghetto is probably a fate worse than death), but it does mean that SF needs to change, and that it needs to become much more inclusive of the alien (and I mean alien in ‘humans-can-be-aliens-to-each-other’ sense) and proactive, meaning it should not just shout ‘FIRE! FIRE!’ (and do almost nothing but), but both man the fire trucks *and* think of ways to prevent more fires.

That’s the short version: allow me to expand on it below the cut.

There have been several flame wars on the internet about what SF exactly is. For one, I think it’s as much a marketing niche as a genre defined by certain hard-to-define characteristics. For another, I think that if SF wants to prevent becoming more marginalised, it needs to ditch the common concept that it’s ‘the literature of ideas’ and should try to become ‘the literature of change’.

Ideas are a dime a dozen. Ideas flow by the bucketloads as half-drunken people quip witticism in a bar, as stoned students discuss RPGs at a frat party, as white collars desperately brainstorm in anther effort to hide a lack of true inspiration. The utmost majority of ideas are ethereal, as lasting and interesting as the latest trending topic on Twitter. Yes, there are those very rare good ideas: and I’m willing to bet that most really good ideas are carefully kept under wrap until they’re patented and ready for the big time (see, for example, how Apple launches new products like iTunes, iPods, iPhones, etc.). And renaming SF ‘the literature of really good ideas’ is lame at best and pathetic at worst.

SF — should it be willing to move forward — needs to reinvent itself as the literature of change. This means that SF needs to be willing to change, itself, and continue to be willing to change, to either adapt, or — dare we think it? — be proactive. Because, let’s face it, SF hasn’t been particularly proactive in the last few decades. This also means that SF needs to be open to outer influences instead of being afraid of those. SF as a species should be willing to cross-fertilise with everything around it, and thrive, or otherwise become a genetic dead end.

So let’s apply this viewpoint — SF as a literature of change, willing to change itself, as well — to the points, mostly mentioned by others, above:

SF is racist (Ashok Banker);

SF is predominantly an anglophone white man’s game (Lavie Tidhar), not open enough to women, people of colour, LGBTs and cultures other than western ones;

SF is on a commercial dead end because (a)women aren’t buying it, (b) it can’t keep up with the current rate of technological change, (c) it’s eaten up from the outside by the mainstream and (d) most people grow up on fantasy films, anyway (all Mark Newton);

SF, like much of the current US way of thinking, is too dismissive of actual science (Athena Andreadis);

SF is not exploring relevant topics deeply enough (me);

1. SF is racist:

Let’s jump immediately into the deep end. Is SF racist? And of so, should it die, or should it mend its ways?

First one qualitative distinction: SF is not a homogenised group thing, but rather a collective of writers and readers (and publishers, editors, reviewers, critics, fans etcetera) that prefer to experience story in a certain mode. Saying that *all* SF is racist is a bit like saying all Christians, all Muslims, all Buddhists, or all atheists are racist. Unfortunately, some Christians, Muslims, Bhuddists or atheists will be racists. Fortunately, some of them will not be racists.

Thus, not *all* SF is racist: throughout its history novels and short stories by people of colour have been — and continue to be — published: Samuel R. Delany, Octavia Butler, Ted Chiang, Vandana Singh, Steven Barnes, Nalo Hopkinson, Alaya Dawn Johnson, Nnedi Okorafor and David Anthony Durham immediately come to mind, and then I realise I am overlooking many, many others (for which my profound apologies).

Therefore, a better question is: ‘Is SF, as a genre, predominantly racist?’ That’s a tough one to answer. Are the SF novels and short stories written by, or about, non-white or non-western people just a small, negligible minority in a sea of conservative WASP tales? Or is there a trend towards more inclusion of diverse cultures in SF?

On the one hand, it is extremely hard to deny that the majority of both SF writers *and* SF protagonists are white males. The Racefail discussion earlier this year does not exactly show SF from its best angle, and incidents like The Mammoth Book of Mindblowing SF don’t exactly help in that regard, either. I remember that some statistics were made of the number of male/female authors in the SF digests, but can’t find them right now, although I do distinctly recall that the majority of writers in them was male (and white).

That none of the 57 Hugo Awards for Best Novel have been won by people of colour (and 15 by women), is not a good sign. That all of the SFWA Grand Masters are white, and that only 3 of the 27 SFWA Grand Masters are women doesn’t help matters, either. Compare this with a literary prize like the Man Booker Prize (where 8 people of colour, and 15 women have been awarded among the total of 43 recipients), or the Nobel Prize for Literature (where 9 people of colour, and, admittedly, only 9 women have been awarded among the total of 106 recipients), then one can clearly see that SF still has way to go in that respect. OK: one could also say that the whole of western literature has quite a way to go in that respect, but I do note that the number of ethnic and women recipients of both literature and SF prizes has been going up since, say 1960 or so. If looked from that perspective, SF has much more catching up to do than literature.

So in SF there is, undeniably, a strong bias for fiction written by, or written about, white males. Part of this is historically grown (yes, the whole western world was more racist in the past — think slavery, witch hunts, concentration camps and other atrocities — and only slowly becoming less racist over time), but I can’t escape the impression that a large part of it is due to the fact that SF, that is: a very large part of the community that we call SF, is very conservative, and as such very much behind the times.

(Obviously, there remains the question how much of this bias is intentional, unintentional, or just plain white privilege at work. It’s another tough question on which I don’t have an easy or definite answer. I’m ignoring it for the moment, as I like to concentrate — in my best Shine fashion — on improving things, on looking for solutions.)

On the other hand, I do have the feeling that the tide is, finally, slowly, yet inevitably turning.

One very recent point of light is provided by Ahmed A. Khan’s and Muhammad Aurangzeb Ahmad’s A Mosque Among the Stars anthology that portrays (at least one) muslim, or Islam, in a positive light. Then there are anthologies like Cosmos Latinos, Dark Matter and Visions of the Third Millenium, and websites like SciFiNoir, the Carl Brandon Society, Afrofuturism, and The Angry Black Woman (even if the latter is only partly about SF & fantasy), and more.

If there is one thing I am sure of, it’s that I am missing quite a few similar ethnic SF loving people out there, for which my apologies: the more, the merrier, as far as I'm concerned. And do enlighten me!

2. SF is predominantly WASPish:

Check out several summaries on the World SF News Blog about how much SF short stories from international writers are published: it’s very little, indeed.

Still, this is an area where I do see quite a bit of forward movement, to wit:

The Apex Book of World SF, edited by Lavie Tidhar (and the international Apex Online issue);

The World SF News Blog, run by Lavie Tidhar;

The Best American Fantasy series, now published by Underland Press, will now include stories from Latin America, as well;

The inaugural SF and fantasy translation awards have been announced;

The Interstitial Arts Foundation has made a concerted effort to bring more international writers in their Interfictions 2 anthology;

The launch of Usok, an English language Philippino magazine;

Not to mention the tireless Charles A. Tan, who, amongst many other things, edits collections of SF/fantasy from The Philippines;

An upcoming anthology of SF/fantasy written by ethnic Chinese people outside of China called The Dragon and the Stars, edited by Eric Choi and Derwin Mak;

The December issue of Words without Borders focuses on international SF;

Last but certainly not least the launch of Haikasoru: a line of translated Japanese specfic from VIZ media edited by Nick Mamatas;

These are all examples of international SF with — mostly, although not exclusively — non-white writers and protagonists. Maybe they’re just drops in the bucket, but these drops are not colourless: they are distinct, and they keep falling in greater numbers. Like in literature, the landscape will change. And this is a change SF should embrace.

Then there is the problem of ‘writing the other’: should people from culture A write about people from culture B, or not?

Of course, this is frought with perils, but still needs to be done. If everybody in the world would only write and read about their own culture, cultural exchange and quite possibly culture itself would die a slow and painful death. Trying to imagine oneself in another’s place is highly important, and trying to write from another culture’s viewpoint is part and parcel of that.

Make no mistake: this has been done (Men Writing SF as Women, Women Writing SF as Men are just two examples), and hopefully will continue to be done. However, SF often takes the easy way out by using a white male protagonist who is slowly (or often incredibly quickly) accepted in the alien culture (FernGully, Dances with Wolves [OK: not SF but a telling example], Avatar), and then — as the hero — solves all problems. That Hollywood movies do it is one thing, but if written SF is really ‘fifty years ahead’ of big movie SF, then shouldn’t it feature much more stories where the hero is a (non-white) native and/or female and/or LGBT?

The obvious answer here is that SF needs to open itself more, much more to writing from other viewpoints: other sexes, other ethnicities, other cultures. For a literature that’s supposedly interested, and often about, the alien SF, but all too often, seems ethnocentric and infused with xenophobia.

3. SF is on a commercial dead end:

Here’s where Mark Charan Newton has stirred up quite a ruckus — and rightfully so — but while this would have been a good chance to analyse how much written SF sales are dropping, and the deeper causes to that, that unfortunately happens only somewhat in the follow-up post (‘What is happening to SF is a negative feedback loop, reinforced by the way modern publishing works, as well as some potential cultural problems’), where Richard Morgan comments:

...that where the SF/F genre is concerned,the message has gone out, loud and clear, that in order to make successful artefacts of mass entertainment, you must not challenge your audience with anything that a 14 year old American mid-western teenager can’t instantly relate to.

This, BTW, is totally aimed at SF movies. Hence Morgan’s and Newton’s musings on risk-taking (‘Is fantasy too risk-free?’/‘risk isn’t everything to casual readers’). However, there are already whole SF lines aimed at ‘no risk’-taking: see the Star Wars, Star Trek and other sharecropper novels that indeed sell pretty well, thank you. I don’t think most ‘original’ SF needs, or should, compete with that. Written SF should be ahead of Hollywood, right?

Mark provides a good explanation of ‘frontlist sales’ in bookshops, and while his observation that —

What we have is a vicious circle. If there are only a few SF books selling well each year, that isn’t enough room for it to acquire significant market share/nurture a culture. It attracts fewer new readers. And as Dark Fantasy rises, this will only squeeze SF out further.

— is certainly true, it overlooks the positive effect that a truly new SF blockbuster, a game changer can have. An obvious example from over two decades ago is William Gibson’s Neuromancer: while not the very first cyberpunk novel, nor the best, it broke cyberpunk to a larger audience, paving the way for more titles and more sales for SF overall.

And Neuromancer took risks: in many aspects it was different from the ‘mainstream’ SF that it preceded. So obviously, if SF keeps churning out the same old/same old all over again, it will certainly dwindle into insignificance, both commercially and artistically.

So in order to get out of this slump, SF must re-invent itself. For that, SF must welcome change, and change itself. It should face the modern world and the near-future, instead of running away from it. For that, it must — inevitably — take risks.

Roughly speaking, both the New Wave and cyberpunk were catch-up exercises: with the New Wave SF caught up with the cultural and sociological changes of society at that time (60s/70s), with cyberpunk with the technological changes (back in the early 80s, almost no SF was about computers, software and the internet).

One might argue that with the short burst of SF novels and short stories about the technological singularity in the early oughts SF was, for once, trying to be ahead of the game. However, this focused merely on the high tech computing frontier, and mostly ignored a flesh-and-blood world that was (and is) suffering major problems like environmental degradation, overpopulation, climate change and more.

It’s high time SF faced that one head-on, and while some may argue that it’s already doing this, I fear that the ‘dystopia-only’ approach is proving less than fruitful. More on this later. But it seems imperative that SF does its next catch-up exercise, and quick.

(And quite possibly I’m wrong: maybe SF should be about mind-blowingly virtual avatars doing mind-numbingly stupid things, a kind of reverse ‘science fantasy’ where SF is merely a thin veneer on an escapist fantasy power dream. The cynics among you may observe that this has always been the case...;-)

Then also it might be smart to aim this at a larger audience: not just the ‘14 year old Midwestern American teenager’ (where we can safely add *white* before teenager), but maybe at women, blacks, hispanics, asians and other ‘minorities’ (I wouldn’t call women a minority, as there are more women than men on average, hence the quotation marks)? As Mark Newton remarks, more women read books, and they’re spending the most money on books. And those other ‘minorities’ read as well, increasingly so. So it’s not only wrong-headed (to say it softly) or medieval (to say it hard) to marginalise women, non-white people, LGBTs and other cultures from SF, it is also commercially stupid.

4. SF dismisses actual science:

This fresh in from Athena Andreadis, where she laments the casual attitude with which American society at large, and also — seemingly — SF in particular, dismiss science and the scientific method.

The prize quote:

The real problem is not that science is hard to portray well in SF. The problem is impoverished imagination, willful ignorance and endless repetition of recipes. In short: failure of nerve.

Amen to that, and I’ll expand on it in the next and final point→

5. SF is not relevant enough:

Where we finally arrive at one of my favourite bugbears. Yes, I know: SF does handle urgent, near-future topics like climate change, pollution, environmental degradation, overpopulation, biodiversity loss and more. However, it almost exclusively shows how things will go from bad to worse to worst, and almost never comes up with the merest hint of a proposal to a solution.

Why?

Because SF is mostly behind the times. While an offhand remark from Nick Mamatas in his brilliant Avatar review — “Avatar does represent a step forward in science fiction film in that it is only forty years behind science fiction literature rather than the usual fifty years.” — sollicits applause and warm fuzzy feelings of entitlement in several comments, the truth is that written SF is, in most cases, way behind the curve of actual scientific, technological and sociological developments in the real world.

As Marcus Chown muses in his Guardian review of When It Changed:

The discovery that we live in a universe far stranger than anything we could possibly have imagined poses a problem for science fiction writers, whose stock-in-trade is, of course, imagining what the future will bring and the impact it will have on us.

Geoff Ryman thinks that a lot of science fiction writers, faced by this difficulty, may have given up, and that a lot of science fiction — particularly what appears on TV and film — is little more than cowboys in space.

It’s worse than that: most SF writers are not only overwhelmed by developments in science, they are doubly overwhelmed by (the pace of) today’s technological and sociological progress. It’s why the utmost majority of SF writers shies away from near-future SF: things change too fast and too unpredictable for them to keep up. Which leads to the usual excuses, and to most SF written safely in the far future, which has another advantage: instead of all today’s problems and developments happening in a highly complex and often strangely intertwined manner, an SF writer can isolate a problem quite nicely on a different planet or different timeline.

This is both a folly (most of today’s problems are complex and intertwined by definition: if not they’d be different problems) and writerly cowardice as in ‘it’s too difficult so I ignore it/run away from it’ and the already cliché’d repartee ‘it’s not up to SF to imagine solutions to today’s problems’.

Because that’s the problem: SF doesn’t want to (try to) tackle today problems. It just wants to highlight them, exaggerate them into apocalyptic disasters and let the world go down the drain in five hundred different ways. SF is very good at imaging how civilisation (or the world in general) ends: if it only used part of that imagination thinking about solving an actual problem it might have had some more respect from the world at large.

So let’s call it what it is: a failure of the imagination. Yes, quote me on it: ‘most written SF today suffers from a failure of the imagination’. It’s lazy, it avoids doing the hard work. As Athena Andreadis said:

However, the nation's radical shift to the right also brought on disdain for all expertise - science in particular, as can be seen by the obstruction of research in stem cells and climate change and of teaching evolution in schools (to say nothing of scientist portrayals in the media, exemplified by Gaius Baltar in the aggressively regressive Battlestar Galactica reboot).

This trend culminated in the choice of first a president and then a vice-presidential candidate who flaunted their ignorance and deemed their faux-folksy personae sufficient qualifications to lead the most powerful nation on the planet. Even as the fallout from these decisions deranges their culture, Americans cling to their iPods, SUVs and Xboxes and still expect instant cures for everything, from acne to old age, seeing scientists as the Morlocks that must cater to their Eloi.

It seems not only true for the unthinking masses at large, but for a large amount of SF, as well.

In short, SF should get off its arse, be totally open to outside influences and other cultures, and get involved with proactive thinking, proudly using science, about the near future.

Conceptual breakthrough doesn’t happen by looking at the other while not trying to understand her/him/it: it happens when a fresh understanding, a new insight opens up the previously weird and uncanny behaviour of the other, enhancing our view of a highly diverse world, opening us up to the beauty of it all.

Sense of wonder doesn’t arrive by watching the world from the safety of the couch or the local pub: it comes from engaging with the strange and the alien, then truly understanding it, and seeing the world in a new light.

Conceptual breakthrough doesn’t happen by pointing only to the things that go wrong, shouting fire and then depicting the seven-hundred-and-twenty-fourth version of Ragnarok: it happens when engaging with a problem so deeply that either obvious or lateral approaches come to the fore.

Sense of wonder doesn’t come when the scientific, technological or sociological causes of a phenomenon are ignored, taken for granted or not understood: it comes when the root cause — which can be something initially alien like quantum mechanics, string theory, complexity or chaos theory — suddenly becomes obvious, when a new way of looking at the world becomes clear, when a wonderful new understanding dawns.

Neither can be achieved without hard work and inspiration, quite possibly more hard work and inspiration than ever before (in that manner, like in When It Changed: collaboration may be the new way forward. It is already so in science, so why not in SF? Must writers remain isolated islands in a sea of change?), but this is also the challenge. Is SF up to this challenge? If not, I suspect it’s bound for a slow deterioration not unlike that of, say, the western (I know: there are still plenty of western *movies* — which even show more signs of engaging with today’s culture that SF: Brokeback Mountain, anyone? — but western fiction has been on life support for decades). If SF is up to the challenge, then it may become relevant once again.

Since this is the festive season, I remain hopeful (although that’s hard, sometimes), and next year I intend to lead by example.

IS IT ALIVE? SHINE COMPETITON!

2009-12-03T15:47:00.010Z

Apologies — to the two or three people still follwoing this blog — for the lack of updates: the Shine anthology and other projects are eating up all my time. All the action (well, as far as I am concerned) is over there.

So a short recap:

In my ongoing efforts to promote Shine, an anthology of near-future, optimistic SF (to be released by Solaris Books in April 2010), I have started a competition. Goal of this competition: guess the end sentence of 16 fragments of the stories appearing in Shine, plus the authors: SHINE COMPETITION!

Prizes: too good to be true!

Rules: short and straightforward!

It's a fun way of experiencing parts of the stories, and get into the writers' minds.

Also, in order to promote Shine and optimistic SF in general, I have started a webzine called Daybreak Magazine. DayBreak Magazine will feature an new story every two weeks. So far four have already been published:

"The Very Difficult Diwali of Sub-Inspector Gurushankar Rajaram" by Jeff Soesbe;
"horrorhouse" by Hugo-winner David D. Levine;
"The Gender Plague" by K.D. Wentworth;
"The Branding of Shu Mei Feng" by Amanda Clark;

Finally, for those who like their fiction *extremely* short, my Twitterzine @outshine containing optimistic SF tweets (and music reviews by Paul Graham Raven, movie reviews by Lucius Shephard, and comics reviews by David Alexander MacDonald) has been running from January 2009 onwards.

These three venues -- the Shine blog, Daybreak Magazine and @outshine -- are updated, very frequently and often.

(Shine cover art by Vincent Chong)

The moment I have more time I hope to post some more personal stuff over here, such as Con reports from both Anticipation and World Fantasy in San José.

A Travel Schedule, Part 2

2009-07-13T12:10:00.019+01:00

In week 32, I will be attending Anticipation, the Montréal WorldCon.

My travel plans and preliminary schedule are as follows:

Flight to Montréal:Departure: Tuesday August 4 @ 15.20 hrs. with flight KL 0671;

Arrival: Tuesday August 4 @ 16.35 hrs (flying time approx. 7.15 hrs.)

After clearing customs & immigration I'll be heading to the Best Western Europa for a full week (there was a CAN$ 80 per night special if I booked a full week, so why not...;-).

This gives me the Tuesday night and the Wednesday daytime for preparations, especially -- I hope -- to do some shopping for a special event.

Also, an 'unofficial' event: Pubcrawling with the Pros.

Last year, Jim Minz had the luminous idea to do a Microbrew Pubcrawl in Denver (actually two: one on the Wednesday before, and one on the Sunday afternoon). As it happened, only two people showed up on the Wednesday (Jim and me), but we had a great time, and tasted some great beers. Sunday we redid it with a nice group (Jim Minz, Jeremy Lassen, John Picacio, Chris Roberson, Allison Baker, John Picacio, Diana Rowland, Christian Dunn, George Mann, Mark Newton and a few others whom I can't recall right now) to great acclaim.

Montreal supposedly has Belgian type beers, so I think a repeat is in order.

So, the way things look right now, there will be two pubcrawls:

Wednesday evening August 5 from 8 PM onwards: where I will be waiting in the bar of the Hotel Delta Centre-Ville for the estimable Mr. Jim Minz to arrive, after which we set off;

Monday afternoon August 10 from 1 PM onwards: we gather in Le Fourquet Fourchette restaurant (which is located right in the Palais des Congrés), and from there we will set off;

Since we expect that the group on the Monday will be much larger, the Monday pubcrawl will be less extensive (we'll concentrate on a group of brewpubs which are within crawling distance) than the Wednesday evening one.

Anybody who wishes to join us, feel free to drop me an email at Jetse.deVries@gmail.com .

At Thursday the WordCon takes off, and -- so far -- I have the following items scheduled:--> Thursday August 6:

When: Thu 2:00 PM

Location: P-511A

Session ID: 345

Title: Translation Challenges

Description: What are the artistic and professional challenges faced by translators? How do they tackle translating between languages whosegrammars are incompatible?

Language: English

Track: Literature in English

Moderator: Kari Sperring

Duration: 1:30 hrs:min

All Participants: Jetse de Vries, Kari Sperring, Rani Graff, TomClegg, Fabio Fernandes, Eileen Gunn.

NB: Fábio Fernandes is still listed as a participant, but unfortunately he will not make it. Too bad: I was looking forward to meeting him, as well.

********************

When: Thu 5:00 PM

Location: P-518A

Session ID: 549

Title: Putting the World into Worldcon

Description: Our information about SF outside the English language isoften provided by (mediated by) Anglophone experts who have been tothe foreign land in question and brought back what interests them.Here, instead, we gather experts from SF/fantasy traditions outsideEnglish to tell us what we should look out for.

Language: English

Track: Literature in English

Moderator: Jetse de Vries

Duration: 1:30 hrs:min

All Participants: Aliza Ben Moha, Alvaro Zinos-Amaro, Jetse de Vries, Stefan Krzywicki, Tara Oakes, Tore A. Hřie

NB: a handy map for the locations (which is available on the Anticipation website):

Furthermore, on Thursday evening -- as things stand now -- I will be having dinner with a few very good friends: Adam Rakunas and Daryl Gregory and his family in Au Pied de Cochon.

--> Friday August 7:

When: Fri 3:30 PM

Location: P-523A

Session ID: 1008

Title: Anatomy for Writers, Heroes and Tavern Brawlers.

Description: Author, karate instructor, fencer and first aid officerSean McMullen provides a tour of how the human body can and cannot bedamaged. Want to know where a hero can be punched without any effect?Worried about his vascular dilation? Curious about the real-lifeversion of Mr Spock's nerve pinch? Not sure whether a really longsword fight is three hours or seven seconds? Wondering why readers arelaughing because your hero has microsecond reactions? Come along andfind out in complete safety.
Language: English

Track: The Light Programme

Moderator: Sean McMullen

Duration: 1:30 hrs:min
All Participants: Jetse de Vries, Sean McMullen, Darlene Marshall, Kirsten Britain

NOTE: this should be great fun: I will be the wild barbarian who gets his arse kicked by the Master. Or maybe, maybe the unwashed barbarian can pull a quick one...

********************

When: Friday 7.00 PM

Location: Room 2231, Party Level, Hotel Delta Centre-Ville

Session ID: C2H5OH

Title: Angry Robot Launch Party.

Description: Launch party for new HarperCollins imprint Angry Robot. With introduction speech by Neil Gaiman. Drinks, drinks, drinks & snacks arranged by your Moderator who has a reputation (Interzone party, LACon IV; Pyr party, Denvention) to uphold. Wine aficionados will be attended to by connoissuer Adam Rakunas; beer lovers will be helped by The Flying Dutchman; there will even be soft drinks and mineral water for teetotallers. This is the party to be on the Friday night: don't miss it!

Language: English/Français/others/

Track: The Party Floor

Moderators: Jetse de Vries, Adam Rakunas (wine master)

Hosts: Marc Gasoigne & Lee Harris (Publishers/Editors)

Duration: ??:?? hrs:min (depending on when your 'Moderator' decides to call it quits, or when the booze runs out, or when the suite needs to be vacated: whichever comes first...;-)

Special Guests: Neil Gaiman & Mystery Guest, various Angry Robot authors

Note that Neil Gaiman, as Guest of Honour, has a very full schedule, so will make an appearance at 7 PM and give a short speech. If you want to see him, be early!

All Participants: everybody is invited!

Be often, drink early! (Or was it the other way around?)

--> Saturday August 8:

When: Sat 12:30 PM

Location: P-521A

Session ID: 1625

Title: Jetse de Vries--Kaffeeklatsch

Description: A chance to ask those burning questions.

Language: English

Track: Kaffeeklatsch

Moderator: (I'll be there: don't worry)

Duration: 1:00 hrs:min

All Participants: Jetse de Vries & all who wish to show up. Come by & ask anything you want!

********************

When: Sat 3:30 PM

Location: P-516AB

Session ID: 586

Title: How to Pitch Your Novel ... And How Not to

Description: You're an aspiring writer, you've run into an editor oragent in a bar. After buying them a drink, what's the next thing to do? Talk about your just-completed novel? Thrust the printout into their hands? Or ... something else? Some advice from those who know.

Language: English

Track: Literature in English

Moderator: Cathy Petrini

Duration: 1:30 hrs:min

All Participants: Cathy Petrini, Jetse de Vries, Mike Resnick, Sean Wallace, Ginjer Buchanan

--> Sunday August 9:

When: Sun 10:00 AM

Location: P-511CF

Session ID: 87

Title: When the Oil Runs Out

Description: Oil is a limited resource but is the basis of much ofour energy usage. What are we going to do as it becomes more expensiveand eventually runs out? Turn your bicycle into a dynamo to power yourphone or laptop?

Language: English

Track: Science and Space

Moderator: Jetse de Vries

Duration: 1:00 hrs:min

All Participants: Chuck Cady, Jetse de Vries, Paul Kincaid, MichčleLaframboise, Richard Lynch, Paolo Bacigalupi.

********************

When: Sun 12:00 PM

Location: Other

Session ID: 1527

Title: Jetse de Vries Signing

Description: Jetse de Vries Signing ehrm ... something.

Language: English

Track: Autographs

Moderator:

Duration: 12:30 hrs:min (this is what it literally says in the email I received from programming: I'll just assume that it's a typo and it'll take 00.30 hrs:min. Or they've mistaken me for J.K. Rowling...;-)

All Participants: Jetse de Vries

NOTE: from 8.00 PM onwards you have the Hugo Awards Ceremony, followed by the Hugo Losers Party (actually Hugo Nominees Party, but as a four-time loser 'Losers Party' just sounds better) and various other parties.

NB: I understand from Jim Minz that the Baen party will also be on the Sunday night. There will be -- as ever -- no lack of booze.

********************

-->Monday August 10:

The second pubcrawl.

Gasthering time: 1.00 PM

Gathering spot: Le Fourquet Fourchette restaurant (which is located right in the Palais des Congrés).

As Jim has something scheduled at 6.00 PM, we intend to return before that time.

It's also much better to do this before the Dead Dog party, as then you can actually taste the great beers Montréal has to offer. After that it's Dead Dog time, and all will be well...;-)

Then I'll be flying back home on Tuesday August 11:

Flight from Montréal:

Departure: Tuesday August 11 @ 18.25 hrs. with flight KL 0671;
Arrival: Wednesday August 12 @ 07.05 hrs (flying time approx. 6.40 hrs.)

No rest for the wicked, as then I need to finalise the Shine ToC, and reminisce about SF plans for the future. Next Con will be World Fantasy in San Jose.

A Travel Schedule, part 1

2009-07-13T08:24:00.016+01:00

In week 30, I will be visiting China in order to witness the July 22 total solar eclipse (which is the longest of this century!).

My itinerary is as follows:

Flight to Shanghai:

Departure: Saturday July 18 @ 18.20 hrs. with flight KL 0895
Arrival: Sunday July 18 @ 10.55 hrs. (flying time approx. 10.35 hrs.)

As I understand from one of my colleagues at work, China is taking the swine flu (or Mexican flu) pandemic very seriously, and people will be scanned -- on the forehead -- with an infrared scanner in the plane, after it has landed (obviously) and before it is allowed to go to the gate. See the picture.

So I'm mentally preparing for an extra two hours on the ground before we can disembark.

Then it's off to the Crowne Plaza Century Park Hotel, where I will stay for two nights. I'll probably visit our company's Shanghai local headquarters on Monday.

Then on Tuesday, I'm travelling onward to Wuhan's Hangkou station by train (and a bullet train at that):

July 21 -- Shanghai to Hangkou -- D3006 -- depart 14.06 hrs. -- arrive 18.59 hrs.

In Wuhan I've booked the Yushang Business Hotel, as my fellow eclipse enthusiasts will be staying there, as well.

My eclipse friends have booked an organised trip through the geology department of the University of Utrecht, which lasts three weeks. I didn't book that trip because I will be going to Anticipation -- the Montréal WorldCon -- a week later, and I only have so many days off, and my budget only goes so far.

Anyway, reunion with friends on the Tuesday night, and then the next morning, on July 22, I hope to join the group when they set off, on 6 a.m., for a good location about 25 kilometres north of Wuhan. Climatologically speaking, this should be one of the best spots (with the lowest chance of cloud cover, which is still 61%, so it's going to be ) to observe the total solar eclipse.

(NB: this is the one from last year in Novosibirsk.)

Here's the interactive map of the July 22, 2009 solar eclipse (courtesy of NASA). The centre line of totality goes straight over the Wuhan Tianhe Airport, and the place where we will -- probably, as I don't know the exact location -- be has the following data re. the total eclipse:

Lat.: 30.7837° N; Long.: 114.3165° E

Total Solar Eclipse; Duration of Totality: 5m29.1s Magnitude: 1.037

Event ----------------------- Date ------- Time (UT) - Alt -- Azi

Partial eclipse start(C1) : 2009/07/22 00:15:01.4 032.4° 084.3°

Total eclipse start (C2) : -2009/07/22 01:24:02.4 047.2° 092.9°

Maximum eclipse : --------2009/07/22 01:26:46.4 047.8° 093.3°

Total eclipse end (C3) : --2009/07/22 01:29:31.5 048.4° 093.7°

Partial eclipse end (C4) : 2009/07/22 02:46:17.5 064.6° 108.3°

Since this is all in UT (Universal Time, then -- according to the Time Zone Converter -- we need to add 8 hours for CHina time, so totality will start at 09.24.02 hrs local time, and end at 09.29.31 local time.

Or, in solar eclipse geek parlance: First Contact @ 08.15.01 local time; Second Contact @ 09.24.02; Third Contact @ 09.29.31; and Fourth Contact @ 10.46.17.

After which we will return to Wuhan and then either celebrate a successful observation, or drown our sorrows if the event was obscured by clouds. There will be beer, nevertheless.

Then the Uni of Utrecht groep will fly onwards to Guilin in the evening: I will stay one more night in Wuhan. The enxt day I'll be going back to Shanghai:

July 23 -- Hangkou to Shanghai -- D3016 -- depart 11.23 hrs. -- arrive 16.16 hrs.

Of course, I could have taken a flight from Shanghai to Wuhan and back, but I hope to see a bit more of China in the train, and a five hour train trip is just about the right length. Another, although unplanned, advantage is that the Yushang Business Hotel in Wuhan is literally a stone's throw away from the Hangkou railway station. This is a lucky coincidence (I would've booked the same hotel as where my eclips friends would be staying, irrespective of location in Wuhan).

Then, on Thursday late afternoon I'm back in Shanghai.

The Friday morning and afternoon are free for sightseeing: in the evening the plan is to have dinner and drinks (plenty of drinks) with a couple of Dutch expatriates, who know the good places in Shanghai.

Then Saturday -- with or without hangover -- is the trip back home:

Flight from Shanghai:

Departure: Saturday July 25 @ 12.50 hrs. with flight KL 0896
Arrival: Saturday July 25 @ 18.55 hrs. (flying time approx. 11.45 hrs.)

Which then gives me the Sunday to recover as I am expected back on the day job on the Monday. Then one week of work, and onwards to Montréal (of which more in the next post). Last year, I had only two days between returning from Novosibirsk and travelling onwards to Denvention. Now, it's ten days, so maybe I'll be more coherent on the first day in Canada...;-).

Miscellaneous Writing Updatery

2009-04-28T09:26:00.014+01:00

With all the things I'm doing for the Shine anthology, my own SF writing gets buried under (much in the same manner as it did when I was still part of the Interzone team).

I do have two new stories ready, but I either run them through the critiquing gamut, or let them age a bit (like wine or cheese), before I send them out. So this update is about reprints.

For one, “Cultural Clashes in Cádiz” – originally in The Amityville House of Pancakes, vol. 1 (officially out of print, although you can snag up a hardcopy [used and even a ‘new’ one] at Amazon US – I notice that the ‘new’ one goes for $36.99 and the used from $6.52 and up – Amazon UK – where one ‘new’ one goes for £8.95 [the other for £51.94, which is insane] and the used for £40.71, what the heck? – Amazon Canada – ‘new’ one for C$62.24, used ones from C$25.95 through C$66.56 , which is also madness – while Clarkesworld Books discounts it to $9.00 [the shop's only temporarily re-opened, and you have to buy for $35 minimum], Shocklines has it for $13.95, and the Genremall has it for $13.35. Finally, an electronic version at Fictionwise) – and now reprinted in A Mosque Among the Stars (hardcopy via ZC Books, kindle edition via Amazon US), is getting some decidedly good reviews:

Annie at Annieworld was somewhat confused by it at first, thrown off by the name Leonard, but eventually “So the real reason for the actions of Leonard caught me by surprise and I loved it. It is probably one of the best stories.” (of the anthology);
Berrien C Henderson, the self avowed geek, wrote in his LJ review of A Mosque Among the Stars: “My hands-down favorite was the time-travel adventure, “Cultural Clashes in Cadiz,” by Jetse de Vries. He handles multiple settings and points of view quite well and weaves them together for a satisfying conclusion with a bit of a twist I thought I would’ve seen coming and didn’t, so my hat’s off to Jetse for the pleasant surprise.”;
And Francesca Forrest – on LJ as Asakiyume Mita – was also very complinetary (while pointing out errors-cum-characteristics: “The language in this one is over the top, sometimes hilariously anachronistic”) in her LJ review: “The story is full of heart. It’s exuberant, hilarious, and underneath it all, moving.”;

However, before my head swells to dangerous proportions, there are also reviews that either don’t mention it (SF Gospel’s Gabriel McKee’s review [maybe it was one of the problematic ones: “There’s a thread running through the anthology, and it’s tough to tell how problematic it is. Many of the stories deal with terrorism, war, and the clash of civilizations.”, however “The important thing, and what the editors have striven for, is that these stories address the questions of terrorism and war without demonizing the innocent along with the guilty. It’s an important message, and this anthology delivers it well. ”], or Susie Hawes at Ghostposts [“The rest of the stories are wonderfully written, with tight plotting, sympathetic characterization and close attention to internal logic. The settings are descriptive. The suspense is chilling.”], or ‘ilm al-insaan’s review [where it was probably one of the problematic ones, as well: “My problems with the volume included a definite sense that readers are still encountering the “Islamic” aspects from the position of outsiders, Western, non-Muslim outsiders. The authors are primarily non-Muslim, and there was a tendency in some of the stories to exoticize the Muslim Other.”), or that don’t like it (I honestly couldn't find one in the A Mosque Among the Stars reviews, although there were a few in the Amityville House of Pancakes, vol 1 reviews).

While “Cultural Clashes in Cádiz” is enjoying its second wind, “Random Acts of Cosmic Whimsy” has just had its third publication, albeit as a translation in the latest issue of Galaxies magazine. The story's first appearance was in DeathGrip: Exit Laughing under the title “The Ultimate Coincidence” (after which Hellbound Books, the publishers, immediately called it a day. The anthology is for sale at Shocklines for $3, though), back in November, 2005.

Then a rewritten and retitled version called “Random Acts of Cosmic Whimsy” appeared in FLURB #6 in September 2008. The translated version of that version has just appeared in Galaxies (according to the Table of Contents it’s French title is “Exemples aléatoires de fantaisie cosmique”, which is something like “Random Examples of Cosmic Imagination”, if Babelfish is on the money). And my name’s on the cover, so I’m quite chuffed.

And there’s another appearance in the works – at least, I hope that’s still the case – on which more if and when it appears.

Finally, “Transcendence Express” is heading for its fourth appearance (first as lead story in HUB #2, the last print version of the magazine: there’s a dangerous pattern appearing here; then as an electronic incarantion in HUB #44 [no direct link yet as content is moved over from the old HUB website]; and Escape Pod podcast EP #122) in The Apex Book of World SF, edited by Lavie Tidhar, and planned for a September 1 2009, but already available as a pre-order.

Also in this case there was a fifth appearance planned, but since it’s been very quiet about that one, I suspect it fell through. Anyway, so far I can’t complain.

(Note: edited to correct that Berrien Henderson is a he, not a she)

Prologues in SF

2009-04-23T21:38:00.010+01:00

This is actually an answer to the "A Bit Previous" post by Neil Williamson, which was triggered by a Twitter discussion after Gareth Lyn Powell made the seemingly innocuous remark "I can haz prologue".

The general sentiment, it seems, is against the (use of the) prologue. Here's my defense of it:

As I already mentioned on Twitter, prologues are like highly dominant spices in a dish: they can work if used with mastery and restraint, and if they add someting essential to the whole.

Three types (from the top of my head):

1) Essential pre-info dumping.

In this, a previous event that — like the famed ‘wings of the butterfly’ — sets off a much larger event. The much larger event is the novel, the much smaller event that initiated the storm is the prologue.

Example: Schild’s Ladder by Greg Egan. Part one of that book is nothing but a prologue; that is: the experiment that triggered a Universe-wide change of reality. The experiment in the prologue is about probing reality at its deepest core — like Fermilab and Cern are doing, but then on a much grander scale. This experiment focusses immense energies at a very small scale, and triggers a change of the ‘normal’ vacuum state, something the researcher in the prologue didn’t expect.

However, once a quantum of the vacuum turns into ‘novo-vacuum’, this releases enough energy to transform nearby vacua as well, and a chain reaction ensues: reality changing from state 1 to state 2 at about half the speed of light.

The researcher and her team don’t survive the experiment (are simply transformed/absorbed by the novo-vacuum), so can’t be used as a flashback/infodump latter on in the story.

The rest of the novel is about how the novo-vaccuum expands from the initial site of the experiment — a sphere expanding at half lightspeed — and how some people eventually find that — while it transforms ‘normal’ space, ‘eating up’ planets settled by humans — this might not be a bad thing after all, as they discover that the novo-vacuum might be *richer* than normal space. However, for deeper emotional richness and involvement it is essential that the reader knows that the onruishing novo-vacuum is not a freak event, but something initiated by scientific curiosity, giving the novel a richer moral ambiguity.

Schild’s Ladder is probably the most extreme hard SF novel ever written, and possibly the one’s that least understood. I consider it Egan’s absolute masterpiece, the most extreme extrapolation of hard SF to date.

And it wouldn’t have worked without the prologue (even if it’s called ‘part 1′: it stands completely apart from the rest of the novel, so is the perfect definition of a prologue).

2) Superb scene-setting without giving anything essential away (that almost the antidote of example 1).

This is even harder to do: the only example that comes to mind right now (and I’m almost certain that next week or next month, when this discussion is forgotten, several better ones will come up) is Ian McDonald’s Brasyl.

I know, Our Lady of Production Values is presented as a first chapter rather than a prologue, but its first three ’slices of Brazil’ — present, future and past — work phenomenally well as three separate prologues into the complex multiverse that is ‘Brasyl’.

(Warning: music analogy coming): It’s akin to the way that ‘Prelude to Madness’ — which is a very heavy version of the Grieg original — is used as an prelude (musical prologue) of Savatage’s “Hall of the Mountain King” (which is the original title — albeit in Norwegian — of Grieg’s composition. It sets the stage for the main song, the whole atmosphere while also, in a way, is quite different from it. It paves the way without giving too much away, and both the prelude and the main song are more than the sum of the separate parts.

3) Both an essential pre-info dump that does give something essential away *and* a superb scene-setting that doesn’t give everything away.

This one is the hardest to do.

For this, check out The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón. This is probably one of the most perfect prologues ever written: the protagonist tells how — when he was still very young — he was taken into the ‘Cemetery of Forgotten Books’ by his father, and had to make a life-changing choice by selecting one book (which was, obviously, The Shadow of the Wind by Julián Carax). This foreshadows everything while giving almost nothing away. It makes you want to read this, no matter what. And the novel delivers in spades.

Maybe it’s more like an overture (warning: musical analogy coming up) than a prelude: it contains the seeds of everything to come while not telling the whole story. Like the ‘Overture’ of 2112 by Rush.

I know that anybody can give countless examples of prologues that are total failures, and I gladly concede that the utmost majority are.

However, that is the same as saying that 'stream-of-consciousness’ writing can never work. Indeed, it almost never does. However, you have novels like ‘Ulysses’ and ‘Finnegan’s Wake’ (the obvious English-language examples: there are Russian & French predecessors and many international and English-language successors to this style of writing).

In science, the single successful experiment leads to a new, breakthrough theory that eventually gets general acknowledgement (and acknowledges the necessity of the failed experiments, as well, as these showed how it shouldn’t be done). In SF writing though, it seems that more often than not people prefer to discard the rare but spectacularly successful experiments on the basis of all the failed ones.

That, I am arguing, is fatally wrong and will help make SF irrelevant.

EasterCon: LX 2009

2009-04-08T11:52:00.003+01:00

I will be attending EasterCon in Bradford. I hope to see many of you there: both the ones I already know, and new people (happy to meet you!).

I will be on the following programme items:

Friday April 10:

SF music in popular culture : War of the Worlds to Rocky Horror
Fri 19:00 Hawthorn
Persephone Hazard (moderator)
Mike Cobley
Jetse de Vries
Neil Williamson

Sunday April 12:

"Near-future, optimistic SF": "Two impossibilities, or something we can pull off?"
Sun 19:00 Hawthorn
Jetse de Vries (moderator)
Chris Beckett
Jaine Fenn
Charlie Stross
Tony Ballantyne

"Writers, artists and fans discuss their musical inspiration"
Sun 20:00 Sycamore
Persephone Hazard (moderator)
Mike Cobley
Paul McAuley
Jetse de Vries
Alastair Reynolds

E-Books - are they the future? Ebook readers are being sold in high street stores. Has the timefinally come for them to achieve mainstream popularity?
Sun 22:00 Hawthorn
Alex Ingram (moderator)
Mike Scott
Lee Harris
Jetse de Vries

Monday April 13:

Hugo nominations panel: "The nominations for the 2009 Hugo awards have been released - what do we think? What are the surprises, and what are the notable omissions?"
Mon 11:00 Boardroom
Pauline Morgan (moderator)
Mike Scott
Penny Hill
Shana Worthen
Jetse de Vries

So my Sunday evening schedule is quite full, but luckily I will have time enough on Saturday to check out a few book launches (especially the Future Bristol anthology), the BSFA Awards, the Symphony Orchestra, the dealer's room, and other programme items.

There's even a beer tasting Saturday at 21.00!

Hope to see many of you this coming weekend!

Ada Lovelace Day: Ingrid Daubechies

2009-03-24T13:17:00.006Z

In honour of Ada Lovelace Day, I thought that I'd try to highlight a woman in science from my home country, The Netherlands. To be honest, I couldn't think of one, and also couldn't find a high profile one. This may very well be because I don't know enough, or because I didn't search enough, and do please feel free to correct me, as I sincerely would like to know.

So I moved my focus to our southern neighbours, and found a great example of a high profile female scientist: Ingrid Daubechies.

Her accomplishments are staggering: while she's mainly known in the field for her Daubechies wavelets and CDF wavelet (Cohen-Daubechies-Feauveau wavelets, of which one family is famously used in the JPEG 2000 compression), she has a Ph. D. in theoretical physics, was the first female full professor of Mathematics at Princeton -- where, I suppose, she still works today -- and has won a veritable slew of awards:

Louis Empain Prize for Physics (1984)

Steele Prize for Mathematical Exposition (1994)

Ruth Lyttle Satter Prize in Mathematics (1997)

IEEE Information Theory Society Golden Jubilee Award for Technological Innovation (1998)

Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) (1998)

NAS Award in Mathematics (2000)

Noether Lecturer (2006)

As wikipedia notes:

In 2000 Daubechies became the first woman to receive the National Academy of
Sciences (NAS) Award in Mathematics, presented every 4 years for excellence in
published mathematical research. The award honored her "for fundamental
discoveries on wavelets and wavelet expansions and for her role in making
wavelets methods a practical basic tool of applied mathematics."

I must apologise for not researching this further: typically, I made the pledge and on the day itself I find myself extremely busy. I may extend this post tomorrow.

UPDATE: there's a saying in Holland that goes: 'It's as if the Devil's playing with it'. Anyway, in a clash of synchronicity -- see me mentioning above that I couldn't come up with clear examples of Dutch women strong in science or technology -- Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant has an article about Suzan de Haan, who is the only female operations manager in charge of a drilling platform in the Dutch part of the North Sea offshore industry.

Article here (in Dutch). I'll translate some parts tomorrow as I'm running out of time today. But hey: I'm proud of Suzan de Haan, as this is a part of technology in which my day job is also closely related (we provide propulsion installations for such platforms), so I know how difficult her job is. Hat's off!

Carousel Gig in the Willem 2

2009-03-24T10:13:00.011Z

Sunday March 15 the so-called Blisstrain tour had their final gig in de Willem 2 in Den Bosch.

Line up: The Antikaroshi, Ostinato, Bulbul, Beehover and We Insist!. The whole show consisted of the bands playing in a kind of 'carousel': one band would start to play, members of other bands would join in at some points, and near the end of their playing time members of the next band would join in until they took over, and the next band was on. And so on throughout the gig.

Thus, the band I was most interested in seeing -- The Antikaroshi -- started the 'Blisstrain'. Actually, the guitar player/singer of Beehover was joining in as an extra vocalist, sitting on his knees, shouting through a megaphone. May sound strange, but it worked.

After that first song, it was mostly 'pure' Antikaroshi (the violin player of Bulbul joined them during one song, and a guitar player from another band during another: I'm not sure which one): a very good band, and they played most of Crushed Neocons, with verve. Since I wasn't very familiar with them (I bought Crushed Neocons at the gig, and had only listened to some of their songs on their MySpace page), I had some cognitive dissonance. For example, at the gig I heared the one singe line of "Fes" as:

"There are so many drugs around. I need them bad, bad, bad."

While on closer listening at home it's obviously:

"There are so many dogs around. I hear them bark, bark, bark."

I leave further conclusions to the Freudians amongst you. When the drummer of two-piece band Beehover joined in, the end of the Antikaroshi's set was near. I really like them: Fugazi is an obvious influence, although for my money the Antikaroshi are more freestyle, while at the same time more tight. Great musicians.

Beehover was a nice surprise: they're a two piece (and read why on their biography) band, very tight and with a highly distinct sound. The guitar player -- as far as I could see -- uses a five string bass, of which he has stringed only the bottom four strings. The result is a sound that hangs somewhere between bass and guitar: sometimes you hear Lemmy, sometimes Kyuss, sometimes dirty rock'n'roll, sometimes stoner rock.

My friend Vincent and I loved them, and I bought their latest album Heavy Zoo after the gig. Then, instead of the next band, there was an unexpected break -- it must have been unexpected, because the DJ Bidi, who was talking backstage, had to run to get the music started.

Check out pictures of the show, made by the venue's volunteers, here.

After the break Bulbul and Ostinato played, but neither made much of an impression on me. This is mostly a matter of taste: both bands are fine, they're just not for me.

The evening ended with the highly alternative French rockers of We Insist! A weird band whose music was all over the place. The drummer looked like a cross between Phil Lynott and John Holmes, and especially his leopard skin shirt was beyond kitsch.

Maybe by that time I had too much, or my mood had shifted, but I found them a bit too freaky. YMMV, as always.

Apart from the usual merchandise (T-shirts, CDs, etc), Blisstrain provided a USB-stick with footage from the show, recorded that very day. I bought it, and love the idea!

This is the way small venues like Willem 2 and small labels like Exile on Mainstream Records make a difference: memory sticks with footage of the show you just visited, pictures both by volunteers and by visitors (if they supply them) of the same gig after that show: see above): a use of new media to good effect. Much fresher than the old go to the gig, no photos allowed and buy the overpriced merchandise tours of much bigger bands.

That Sunday I spent half the money (than I would have on a show of a 'bigger' band) and got more than twice the fun.

Why Postal Companies Are Going Down the Drain

2009-01-10T11:48:00.002Z

Warning: rant!

Today I sent off an MS of 60 pages to the USA. Since that weighed over 200 grams, I had to pay 10.45 euros for the privilege. The economy option for post outside the EU has been discarded: it's either the priority rate or nothing. This is insane: I will now endeavor to send MSs only through email (even more than I already did).

Then I wanted to send a small envelope of business mail to the UK. Not only has the economy option for that been dropped, as well, but you must buy a minimum of 5 stamps, as of January 1. I only need one stamp, not five. Also, years ago postage rates would remain the same for years on end. Now the rates are increased every year, so those other four stamps will be useless if I don't use them before the end of the year.

The lady at the post office had already put the 5-stamp package in front of me, expecting I would accept that kind of policy without question. This sort of monopolist shenanigans makes my blood boil, and in turn my stubbornness goes to 11 (on a scale of 10).

So fuck that: I've sent it off with two old stamps I still had who together were worth more than the priority rate. On top of that, I'll scan the signed contract at the day job next Monday, and email it. I will try my damnedest to do as much of my correspondence over email (if possible *all* correspondence).

Thus, large national postal companies (I understand that the Royal Mail and USPS are just as bad) will continue to lose small customers (yes: citizens like you and me) through their insiduous ways of charging outrageously, and will end up mostly servicing large customers that send of mail in bulk, and thus get good discounts.

However, there are already many private companies doing that, and since these offer cut-throat rates (for bulk shipments only: just try to send a single package through a private mail company, and watch the price) in combination with horrible service (and I've seen quite some rants aimed at UPS, DHL and FedEx in the blogosphere), that is the way the national mail companies will go.

And indeed, Dutch TNT Post (already partly privatised) has already announced job cuts for the upcoming five years, even if they continue to make a profit. You see, they have to *continue* to make a profit, as they're not a fully national comany anymore. So they increasingly focus on the commercial market, and keep increasing the prices for small customers.

SF magazines are one of those 'small' customers: sending out a few thousand (let alone a few hundred) is not enough to get a bulk discount. So the postal rates for them go up, considerably, as well. Therefore, SF fiction print magazines are doomed (or more doomed than they already were): mailing costs will go up, and sending the magazines through commercial companies is even more expensive. In the abscence of growing subscription numbers, the only thing left (apart from going fully online) is cutting costs. Therefore Asimov's and Analog have changed size, and F&SF has lowered its publishing frequency. However, if USPS keeps raising its prices -- and they will -- it's a losing battle (and it pains me to say so).

And the national postal companies will become indistinguishable from commercial shippers, with the only difference that they must deliver mail to even the smallest of customers. By boy, will they charge you for it!

Some Cheese, Wine & Beer Blogging

2008-12-20T17:12:00.017Z

For the few people still hanging on: apologies for the relative silence. Of late, most of my blogging energies went into the Shine anthology weblog. Expect some major announcements and fresh developments on that soon.

Also, it was very busy at the day job: I was having nothing but back-to-back training sessions from the Summer onwards, with barely a day or two to recover in between.

OK: let's start with some wine. From my employer I got two bottles of Grande Visière. I tried it last Thursday, and didn't like it. I tried it again on Friday, and it still didn't work. I tried it the last time today: I guess it's OK as table wines go, but it just doesn't have any character: a middle-of-the-road red that is just a little bit too sour and too plain unremarkable to make any kind of impression. A 3 on a scale of 10, or a 1.5/5 as Wineass has it.
Since I'm at it, a Wineass-like Twitter review: Grande Visière French table wine: sour, dull. Like transmission fluid without lubricating properties. Free, 1.5/5, use only in emergency.
I actually threw it down the drain after tasting the Lehman: with wine I just can't be bothered with second class products (nothing to do with price: some cheap wines can be very good).

Then in the local Gall & Gall liquor store (where a very good friend of mine works) I bought a Spanish wine called Celeste (a 2005 crianza from Ribera del Duero), which I haven't opened yet (so expect a report later on), and a Peter Lehman the futures shiraz from 2003, which I opened.

According to Sylvia (my good friend at the Gall & Gall store) 2003 was one of Australia's best wine years, and it shows: I think it's divine. This is shiraz as it is meant to be (at least, according to my preferences): a red so deep it's almost black, rich forest fruits and plummy overtones, heavenly herbs and superb spices, subtle, fine grained tannins and a lingering, deep & complex aftertaste, like angels bleeding on your tongue.
Twitter review: 2003 Lehman the futures shiraz: fair dinkum. Forest fruits, plums, heavenly herbs & Superb spices. Angels bleeding on your tongue: €15, 5/5.

The cheese: I did some cheese shopping at Fons van den Hout, a delicatessen shop specialised in cheese in Tilburg. It's the closest shop (it involves a 20 minute train ride) where I can get the single Dutch truffle cheese: more than worth the short trip. I bought two cheeses there, and two from my local AH (Albert Hein) supermarket.

Also, I have the habit to put those -- sometimes expensive -- cheeses on LU (this is the brand name) crackers of the 'salt & pepper' variety: I find they combine real well with certain cheeses. Obviously, YMMV.

A gorgonzola piccante from Ballarini (from my AH supermarket);
A blue stilton which is the Christmas special in Albert Hein: you're supposed to drink port with it, but I have tried port several times (I have colleagues in Portugal who bring port, and I've tried it both in Portugal and Andalucía, but it just doesn't work for me. A matter of taste);
A mountain cheese from the Elzas (from Fons van den Hout);
A Dutch truffle cheese (ditto);

The blue stilton is both extremely crumbly and very smelly, and so blue-veined that mushrooms almost start to form: it's an aggressive cheese that takes no prisoners. Still, there is a certain complexity behind the near-overwhelming fungal and almost sickeningly sour attack on your taste buds. Definitely one for advanced cheese aficionados, and not one for the faint of heart. Strangely, I find it combines surprisingly well with Leffe Brune (see below).

The Elzas mountain cheese, on the other hand, doesn't make much of an impression on a first look: a plain cheese, halfway between soft and crumbly, with no fungal veins or speckled additives. Only the brown crust marks it somewhat. I tasted a piece of it in the shop, and it didn't immediately make much of an impression: this might also be due to the fact that it was very busy in the shop (good for them: they deserve the clientele) and that I was still slightly hung over from the office party of the night before.
However, after returning home and a refreshing shower it slowly reveals its hidden subtleties: a salt'n'mustard tang that works great with the almost sandy texture, combining the suaveness of a younger cheese with the character of an older one. Definitely a keeper, and a perfect accompaniment to the Lehman futures shiraz.

The gorgonzola piccante is an old favourite: when I do a four-cheese plate, I try to make a 50/50 mix of new and known. I tried the mild gorgonzola, but found that it was a bit too cowardly for my tastes. The piccante combines a certain tang with a certain smoothness, a bit like a very charming kid doing something naughty but getting away with it.

The Dutch truffle cheese (picture above): this one is the most difficult to describe for me. It combines the taste and texture of a 'belegen' cheese (in Holland this is a classification system to determine the amount of time a cheese has ripened: 'jong' -- young -- is up to four weeks; 'jong belegen' is 8 to 10 weeks; 'belegen' is 16 to 18 weeks; 'extra belegen' is 6 to 8 months; 'oud' -- old -- is 10 to 12 months; and 'overjarig' -- overaged -- is 16 months and older) with the phenomenal taste of truffles. How does a truffle taste? Well, this is a minefield: not only are there several types of truffles (black and white, summer and winter, and many others), and I suspect that this Dutch cheese uses the black truffle (the least expensive variety). Also, truffles are very pungent, so can easily dominate the palette.
However, when used in just the right amount they give extra depth, complexity and a certain suave smoothness to a dish (this can be a meat dish, over a pasta or a salad, or indeed in specialty cheeses). Think of the king of all mushrooms with a very earthy undertone and tangy, twangy, maybe even funky overtone (OK: it is undescribable. Do try it, if you get the chance). Restraint is the true mastery in combining cheese with truffles: too much truffles and they totally dominate the palette (if you want that, you might as well eat them pure, even if that's an expensive experience), too little and their complex suavity doesn't shine through.

Also, the very helpful lady in the shop in Tilburg gave me something extra: a dip (or sauce) to use with the cheeses: this is an orange marmalade-like concoction that I find works nice with more plain cheeses, but kills the complexity of the more advanced cheeses. So I'm only using it when in dire need (read: if I can't afford the real good stuff).

Now, I'm one of these drink multitaskers who think it's no problem to drink both a great beer *and* a fine wine during dinner. In some connoiseur circles this amounts to blasphemy, but since it's perfectly fine to have a seven (or more) course meal with a great diversity of dishes I don't see why I can't have the same diversity with drinks (and yeah, I know there are endless varieties of wine: I just like to have both beer and wine).

In summertime, I prefer wheat beers like Hoegaarden, Brugs Wit, Dentergems or a good German Heffe-Weissen. In wintertime, though, I prefer more heavy beers (apart from the Hertog Jan lager I drink year-round) like Leffe Brune and Corsendonk.

Leffe Brune is the beer of choice tonight: a great complex darkly malted beer with caramel overtones: packs a good punch without knocking you out straightaway (in the manner a lot of triples do).

I also bought a Leffe beer glass: I think this is close to the perfect beer glass, an near-spherical bowl on a thick pedestal, think a wine glass for beer.

The Police in Belgium

2008-11-30T20:01:00.004Z

Don't mess with them...

I Have Been Interviewed...

2008-11-19T08:25:00.004Z

...about optimistic SF and the upcoming SHINE anthology by Jay Tomio of BookSpot Central for their BookSpot Beat feature.

Check it out!

The Diamond Ring Society

2008-11-16T15:39:00.023Z

On Saturday November 15 there was another meeting of the 'Diamond Ring Society'. It's a not-so-secret cabal of Dutch solar eclipse chasers, consisting of my friends Peter v/d Linde, Bram LaPort, Ellen Dautzenberg and Freek Slangen. We met up in a bar in Amsterdam, exchanged pictures (that is: most of them gave CD-roms with pictures to me, as I'm not a photographer), and we discussed future solar eclipses.

First, finally some pictures of the August 1, 2008 total solar eclipse near Novosibirsk:

The shadow of the moon racing towards us over the lake;

The sky at the beginning of totality;

Snapshots of the total solar eclipse sequence:

First Contact until Second Contact;

Second Contact to Third Contact (totality with one protuberance and the solar wind);

Third contact to Fourth Contact;

The sky at the end of totality;

The shadow of the moon racing away from us across the lake;

(All pictures are made by Freek Slangen, a member of our not-so-secret cabal.)

The next total solar eclipse is July 22, 2009, where the moon's shadow will cross over the north of India, over the Himalaya Mountains into China, then into the Pacific via Shanghai, passing just under Japan and off way into the Pacific (path here). My friends are looking at an organised travel arrangement via the University of Utrecht: for me this might be a bit too long (a three-week trip), as I intend to do WorldCon in Montreal (August 6 to 10), as well, and also World Fantasy in San José, and I only have so much days off.

So I might fly into Shanghai for a week, and join my friends in Wuhan (which looks to be one of the best spots: it'll be a tricky one, as July is the monsoon season in India, and the rainy season in China. This is compounded with the possibility of tyfoons, which generate an enormous amounts of clouds around their central twisters). Then get back home, stay home for over a week -- instead of a day like this year when I went from Novosibirsk, one day at home, then onwards to Denver -- and go to Montreal.

In 2010, there is a total solar eclipse on July 11, which is almost fully over the Pacific Ocean, and ends in Patagonia. It crosses over Easter Island, but all accomodation and trips for that are already fully booked now. So we're looking at French Polynesia or the Cook Islands.

Relevant SF

2008-11-15T00:32:00.005Z

(Cross-posted from the SHINE blog)

...or: The world is looking for solutions. Why isn't SF trying to help, or at least trying to think along?

In the past couple of weeks, I've been in airplanes quite a bit. My airplane reading is mostly newspapers and science magazines like New Scientist and Scientific American. So when I flew to Spain about a month ago I delved into the October, 11th New Scientist "A Brighter Future" special issue, and when I flew to Calgary two weeks later I bought Scientific American's "Earth 3.0" special issue. Then there's also Ode Magazine (I read the Dutch version, but there's also an English one) with a 'Generation Now' special report.

The similarities between the three: they're all worried about the (near) future. Indeed, just like SF, I hear you think. But unlike most SF today, these three magazines are not only analysing the problems, they're also actively looking for solutions. Why has most SF fixated on the former (often directly extrapolating today's problems in tomorrow's dystopias), while greatly ignoring the latter?

I strongly suspect that this is one of the main factors that keeps (written) SF from being relevant to a larger part of the population, especially young people. Not the sole one(*), mind you, but a very important one. I strongly think we need SF that starts thinking about near future solutions for our current problems.

Since our problems are complicated and interlinked, our solutions need to be multifacetted: most of today's biggest adversities do not exist in isolation, so multiple causes need to be addressed simultaneously. This requires multidisciplinary approach that is both broad and deep: one single specialist in one field (no matter how brilliant) will not do, but a group of 'intelligent optimists'. These teamworkers and teambuilders realise that there is no 'one-size-fits-all' solution, but that quintessentially different aspects require tailor-made solutions. They cherry-pick the best solutions from a great variety of sources, attack the problems from a lot of different angles, and are interdisciplinary, practical, forward-thinking go-getters.

Dog help me, I hear some of you think: this is immensely difficult. Indeed, it is. It's the point: SF can't afford to be too simple or straightforward anymore. Good near future SF not only reflects the complexity of the real world to a high degree, it also needs to see the intricate problems as tractable if we put our combined minds to it, with sharp intelligence, the will to co-operate, and hope.

So let's look at this in a broad perspective, and link the three 'special issues' I mentioned above:

Our energy and water problems are interlinked: both crises must be solved together (this is the Scientific American "Earth 3.0" cover blurb almost ad verbatim). In the article, they link water usage to huge power plants such as combined gas/steam cycle, coal, oil and nuclear plants. And if alternative vehicles like hydrogen fuel-cells and plug-in electric vehicles get their charge from these huge power plants than they are water hoggers, as well:
But the New Scientist "A Brighter Future" has this highly illuminating graph on pages 32 and 33 that depicts where alternative energies such as solar, wind, geothermal, biomass and tidal wave are most abundant across the world showing that the electricity potentially available from renewables (310,600 TWh) is much bigger than the total electricity being generated (19,014 TWh in 2006). Especially solar and wind energy use hardly any water: so if we power our electric or hydrogen fuel-cell or biomass hybrids with them we kill two birds with one stone: the energy and the water dependency. Only 433 TWh is generated by renewables, so the potential is enormous:
Which bring us to Ode Magazine's "Generation Now": it sees higher oil prices as the trigger for decentralised generation of renewable power, both stimulated by governments (as has already happened in Germany and Spain) and by entrepreneurs, as Silicon Valley investors are now turning to investing heavily in green energy, and where people will try to make their houses self-supporting energy-wise ('energy-free living');

Again, why do I find this kind of positive, forward-thinking in non-SF magazines?

Two quick, off-the-cuff musings:

We need an urgent paradigmatic shift in economic thinking: the planet cannot sustain continuous economic and population growth. So combine a zero-growth (or a shrink-and-expand-to-the-same-size) economy while the population stops growing, as well (UPDATE: the 'zero-growth' economy was actually the theme of the 18th October issue of New Scientist, as Anthony G. Williams's post 'The Folly of Growth' reminded me. Thanks!). The European Union might be the forerunner in this: less economic growth over the last decade than the US or the new Asian tigers China and India, with a population that is stagnating or even shrinking while its people are growing older.
Suppose a platform like Liftport starts building a space elevator somewehere west of the Galapagos Islands, it could have the hydrocarbons it needs for its complex nanotube tether supplied by a company that is cleaning the Pacific from the accumulated plastic pollution. It uses solar and skysails powered vessels to get supplies to and from the space elevator's Earth base, it's presence in the tropics stimulates the nearby Latin American economies in a sustainable way, and more.

This is to get you -- and especially the SF writers among you -- thinking. Doesn't SF pride itself for it's potential for 'sense of wonder' and its ability to shift paradigms? The point is, these sensawunda-powered conceptual breakthroughs almost always happened in space, virtual realities and runaway technological singularities (and yes: I'm guilty, too). Bring the gosh-wow, preconception-shattering power of SF to address, if even partly, the current problems plaguing our planet (or help imagine new solutions, new approaches) and SF will become relevant again.

Another maxim has it that SF writers like a challenge. So what are you waiting for?

(*) = I fully agree with Paolo Bacigalupi -- see his interview in The Fix and an exchange I had with him on his blog -- and Ian McDonald that SF needs to become relevant again (we disagree, and probaly not even that much, on how to recapture that relevance: Paolo's focus is on environmental issues, while Ian has a thing with the Multiverse, while I think we should troubleshoot the lot -- the environment, the economy, the human tendency to short-term thinking, the lack of education, and the elephant in the room called overpopulation): spewing humanity all over the galaxy while we haven't decently solved our current, highly complex problems is a flight forward. We need to face our challenges now, and instead of fictionally wallowing in them, we need to start thinking our way out of them.

(NOTE: I love a good discussion, and haven't closed the comments on this post, but I would appreciate it if people would comment on the SHINE blog.)

SHINE weblog update

2008-11-11T19:10:00.005Z

A weekly (or so, I hope) update of what's going on at the SHINE anthology weblog last week:

The kick-off: Optimistic SF open platform;
For those that need to write: guidelines;
A post about the US elections and its impact on the anthology;
Two posts about the publicity events involving SHINE, tagged 'The Grapevine';
A first foray into the heart of the matter: "Why Optimism?";
The first post of a series about music that makes you feel good;

Foreign Sale

2008-11-11T18:31:00.005Z

My story "Random Acts of Cosmic Whimsy" (originally published in Flurb #6) is now slated to appear in French magazine Galaxies (which has been relaunched at the last Utopiales, if I understand their announcement correctly) for the late February/early March issue, according to a reliable source.

Actually, there is another reprint (well, republish) of "Random Acts of Cosmic Whimsy" in the pipeline, but more of that if and when it happens...

A Mosque Among the Stars

2008-11-08T17:50:00.010Z

...is slated for a November 14 release. It contains my story "Cultural Clashes in Cádiz". It's one of the stories that portrays (at least one) Islam or Muslim character(s) in a friendly light.

Here's the page about it on the Islam and Science Fiction website.

Here's Ahmed A. Kahn's announcement of A Mosque Among the Stars (with a ToC).

Order it at ZC Books here.

And last -- but certainly not least -- there will be a launch event on November 22 at the Chapters bookstore in London, Ontario (from 2 to 5 pm). A Mosque Among the Stars will be jointly launched with Ahmed's collection Sparks. Call me biased, since I lifted Ahmed's story "Elevator Episodes in Seven Genres" from the IZ slushpile (it was published in Interzone #211), and he published me in A Mosque Among the Stars. But do check it out.

World Fantasy in Calgary...

2008-11-05T20:55:00.007Z

...was brilliant. It was only my second World Fantasy and it has become my favourite convention.

I haven't made any pictures myself, so I will just point to the good people who have done so:

Laura Anne Gilman's pictures;

John Picacio's pictures (and blog post);

Ellen Datlow's pictures;

Lou Anders's pictures (and blog post);

Kathryn Cramer's pictures;

John Klima's pictures;

Marjorie Liu's pictures (and blog post);

Some of the many, many highlights included:

Unfortunately missed the Hades party at Wednesday evening because my flight arrived late, but the buzz in the Hyatt hotel bar was fine;
A relaxed lunch with David Levine & Kate Yule;
The Queensland Writers party;
The Johncon/Nightshade party in Jeremy's room, and going to a liquor store with Alan Beatts to get more booze when it ran out (and then needing to be subtly reminded by Alan that when Jeremy strips he might be indicating that the party is over, around 5.30 in the morning);
Doing the "Fantasy 'Zines Around the World Panel" with a monumental hangover but liking it nevertheless;
Great lunch with Gordon Van Gelder, Sean McMullen and Jenny Blackford afterwards the panel;
the Borderlands Scotch single malt tasting party (absolutely awesome! Both the whiskies and the party);
Having dinner with Diana Rowland on Halloween: she was dressed up as Sarah Palin and it took me a while -- we don't celebrate Halloween in Holland -- to realise just why she did that;
The first few days I had problems getting my bar bills paid: that is, the moment I went away for a few minutes (to go to the toilet, to talk with yet another fabulous person) and came back to get my check I found that somebody else had already closed the tab for me. I sometimes protested to be told not to worry about it. Then the last few days I made certain that I picked up a number of tabs from people -- often against their protests -- because good karma needs to go around and around;
Dinner with Marc Gascoigne (now Angry-Robot publisher), Sean and Catherine McMullen and Mike Gallagher: probably the best conversation I had in Calgary;

It was fantastic to meet so many people I didn't know personally (but was, in many cases, well aware of) like Shawna McCarthy, Daniel Abraham (David! Next time I'll buy Mexican lunch or dinner), Jenny Blackford, Robert Hoge, Justin Ackroyd, Shaun Tan, Nora Jemison, Steven Mills, Lawrence Connolly, Laura Anne Gilman, Jemma EveryHope, Nikki Kimberling, Rob Shearman (who might have been a wee bit shy initially, but looked like a veteran as the con progressed), Colleen Anderson, and several people whose face (and function) I remember, but whose name I forgot: I ask forgiveness.

And the many very good to good friends (and I'm not even trying to pretend this list is complete): Lou Anders, John Picacio, Paul Cornell (thanks for introducing me to Rob), Karen Newton, Bill Willingham (you should be working...;-), Chris Roberson & Allison Baker, Mary Robinette Kowal, Aliette de Bodard, Alaya Dawn Johnson, Doselle Young, Gordon Van Gelder, JJA (this anthology is METAL!), Marjorie Liu (next dessert will be on me), Jeremy Lassen (even if the 'Shade faded for a little while on Saturday evening...;-), Jim Minz & Jay Caselberg (don't mention the 'better' name tags), Ellen Datlow, Eileen Gunn, Jonathan Strahan, Garth Nix, Alan Beatts & Jude Feldman, Amelia Beamer & Liza Groen Trombi, Todd Lockwood, Kay Kenyon, Diana Rowland (creepy Halloween costume alright, and I'm glad I didn't look like her running mate...;-), Marc Gascoigne, Sean McMullen & Catherine McMullen (what not to do in Venice), David Anthony Durham, Steven Erikson, Rani Graf (I am finally remembering your name: so alcohol does not destroy braincells...;-), Christian Dunn & Mark Newton (obviously...;-), Graham Joyce, Daryl Gregory, John Klima & Mark Teppo, Adrienne Loska (good luck with the documentary!), Tony Richards, Farah Mendlesohn, Mark Rich, Leslie Howle, Walter Jon Williams, David Levine & Kate Yule, Ken Scholes & Jay Lake, Heather Lindsley (say hi to Al Golden --ehrm -- Robertson).

My profound apologies beforehand for all the great people I've met but forget to mention here, and all the great moments that I'm either skipping or temporarily (I hope) not remembering.

World Fantasy is the best!

Imaging President Barack Obama

2008-11-05T20:38:00.005Z

First (and most important of all): many, many congratulations with President Barack Obama! To many of my American friends, and the many outside of it as well. Too many to mention, and you know who you are.

(I returned from World Fantasy on November 4, and was so jetlagged I couldn't sleep. Which was good, as I had planned to follow the US elections live anyway, but now I had no problems staying awake [I had those today]. At 05.30 am or so Dutch time McCain gave his concession speech. I feel so happy I nearly cried, and so many in the US must have felt -- probably still feel -- much, much happier than I do.)

Back in May 2005 I received a story from Ed Morris in the IZ slushpile called "Imagine" (Paul Di Filippo had urged him to try Interzone with it, and too good effect, and my belated thanks here). I forwarded the story to my (then) Interzone colleagues and Andy Cox published it in Interzone #200, on September 2005.

The last paragraph of the story is as follows:

"Well, we would have been denied our President Barack Obama, who just allowed me back into the States a week ago Tuesday. About him, at least, I have no room to bitch."

My question to the blogging masses is: does anybody know of fiction (not non-fiction) that imagined a President Barack Obama that was published before September 2005?

As a second query: what might be the first story (or novel) that imagined a black President of the USA?

SHINE Anthology

2008-10-28T21:43:00.008Z

ANNOUNCEMENT:

Here's the Solaris Books Press Release:

********************************************

SOLARIS

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

SOLARIS SIGN UP JETSE DE VRIES FOR NEW SF ANTHOLOGY

Solaris is delighted to announce a major new anthology from ex-Interzone co-editor Jetse De Vries.

Shine is a collection of near-future, optimistic SF stories where some of the genres brightest stars and some of its most exciting new talents portray the possible roads to a better tomorrow. Definitely not a plethora of Pollyannas (but neither a barrage of dystopias), Shine will show that positive change is far from being a foregone conclusion, but needs to be hardfought, innovative, robust and imaginative. Most importantly, it aims to demonstrate that while times are tough and outcomes are uncertain, we can still bend the future in benevolent ways if we embrace change and steer its momentum in the right direction.

Christian Dunn said of the deal: “Jetse has been quite vocal in his opinions about moving SF in a more positive direction, and it’s a journey Solaris are delighted to be accompanying him on.”

Jetse de Vries was co-editor of Interzone for four-and-a-half years, and his non-fiction has appeared in The New York Review of Science Fiction, the BSFA´s Focus and others. His fiction has appeared in a few dozen publications on both sides of the Atlantic, most recently in Postscripts, Clarkesworld Magazine, Hub, Escape Pod, and Flurb. Shine is his first post-Interzone project. Jetse lives in the city of Hieronymus Bosch, has a blog at eclipticplane.blogspot.com and can be contacted at Jetse.deVries@gmail.com.

About Solaris

BL Publishing, a division of Games Workshop Group PLC has been publishing SF and Fantasy under its Black Library imprint for over ten years. Solaris was founded in February 2007 with the aim of publishing original genre fiction for the US and UK mass markets. In its first year Solaris gained praise from many critics, especially for its back to basics approach. Solaris continues to attract high profile authors to its stable. For more information visit www.solarisbooks.com

For more information please contact Mark Newton on mark.newton@games-workshop.co.uk or on ++44 (0)115 - 916 8384

****************************************

I've made a SHINE anthology website, doubling up as an open platform for optimistic SF here: Shine Anthology Blog.

Guidelines here (will be slightly updated after I return from World Fantasy on November 4).

A Little Exposition...

2008-10-26T15:51:00.008Z

...In the Bateria Candelaria (an old fortress, now an art centre) in Cádiz.

I ran into it on my way to Parque Genoves, on my way for my daily piece of writing in the park. I quite liked it: it seemed to be themed around shoes or footwear. Does the name of the Spanish prime minister (Zapatero 0 shoemaker) have anything to do with it?

Anyway, a few pictures:

Flying shoes.

Shoes hanging down on loooooooong stockings.

A painting I really liked.

Walking on clouds.

A Few Thoughts

2008-10-26T15:25:00.006Z

Openness to change --> change to openness

Food for thought --> thoughts for food

Suspension of disbelief --> disbelief your suspenders

Do´s and Don´t´s in Cádiz

2008-10-21T10:56:00.005+01:00

I´m itching to post a few pictures of this beautiful town (actually I´m itching to post something else as well, but it´ll come), but can´t as my company laptop´s internet access is too slow, and my USB stick is rejected by the PCs in the internet cafés.

So:

Do take a laptop with wireless access next time;
Do learn better Spanish;

As it was, way back when I was attending college, there was a (free) Spanish course. I missed more than half of it becuase I´d rather go to the beach (it was during summer). I greatly regret that now, as Spanish is one of the world languages. And while I get along fine in Cádiz, speaking better Spanish would have made things even better.

Foodwise,

Do:

Eat local food in cafetarias, tapas bars and other eateries. Unlike most restaurants, these are open before 21.00 hrs, and provide great value for money;
Do order separate salads with your meal (this might be usual in the US, it isn´t in Europe), as the vegetables you get with the main course quite often are not fresh, but pickled;

Don´t:

Eat Mexican food: I did it a few nights ago, and it was bad. Then I remembered from previous visits (to other places in Spain) that the Spanish version of Mexican food (keep in mind that restaurants with non-native food have mostly adapted that non-native food to the taste of the natives -- a survival tactic -- and that they´re only rarely ´original cuisine´) is just not to my taste. Just not enough fresh
Eat Italian food: ditto. Way too greasy, and not enough attention to making each individual ingredient top notch (like the Italians do);
Go to Spain as a vegetarian: I remember reading that Spain was the most carnivorous country in Europe, well above Germany and Austria;

Make no mistake, the Spanish food is fine (if you´re not a vegetarian, obviously).

Also (added after this happening a second time):

Do:

Have a beer (or a coffee) at an almost deserted Spanish café at 18.00 hrs. I did it last a few days ago on the Plaza Fragela (the one around the Gran Teatro Falla) and today in a bar at the Via de la Palma: in both cases it seemed I was the only (or one of a two) customers around that time. That suited me fine: it was still warm and sunny, both places are picturesque, and in all--relative--quietness I could start up my laptop and work on my fiction. In both cases, though, it becoame quite crowded in about half an hour: at the grand theatre plaza I suspect it was a theatre group (all of a sudden, the owner was setting up *all* his terrace tables, food was being served in large quantities, so I suppose this was reserved in advance), at the street of palms it just became busy with, I suspect, the usual customers. Either that, or I am a crowd magnet...,-)

Quite enjoying myself.

Anyway, back home next week, with one day to post pictures before heading of to Calgary (World Fantasy). From sunny Spain to wintry Canada...

In Cádiz

2008-10-16T10:53:00.006+01:00

I've arrived in Cádiz last Monday evening. I took some nice pictures but no internet café here (I've tried three, so far) wants to recognise my memory stick. Which is a nuisance.

Trying to enjoy myself here, while also trying to get several things done. So as soon as I find a decent PC, there will be pictures. Or they will be inserted when I get back to Holland (whichever comes first).Now the first objects iI photographed were not historical buildings (of which there is an abundance here, Cádiz being one of Europe´s oldest cities), but trees. And a lot of déjà vu moments.

Here's an impressive tree near the Punta Candelaria (which is an old fortification).

Here's a nice one in a playground between Parque Genoves and Hotel Atlantico (I stayed in that hotel some ten years ago when servicing the controls of the propulsion equipment of two ferries that sail between Cádiz and the Canary Islands).

And another tree -- a double one, actually -- before the entry of one of the University of Cádiz many facilities.

And several moments of recognition: the port and the ferries are still very much the same. The Irish pub at Plaza San Francisco where i drank too much whisky (it was dirt cheap) is still there, although prices have gone up. Some restaurants and tapas places have closed down, but many new ones have opened up. Right now there is the festival IberoAmericano in Cádiz, meaning a lot of theatre shows and performances throughout town. And I promised my sister -- who has worked on a project about it, and I´ll add a link as soon as I find out which it was -- to visit a Flamenco club.

I´m working on several things here, and my company´s laptop refuses to let me access the internet (it´s firewalled to the brim), so I can only get online in internet cafés. Therefore, updates may be patchy as the beautiful weather and cold beer are big distractions.

So little time, and so much to see and do.

A Batch of Near-Future Stories

2008-10-09T08:59:00.008+01:00

In a previous post I declared this October to be the month of hope. Typically, I've seen a batch of near-future stories on the internet this early in October that made some interesting points:

"The Right People" by Adam Rakunas on Futurismic;
"A Short History of the Twenty-First Century" by Chuck Klosterman in Esquire;
"1337 in 2012" by Jason Stoddard on his own Strange and Happy blog;

A few general remarks first: while it is increasingly difficult to write about the near future (as both Charlie Stross and I agree), the point is that when you do it, your predictions and extrapolations should err on the audacious side rather than being too cautious. Things move faster than you think and being wildly wrong -- while telling a good story -- mostly works better than a compelling narrative that was close but didn't quite go far enough. Simply because the former is often more thought-provoking than the latter.

All three of the above-mentioned stories are a case in point: Rakunas mixes (America's) obsession with sex with slacker culture and high school politics to both humourous and mind-bending effect; Klosterman fires off futuristic nuggets that vary from old hat (old entertainers/artists/trends making a comeback, well-worn conspiracy theories) to irrelevant (hole in the ozone layer) to interesting (first AI used for virtual sex), witty (near-death experiences inciting more instances of the actual event) and imaginative (expectation entertainment and news blows); and Stoddard boldly predicts a phase-change in politics, where all the internet tools already available now (and expanding fast) are used as not only as the lure, the promise of a hyper-direct democracy (albeit for those online mostly), but are implenented as the ultimate election campaign: find out what each and every voter truly wants, and then promise it to them (or promise something that is very close to that). Change can be both exhilirating and scary.

("1337 in 2012" easily has the boldest prediction of the three: it not only follows current trends -- an important part of Obama's lead so far is his use of the internet: not only for funding, but in organising communities, advertising, and much more -- but tries to extrapolate them to their extreme endpoint. While this has the risk of taking things too far, it does make for a highly thought-provoking story, and this is one of the things SF should be very good at. Thinking about it before I fell asleep last night I wondered if it might not even have gone far enough: in the end it teases with the possibility that future elections might be won by the best hacker, but I am even thinking that it might even evolve not only in a tight competition between hackers and internet entrepreneurs/savants, but also in a competition between *systems*, where the 6 kazillion dollar question is whether the system that is best for *winning the election* comes out on top, or the sytem that is best for *running the country*. Gut feeling might say the former, but I'm not so sure.)

An interesting parallel between the Klosterman and the Stoddard story is that both have an internet 2.0 (or 3.0, or higher up) entrepreneur winning the US election at some point. Make no mistake that while Klosterman's piece appeared in the most prestigious market, Stoddard's made the bolder prediction: it takes until 2020 in "A Brief History of the 21st Century" before 'blogucrat' Digger True wins the election (participating in two previous ones), while Susan Acker in "1337 in 2012" already 'steals' the election in 2012.

There is a lesson there somewhere:

Esquire running an SF story is not only another indication that SF is part of the mainstream, but also that there is a huge potential audience for it out there;
Mainstream writers (or artists/directors/bloggopundits or whatever) turning their hands on SF is a good thing, even if they don't get it (completely) right;
Because both competition from outside the ghetto, and exposure of the SF meme to an audience as wide as possible is not only beneficial, but essential for the genre's long-time health;
This should force SF writers to be both more relevant and more daring in their (fictional) ventures.

Does this mean that the more escapist-oriented parts of SF should go? No, of course not, as there is room for almost everything under the SF umbrella. However, in order to be more interesting to a younger and more varied audience I think SF needs more fiction that is urgent, near-future, and relevant, and needs to rely less on its old tropes and its well-worn bag of tricks.

Would more optimism help? I think it will, but it's not the be-all and end-all. Again, SF encompasses a broad palette of expressions, and it is my opinion that the red paint of pessimism has been overused in respect to the blue paint of positive progress (a double entendre and a mixed metaphor for the price of one...;-).

There are several problems with writing urgent, relevant near-future SF: by making bold predictions one can be easily proved wrong (for example, Klosterman predicts that McCain wins the US election by a very slim margin. Either way you predict the current election, you have a 50/50 chance of being wrong. However, I suspect both Klosterman and most Esquire readers aren't really worried about the piece's futuristic accuracy, but read it more for entertainment, even if it's idea-rich entertainment. A new type of infotainment: futuristic infotainment?), and by writing very close to tomorrow one can become obsolete very fast (hence Jason's decision to publish his story now, while it's very actual, rather than wait for the next election, and be dead wrong).

As with almost all risky, but forward-looking businesses: it's immensely difficult, the potential for failure is huge, but so are the potential rewards.

Anybody into boldly going...?

Life on Mars Preview

2008-10-04T16:10:00.010+01:00

For those few SF aficionados not in the know, a primer:

For the fans, a preview:

The difference between the primer and the preview? Minimal, I'd say.

More emotionally effective is the "Sent to the 70s" preview, I think:

Will it be as good as the original, English version? io9 is cautiously optimistic.

Anyway, don't both the original and the ABC version own a lot to The Singing Detective?

The Optimistic SF Debate Goes On...

2008-09-26T20:24:00.018+01:00

...through Damien Walter's Guardian blog post, with Kathryn Cramer (comment 74) reacting on the Tor beta website.

If I understand Kathryn's argument correctly, her central argument is:

I don’t think SF can be held responsible for finding solutions to all the world’s problems, but I think it is SF’s task to help us understand them.

I have heared this argument before, and I think it's a bailout. It's the old chestnut that dystopias show us what's wrong with the world today, and what will happen if this goes on, so that we will not do it. That's one-sided: we tell people what they should not do, but not what they should do. Like saying what is bad without even trying to give a good alternative. While SF can't be held responsible for finding solutions to all the world's problems, it should at least try to look in the right direction. And pointing the other way saying that *that* is the wrong direction is not the way forward.

Now, I fully agree with Kathryn's impression -- namely that the majority of the stories she (and her husband David Hartwell) read for their Year's Best SF anthologies (and for their YBSF 13 particularly) are, indeed, very much 'reflect reality', and are thus downbeat.

While conventional wisdom dictates that readers tend to prefer more up-beat SF and that the Eeyores of the SF field just don’t sell, what I find as an anthologist picking stories during wartime and in the midst of the unfolding of various other dystopian scenarios is that a lot of the best SF and fantasy lately is really dark.

No argument there.

My problem is: must SF *only* reflect the current world? Or might it look beyond our current problems? Kathryn doesn't seem to think so:

I also don’t think that providing rays of sunshine through the storm clouds is really the solution particularly, nor necessarily the most workable aesthetic choice, unless you are in Hollywood.

Here is where I disagree with her. She even ends her post with:

So, to answer his question, Does SF have to be so gloomy? I guess my answer is that for now it does because it is in touch with the world we inhabit right now.

Make no mistake: I regard Kathryn, as an editor, very highly. I greatly disagree with her on this point: what happened to the SF that dared to make audacious predictions? The SF that, for better or worse, dared to go into the great unknown? That dared to lead, and make mistakes?

If I understand her post correctly, 'cultural forces much larger than the SF field' will more or less define SF's agenda. Say again? Since when did that stop Olaf Stapledon? Arthur C. Clarke? Ursula LeGuin? John Brunner? Greg Bear? Bruce Sterling? Greg Egan? Ian McDonald? And more writers I can remember right now who tried to transcend the zeitgeist (cue to Bruce Sterling's eponymous novel, OK, but contrast it with Islands in the Net, Holy Fire and Distraction) and write about what will change?

I disagree with the cliché that SF is the literature of ideas (they help, but they're not the core): to me, SF is the literature of change.

Roughly speaking, there are two kinds of change: things change for the worse, or things change for the better (I realise life is much more complex than that: some things improve, other things worsen, and some things don't change very much. I'm looking, admittedly roughly, at the net result here). In SF -- as both Kathryn Cramer and Damien Walter seem to agree, even if not for the rationale, or the necessity behind it -- the utmost majority of stories depict the change for the worse.

My opinion (especially at this point in time, but also in general) is that SF stories where something changes for the better -- and I'm not talking mindless Polyannas here, but stories where progress, even a small amount of it, is achieved against the odds, is hardfought -- are not only in the minority, but in the minority both because convincingly optimistic stories are much more difficult to write (people tend to believe a story where everything goes down the drain much easier than one where things change for the better), and because the majority of the SF community (writers, readers, and editors) seem to be too mired in the current downbeat zeitgeist to rise above it.

Now shoot me, but I like to think SF that's really audacious, gutsy and forward-looking dares to make predictions against the flavour of the month. Dares to make totally unexpected predictions, and -- in the process -- dares to be wrong: but nevertheless inspires others to carry the torch of progress.

Depicting a world like today that's going down the drain is easy: people love to complain, and blame the world's problems on someone else. Depicting -- convincingly -- a world that changes -- even if marginally -- for the better, is much more difficult, for an SF writer.

One cliché has it that writers (and specifically SF writers) like a challenge. I'm not so sure: I think most SF writers like a small challenge, like trying to write an elf story for an editor who doesn't like elves. As readers of this blog know (all five of you...;-), I'm looking for SF writers that like the big challenge: write something that rises above the current problems.

Because if everybody -- like Kathryn Cramer says, remains in touch with the world we inhabit right now -- is gloomy, then *nobody* will invent higher efficiency solar cells, better alternative energy solutions, improved agricultural practices, innovative sustainable living methods, and so on.

Indeed: while we expect companies, inventors and innovators in real life to come up with solutions to the problems we are facing today, why should SF bail out of that discussion? Because it's not popular?

The most popular thing I ever did was post pictures of fake Yu Gi Oh! cards from my son’s collection. Despite being a novelist and all that, the most popular thing John Scalzi ever put out there in the world was a picture of his cat with bacon taped to it.

Please correct me, but I understand that in his time, Galileo's worldview was far from popular (it nearly got him hanged). But it didn't mean he was wrong. OK: this might be overstating the case, but I do remain that most innovators have had to overcome a lot of resistance of their contemporaries, because these contemporaries refused to believe that these unpopular visions could be correct (a boat made of steel could not float; a vessel made of metal could not fly, and there are multitudes of similar examples).

Now I do understand that Kathryn Cramer works for Tor, and that Tor needs to sell books, and presumably books that concur with the currently held consensus sell better than those that go against it. So the Year's Best SF follows the zeitgeist and is filled with downbeat stories (also because daringly upbeat stories are thin on the ground).

Now you can shoot this naive idealist, who prefers to invest his surplus income in sustainable banking, and believes in innovation and progress: but if there are so many -- yes, there have been lots of failures, as well: that hasn't stopped others from trying -- innovators succeeding (for example, on the day job there was a shipping company that were to first to try the sky sail: these people were willing to try this innovation, but were mildly skeptical at the result. What happened: the system performed above expectations) in real life, why is SF lagging behind?

Yes, I will admit to being ashamed: I love SF, and like to think it's forward-looking. But if the things I see at my day job are quite often more innovative, forward-thinking and imaginative than SF, then I feel really, really ashamed. I train young people, from all over the world, at my day job, and let me tell you that they are, almost without exception, upcoming young professionals that believe that they can change their future for the better. They're (mostly) not interested in contemporary SF, because it doesn't speak to them.

I am extremely tired of SF that shows how the world goes to hell: it's the most defining characteristic of modern SF. The real world is developing more initiative than the literature of the future, the literature of change, and this is one of the main reasons why SF is becoming so irrelevant.

SF is reactive, not proactive. SF is following where it should lead. SF is empasizing the gutter, not looking at the stars. No wonder it's becoming obsolete.

Written SF is losing its contact with the (potential) young readers (or whatever was left of that, the cynical part of me adds). While publishers are finally changing the medium (from paper to electronic) in order to reach new audiences, I strongly believe that even with a new medium nobody will be interested if the message doesn't hit home.

So do we win a new, young audience by telling them -- however eloquently -- that their world will go to hell, or by telling them that they can at least change some things for the better? It's even worse: most of the young people -- the professionals of the very near future -- I see aren't waiting for SF: they're already doing it themselves.

In my day job (where I work for a propulsion company), I train both our own technicians and customers to work with our installations. In my experience, most of these people (yes, both our own technicians and customers) are not only focused on troubleshooting -- which is very important -- but also try to find ways to prevent problems. Sharp people that often ask me difficult questions, some of which I can't immediately answer (I need to get more info from engineering). Quite often, these people not only learn things from me, but I learn a lot from them, as well. And always -- without exception -- when we acknowledge a problem, we are then fully focused on a solution.

We may not get that solution, but it's certainly not for lack of trying. Therefore, while SF indeed can't be held responsible for finding the solution to all the world's problems, that doesn't mean it should not try to attack at least a few of them.

Pointing to the problems is not enough (no matter how eloquently done): thinking about the solution is required. If -- at the day job -- I would only point to the problem, and do nothing else, I would get fired. I'm supposed to think about a solution, be helpful towards that.

Therefore, if SF isn't, at least, trying to pave the way towards solutions (and not be afraid to be wrong), then it will become...

irrelevant...

obsolete...

dead...

(if it isn't already)

Realistically optimistic SF is not a luxury, nor an impossibility. It is essential if SF wants to be relevant. Otherwise SF will become/remain(*) a nostalgic enterprise for baby boomers.

(*) delete as appropriate.

Optimistic SF: An Idea Whose Time Has Come...

2008-09-25T19:03:00.017+01:00

...Again?

Damien G. Walter already thought this on September 4, and repeats this on his Guardian blog.

Futurismic notices.

Gareth Lyn Powell weighs in.

And your humble SF aficionado, who has voiced his opinions on this blog?

Well, for better or worse, and come armageddon or (unexpectedly) high CO2 levels, I'm declaring October the month of hope...

WATCH...

THIS...

SPACE...

Ethical Investments, Sustainable Banking and Optimism

2008-09-20T22:00:00.008+01:00

On Saturday September 20th, instead of going to the British FantasyCon (which I did want to attend, but after the credit card bills of my Summer trips came in, and the airfare from Amsterdam to East Midlands went above 350 euros and didn't come down, I had to skip it), I went to the customer's day of the Triodos Bank.

Triodos are one of the pioneers in ethical investments, and it's the place where I'm investing my surplus money (with current trends in pension funding in The Netherlands, I'll probably be expected to keep working until my 67th, or -- who knows -- my 70th birthday. I'm putting away money to at least make it possible for me to afford to do 3-day work weeks after my 60th birthday, and I certainly don't like the fact that most big Dutch pension funds invest heavily in hedge funds). Now, while their return on investment may not the best in the business, they performed very well last year. Also, the current credit crisis doesn't affect them at all. As CEO Peter Blom says:

“By sticking firmly to our own approach, the crisis currently impacting on the banking industry is bypassing Triodos Bank. This crisis is the caused by losing touch with the real economy. Triodos Bank makes the conscious choice to remain close to the real economy. We do not get involved in speculative derivatives. Instead the bank invests its savings in concrete sustainable businesses and has direct contact with the entrepreneur. That too is a form of sustainability.”

On the day, there was a speech by their CEO, and -- strongly condensed and highly generalised -- it came down to this:

"The root cause of the current credit crisis is greed. Bank managers have been put under enormous pressure -- through CEOs and shareholders -- to make high profits: 'meet this (unrealistic) mortgage goal every month, and then get your bonus, or otherwise get fired. And that goal was raised every month. Under such tremendous pressure, people will only look at the short term, not at the long term consequences. The mortgage dealers made their goals, not quite checking if the people they sold the mortgages were actually solvent (and indeed people taking on unrealistic mortgages are to blame, as well: must we assume all people are not much more than morons, or assume they have some basic intelligence?). The debts were sold, through increasingly complex and untransparent constructions to other financial institutions: a pyramid scheme of truly unprecedented proportions. Basically, money is the lubrication of the economy: that is the means (by which the economy works). Things went wrong when it became the end in itself. The reason why Triodos Bank is not -- or very minimally -- suffering from the current credit crisis is because it invests in actual, sustainable projects with full transparancy for its customers".

(Note: not the actual words being said, but my recollection and summarisation of them.)

Greed, indeed, and -- check out Glen Greenwald at Salon -- the knowledge that the state would bail them out (another post with some superb observations, like why are Americans so afraid to socialise healthcare, but -- apart from a few shouters in the desert -- seem to think that nationalising failing mortgage and financial institutions is OK?)

Sorry, but I can't help to reproduce this price quote:

Can anyone point to any discussion of what the implications are for having the Federal Government seize control of the largest and most powerful insurance company in the country, as well as virtually the entire mortgage industry and other key swaths of financial services? Haven't we heard all these years that national health care was an extremely risky and dangerous undertaking because of what happens when the Federal Government gets too involved in an industry? What happened in the last month dwarfs all of that by many magnitudes.

It's appalling (and that's a huge understatement) that taxpayers -- the population at large -- must cough up for corporate greed. Yes, I know it's a complicated problem, and that part of the blame goes to hugely overspending citizens, as well. But this way also the actually fiscal conservative Americans (and I don't mean Republicans, or Democrats, or people from whatever party, but people who really took care not to spend more than they earned) get to pay the bill for this recklessness. Not to mention those *outside* the USA: for example, the pension premiums I pay through my day job go into a huge pension fund. The managers of that pension fund (unlike Americans -- and do correct me if I'm wrong here! -- who can decide where their 401 funds go, I as a Dutchman have no influence in to where my pension premiums are invested) have invested heavily in hedge funds, the same ones that are now also suffering heavily under the current credit crisis. As they bloody well should, being the sharks they are, but it just pains me that some of *my* money -- without my consent, through my pension funds -- has gone their way.

It's the reason why I have a savings account outside of the centrally regulated way -- actually the bog Dutch pension funds have had some harsh critiques for investing heavily in weapons industries, indeed investing in land mine manufacturing companies, out of which they retracted only after massive public outcries (they were *lucrative* investments, thanks in no small part to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars).

To put this in my personal perspective: what little hope I had that governments would try to set right all the wrongs in this world has just completely evaporated. I increasingly believe it comes down to actions that bypass governments, where small, forward-thinking (and thus almost by definition -- yeah, kill me now -- ethical and sustainable) initiatives and companies drive progress. Like Triodos bank.

Anyway, it turned out to be a very illuminating day: I ran into quite a few interesting projects I wasn't fully aware about, and which I do gladly support. To wit:

For example, one of the presentations I attended was about microcredit financing. It began by reminding me how well-off we are in the western world:

80% of the world's wealth belongs to 20% of its people;
Two billion people make less than 1 euro per day;
One billion people live in slums.

To them 'credit crisis' is business as usual.

So what can microcredit financing help this situation?

The way it was explained was like this: the money from my -- and other Triodos Bank customers -- savings account is (partly: obviously they have lots of other projects going on, some of which I will mention) going via Hivos to MFIs (local 'Microfinance Institutions', the Dutch abbreviation is MFI) who then give loans to local entrepreneurs.

As a very important aside: where do the most of these microcredit loans go to (this was actually asked, and answered correctly by almost all attendees), men or women? The utmost majority goes to women (Grameen Bank of Bangladesh reports 97%, Mibanco of Peru reports 86%), because they are much more responsible, reliable and motivated to not only make the project work, and pay that loan back with the -- admittedly very high -- interest. It almost makes me feel ashamed to be a man (because they -- generally, not the good exceptions! -- tend to use the money to buy something relatively useless like a TV, or just get drunk on it).

The point is, though, that these MFIs tend to keep a very close look on the people they invest in. Of course, they have their failures, but the successes more than make up for those. And, on average, they do bring a return on investment, even if this is only some 3 to 4%. More importantly, they raise the local wealth in a sustainable way: people *borrow* money, and know that they must pay it back. Then, when they realise they can do this successfully, they expand their business -- even if it's a microbusiness by western standards -- bringing increased wealth (OK: less poverty is probably the better term) to their immediate surrounds (family and local people).

(As another aside, the interest rates the third world entrepeneurs are paying are something like 30 to 40%. This initially shocked several people -- me included -- until it was told that commercial banks in the third world ask for much higher interest rates, typically well over 100%. I don't know enough about this to give any meaningful comment on these rates, but I do appreciate the openness, the transparancy of both Hivos and Triodos Bank on this: they practice what they preach.)

To keep things in perspective, Hivos handles about a 150 million euros to MFIs in the Third World, and the Triodos Bank Noord-Zuid ('North-South') saving accounts have about the same amount of money. Luckily they're not the only players in this game, and I was given to understand that the largest player in the MFI game -- Grameen Bank -- has about 8 million customers in Bangladesh and India, and had expanded to Tanzania, where they acquired 64,000 customers in the first year. Also, the Mibanco MFI in Peru has acquired enough funds to have become a savings banks (with savings mainly from Peru, not from the western world) in its own right, and become a true player on Peru's financial market, having 94 branches throughout Peru.

These may be (relatively) small progresses, but they are *sustainable*, and -- I suspect -- might be more important in the long run than whatever 'get-rich-quick' or other pyramid scheme western capitalism gone haywire can dazzle investors with.

Other informations stands (among others):

Ode Magazine: a magazine for intelligent optimists. Well, the moment I fail to feel attracted by the label 'intelligent optimist' is the moment when I will stop drinking beer. I thought it was the Dutch version of an American magazine, only to find out that it's the other way around: the magazine originates from The Netherlands, but has expanded into the US (an office in San Francisco);
Biologica: a Dutch organisation for organic food;
Windunie: A Dutch organisation for wind energy production;
Humanitas: the biggest Dutch community work organisation;
Tuyu (can't get the English part of it to work just yet): a fair trade company specialising in business gifts;
Ko-Kalf: an organic, animal-friendly (until they go to the slaughterhouse, as one of my friends has said) meat provider, who sold 'bitterballen' (untranslatable Dutch snacks);
Wijngoed Reestlandhoeve: an organic Dutch winery, with wine tastings (I bought a bottle of the 'Reestlander Rood': a red wine with the sublabel barrique, which is the wooden barrel, originally from Bordeaux, in which the wine is aged);

More on some of those (also with a certain future project of mine in mind: yes, I am tickling your interest) later.

As a final aside, Triodos Bank also -- among a lot of other things, all either sustainable, ethical, humanitarian, or all of the above --invests in art & culture. Reasoning: innovative thinking generates new, profit-making projects; innovative thinking needs inspiration; art & culture can provide inspiration; thus some of the money from the innovative projects Triodos Bank finances -- and makes money from -- is invested in art & culture.

Another reason why I invest in this bank.

So this is one of the things I do to try to make a difference.

Pushing Daisies and Pushing Numbers

2008-09-19T10:04:00.010+01:00

In which your innocent SF fan is approached by somebody from a marketing agency to take a look at two Pushing Daisies sneak peaks, and blog about it.

Thing is, I don't watch TV (only when I'm in other people's homes, or in airports, or in bars -- normally only in the US, but this big-flatscreens-in-pubs trend is, unfortunately, spreading across the Atlantic, as well), so I'm not really the person to comment on this.

Nevertheless, for those that are interested (like Adam Rakunas, who obviously liked the first season, halfway broken off because of the screenwriters' strike, quite a bit), I'll post these sneak peaks below:

1): Bzzzz!

2): Scream!

Another reason for posting this is that modern marketing techniques greatly interest me. As Centric's overview (warning: 1.21 MB PDF file) notices on it's fifth page:

Today social media drives as much traffic to websites as search engines

And now I feel like a little link in this brave, new, all-electronic promotion network. Jason Stoddard has blogged about (internet) promotion for writers, small and big (SF) publishers with much more knowledge, and I follow that with great interest (and with future projects in mind).

Hopefully more soon...

Random Acts of Cosmic Whimsy

2008-09-16T22:00:00.006+01:00

Is now live at Rudy Rucker's webzine FLURB, here.

In order to maintain FLURB's house style, I have to add an image between every paragraph.

At first sight they seem unrelated to the text, but on second look the observant reader begins to distinguish some method to the madness.

Or, possibly, in my story's case, a madness in the method. The very first picture may have something to do with a random whimsy generator, the second one with a cosmic act.And maybe the third relates to random cosmic, and the fourth to cosmic whimsy. And the fifth... Well, let's not go there.

Anyway, it's a Watt & Krikksen story, two characters that also feature in "Cultural Clashes in Cádiz", which is featured in the A Mosque Among the Stars anthology (edited by Ahmed A. Kahn and Muhammad Aurangzeb Ahmad), available very soon from ZCBooks. See also the Islam and Science Fiction website.

The Difficulty of Writing Near-Future SF...

2008-09-08T19:39:00.008+01:00

...Has to do with the complexity of the world and the way that things develop in a very unpredictable way: not totally chaotic, but not quite in a straight extrapolative manner, either.

Take for example the way government and politics have developed over the past 25 years or so in Great Britain. Imagine travelling back in time and telling UK citizens of the early Maggie Thatcher years that in 2008 their country would be well underway to having an Orwellian, '1984'-type government: CCTV cameras everywhere, civil liberties greatly reduced, the UK spending more money per capita on safety, security and surveillance than any other western country: they would probably nod in agreement. Then tell them that this was mainly implemented by a long-time Labour government.

It would be interesting to see their reactions. Then tell them that the tories, desperate to come back in power after a long stint in the opposition benches are -- among other things -- selling themselves as a green party ("making Britain safer and greener"). Do I see the sardonic smile of history stretching from the early eighties to the late noughts? Would these early Thatcher-era Britons believe you?

It what makes writing near-future SF such a daunting task, and a kind of catch-22 exercise: if it looks too believable it (most probably) won't happen; if it looks too implausible it might very well happen.

So if you dive into the world of tomorrow, you need to find a balance between not being too conservative in your predicitions, but also not too 'off-the-wall', either. For example, back in 1997 the movie "Wag the Dog" satirised the Clinton/Lewinsky affair by fabricating a war to cover up a presidential sex scandal. Nowadays, one would not only wish it was only a sex scandal they were covering up, but -- much more importantly -- that the war was 'fabricated' instead of real.

Instead, in the extremely important and hotly contested US election of this year the personalities of the candidates and the subsequent smear campaigns are -- or at least seem to be, like in 2000 and 2004 -- more important than the actual *issues*.

A quick reality check: the US government bails out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- which control or own about 50% of *all* American mortgages -- because their losses are so big they both threaten to topple over. It's yet another signpost of how bad the current credit crisis really is, but does it dominate the main American news outlets? One would wish, but it appears that the nomination of a previously quite unknown, but sexy and mediagenic VP candidate completely eclipses this. It's almost as if "Wag the Dog" had it the wrong way around: attractive personality and sex appeal are used to distract from the actual issue: the completely failed economic policies of the past eight years (thanks, Jeremy Lassen). And the fact that it bails out the rich through the US taxpayer's pockets goes unnoticed as the big media focus on polls, more polls (one that seems to support Dutch research that showed that men will indeed become less critical of a purchase when the salesperson is an atractive woman), or fear stories that question science without knowing much about it, and -- against my line of argument, just to show that tracking the present has the same pitfalls -- Fox reporting a near-record deficit.

(Update: as another big US bank reports a record loss, the distraction tactics intensify. "Wag the Pig", anyone?)

Anyway, the main thrust of this post is to show just how difficult it is to extrapolate the near future (and I mean near: even tomorrow is highly unpredictable, especially in socio/political terms).

So what's a poor SF writer to do? Well, dare to make mistakes, try to ride the fine line between extrapolating too straightforwardly or too crazily, and face complexity. More reminisces on that in a following post.

(Yeah: I certainly don't have all the answers. Otherwise I'd be solving all this planet's problems, if I could. But while I'm struggling like a lot of you to make sense of life on this insane, yet also beautiful planet, often putting my thoughts on [electronic] paper helps me move forward.)

Typically...

2008-09-05T10:55:00.003+01:00

My internet provider decided to have a central breakdown in the last couple of days, so while I posted my resignation from Interzone on Tuesday night, I couldn't react to the comments and all the emails I've been getting about it on the two subsequent days (and I'm way too busy on the day job to do it over there: I'm just typing this quickly during my lunch break).

I did see that I had internet connectivity back this morning, promptly filling my mailbox with 250 emails, which I was unable to answer before breakfast. I will do my damnedest to get back to everybody tonight.

UPDATE: It's past o1.00 AM on the Friday night (or Saturday morning) here, and I hope I managed to answer all emails regarding my departure from IZ. Many thanks for all the kind words that I received: they're highly appreciated.

Now I'm just dead tired, and will get back to the comments to the post below, and those on the TTAboards tomorrow.

Resigning from Interzone

2008-09-02T16:44:00.008+01:00

After four-and-a-half years, I am resigning as an Interzone co-editor.

I do not take this decision lightly, but it is what I feel I must do.

The reason is simple: like a rock band where one musician quits because she/he doesn't like the musical direction the band is taking (the well-known 'musical differences'), I am unhappy with the direction and tone the fiction in Interzone will be taking.

Make no mistake, I think that, fiction-wise, Interzone has had a very good year so far. And there are still some very good stories forthcoming (Jason Stoddard's "Monetized", Alaya Dawn Johnson's "Far and Deep", Hannu Rajaniemi's "His Master's Voice", Gord Sellar's "The Country of the Young" and Paul Evanby's "I Love the Smell of the Lotus in the Morning" immediately come to mind).

However, most of the stories the magazine has accepted this year will appear next year. And -- as mentioned above -- the tone and direction of most of those are moving farther and farther away from what I would prefer to publish. So it's time for me to say my thanks and take my leave.

I'd like to thank Andy Cox for having me all this time. I'd like to thank all IZ editors past and present. I'd like to thank everyone who has volunteered for the magazine, or helped out in any way: they've been great years, and would not have been possible without you.

I wish Interzone, and all other TTAPress publications nothing but success and the best of luck in the future. This may sound a bit strange after my statement that I'm unhappy with the direction IZ is taking, but I really do mean it.

May Interzone live long and prosper. It'll just not be my Interzone anymore.

(I wanted to post this yesterday, but was too sick and tired. Now I feel somewhat better.)

At the Crossroads of Hardrock/Heavy Metal & Science Fiction, part 1: UFOs

2008-08-29T13:01:00.010+01:00

(And I don't mean the band UFO...;-)

I've been thinking about the overlap between these two art forms before (as I am a fan of both), but triggered by this blog post by John Scalzi I decided to tackle it, but piece by piece. There is a lot of overlap.

So let's begin slowly, with the most prominent example:

Probably the band that's done the most incorprating of SF into metal (or vice-versa) is Voivod. UFOs and aliens are a recurring theme throughout their albums. Directly in -- for example -- the "We Are Not Alone" and "Jack Luminous" (more an epic) songs of the The Outer Limits album, and somewhat indirectly in other songs, for example check this video of "Clouds In My House" (from the Angel Rat album):

One of their more original takes on UFOs is in "The Unknown Knows" (from the Nothingface album, their best), which is about a legend among Native Americans about UFOs. Below is a live video of it:

On their 10,000 Days album, Tool's "Rosetta Stoned" hails of the adventures of a guy who believes he has been abducted. Since the story is told from the abductee's viewpoint it's carefully left ambiguous if what happened to him was real or not, but the way in which the song superbly crams almost each and every cliché of the UFO legends and sharply typifies its staunchest believers I suspect this is either a great satire, (singer James Maynard) Keenan is a true believer, or both (especially since he sings "I ain't opened my third eye" on the Aenima album).

There are literally hundreds of live videos of that song on YouTube, so I took one from the Lowlands Festival (which is in The Netherlands):

Tool, though, are most probably pulling your leg. However, when it comes to UFOs and metal, Agent Steel's debut album takes the cake (and eats it). Skeptics Apocalypse (gotta love the title) gives short shrift to those who think Unidentified Flying Objects filled with aliens are just a figment of the collective imagination. Singer John Cyriis was a true believer and this added an extra dimension. From the wildly galloping opener "Agents of Steel" (see the live video from the Dynamo Club(*) below, and witness how Cyriis voice rises -- at the fourth iteration of the 'masters of metal, agents of steel' chorus -- through a steel-splintering number of octaves) to the call to "Bleed for the Godz", and reaching its zenith with the duo of "144,000 Gone" ('twas more than just a few that were abducted) and "Guilty As Charged" (the human race, who else?).

Agent Steel (the latest iteration sometimes tours, AFAIK) has made a few more albums with John Cyriis, but none of those quite have the weird combination of full throttle speed metal with the Cyriis UFO madness.

Anyway, these are the ones that come from the top of my head. Does anybody have other recommendations?

(*) And what can I say about the old Dynamo Club (the youth centre in which it was located has been demolished and replaced by a modern one, with the 'new' dynamo club and bar)? Back in the 80s and 90s it was the place to be if you were into heavy metal, and the club has hosted numerous legendary performances. I believe that at that time the official maximum number of people allowed inside (from the fire regulations) was 75, while most soldout shows held more than 300 people. To say it was sweaty and crowded was an understatement: it was a seething pit of chaos, while at the same time the coolest place on Earth (for a metal fan). No wonder we drank so much beer: it was the only way to keep our temperature down!

I am the very model of a singularitarian

2008-08-23T14:14:00.003+01:00

Via Damien Broderick, this from YouTube:

I am the very model of a singularitarian.

America: Denver and Denvention, Day One

2008-08-22T13:35:00.013+01:00

Tuesday August 5, after returning to Europe from the Asian part of Russia, it was time to visit the third continent in the same week: America.

After an uneventful flight from Amsterdam through Detroit -- nice Irish pub on the C-concourse -- to Denver I met TTAPress publicity maverick Roy Gray and our new electronic editions editor -- who had started up the new Transmissions from Beyond podcast the day before -- Pete Bullock. Pete drove Roy and me to our respective accomodations, and since it was close to midnight, which felt like 8 in the morning on my West European Time, I went to bed. Without a beer: but I would make up for that in the days to come.

The next morning -- let's call Wednesday August 6 Denvention Day One -- I went to the Colorado Convention Center to help Pete and Roy set up the dealer's table, but they wouldn't let anyone in without a badge. The registration line, though, had already stretched over 50 metres. Luckily Pete was already in there setting things up, and Roy was almost up ahead in the line, so without feeling much guilt I went to the Sheraton lobby to meet up with the esteemed Jim Minz.

The plan was a pubcrawl as a way to kickstart Denvention, but apart from me and Jim -- whose idea it was -- none of the usual suspects showed up. Fully understandable, with dealer's tables, presentations and art shows to be set up, and we were going to repeat the pubcrawl on Sunday afternoon. Still, it's vitally important to do some scouting ahead, and, selflessly sacrificing ourselves, we put to the task with vigour.

First stop was Stranahan's, the distiller of 'straight rocky mountain whiskey'. Jim and I and a third gentleman whose name escapes me took a tour at eleven AM. I've been on a few tours of Scottish whisky distillers (whisky or whiskey? See (1)), and what I noted here was that they use a custom-made distillery vessel that is somewhere in between a traditional pot still and a commercial distillery column, which brings their whisky somewhere between bourbon and whiskey. They also keep their casks -- American oak, obviously -- at summer temperatures year-round, at a controlled humidity, to speed up the aging process, so they achieve -- or claim to achieve -- the same maturation of a 6-year-old Scotch in two or three years.

The proof of the (pudding) whisk(e)y is in the (eating) drinking. So Jim and I had our first drink of the day at eleven thirty: tasting Stranahan's whiskey I said: "Jim, we can only go downhill from here." Not specifically meaning the whiskey -- which was very nice, but no match for a good Scottish single malt -- but more the fact that all other beverages of the day would have a lower acohol content. We each bought a bottle: the top of my bottle was cracked by Ian McDonald, Lou Anders and me to celebrate the end of the Pyr party on Friday night, the rest I donated to the Baen party -- hosted by the indomitable Mr. Minz -- the Saturday night after. I had already bought a bottle of Camus XO at Schiphol, and could only import one bottle of booze tax free, so the Stranahan's had to go. Which it did.

Next up was the Breckenridge brew pub, which proved to be -- at least to me -- the best one we visited in Denver. A great selection of beers, and some nice food (although we only found the latter one out on the Sunday, because the macaroni & cheese wedges don't count: while quite OK, they reminded me of their Dutch counterparts nasischijf and bamihap).

The Agave Wheat and the SummerBrig ht Ale were fine drinks, but the Vanilla Porter was the big surprise: imagine a near-perfect mix between beer, coffee and chocolate and you some idea of how it tasted. Quite incredible and very, very good.

Then there was another microbrewery, a bit out of the way, whose name I forgot, which was closed on Sunday. Also quite good, although it was beer only there, with just a few snacks.

Then we went to Falling Rock taph ouse, and this place rocks! Over 69 beers on tap: both local and international ones (plenty from Belgium, but at prices -- hey: I live 50 kilometres from the Belgium border. We have Belgium beers, cheap, in our supermarkets -- that gave me pause, even at the current exchange rates). We did a lot of tasting there, together with a local beer enthusiast. Grabbed some excellent onion rings and breaded mushrooms -- that's why beer makes you fat: the greasy food that goes so well with it -- as well. We actually played with the idea of having the whole place relocated to straight across the convention center, as to make it the Con bar, but unfortunately we couldn't make it work. However, we did both get a classic "NO CRAP ON TAP" yellow sticker. Love this place!

We liked it so much in Falling Rock that we had to skip a few other candidates on the list, as we had to get back to the Convention Centre to set things up (and get registered first). On our way, though, we did make a quick stop at the Rock Bottom Brewery, which is close to the pedestrian shopping area. Subsequently, it was very busy down there, but there beer list was impressive. I believe it's become something of a national chain, which, for once, I'll recommend.

Then, at the end of the afternoon, I got registered and checked our table in the dealer's room: Roy and Pete had it set up perfectly, and Pete was even setting up two laptops with headphoes and speakers so that people could listen to our first three podcasts (" ). Great dedication to the cause here.

After the dealer's room closed at 6 PM, it was time (again) for some beer: I checked out the bar in the Hyatt -- across the street from the convention -- and it soon became clear that this would become the central bar of the Con.

(1) snarched from here:

The Bard of Banff

Whisky or Whiskey?

A Scotsman who spells

Whisky with a n ‘e’,

should be hand cuffed

and thrown head first in the Dee.

In the USA and Ireland,

it’s spelt with an ‘e’

but in Scotland

it’s real ‘Whisky’.

So if you see Whisky

and it has an ‘e’,

only take it,

if you get it for free!

For the name is not the same

and it never will be,

a dram is only a real dram,

from a bottle of ‘Scotch Whisky’.

Stanley Bruce.

20th April 2004

Ironically, though, according to Wikipedia, Whiskey was re-adopted by the Irish back in the 1870s 'to distinguish their higher quality product' (because 'the reputation of Scottish whisky was very poor '). How the times have changed.

A Quick Meme I couldn't Resist...

2008-08-21T11:59:00.003+01:00

...Snarched from Chris Roberson:

Look up your birthday in Wikipedia. Pick 4 events, 3 births, 2 deaths, and 1 holiday.

Events:

1595 - Nomenclator of Leiden University Library appears, the first printed catalog of an institutional library.
1626 - Peter Minuit buys Manhattan. (In exchange for trade goods valued at 60 guilders, or about $24. Can we have it back, and make New York New Amsterdam again? I'll PayPal the 24 bucks...;-)
1883 - The Brooklyn Bridge in New York City is opened to traffic after 14 years of construction. (We'll rename it to how it should be called: de Breukelen Brug...;-)
1992 - The last Thai dictator, General Suchinda Kraprayoon, resigns following pro-democracy protests.

And decidedly unhappy about:

1943 - Holocaust: Josef Mengele becomes chief medical officer of the Auschwitz concentration camp.

Births:

15 BC - Julius Caesar Germanicus, Roman commander (d. 19)
1819 - Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom (d. 1901)
1941 - Bob Dylan, American singer and songwriter
1963 - Michael Chabon, American author (OK: so I smuggled in a fourth. Couldn't resist.)

Deaths:

1543 - Nicolaus Copernicus, Polish astronomer (b. 1473)
1974 - Duke Ellington, American composer and musician (b. 1899)

Holiday:

Canada: Victoria Day, on this date if it falls on a Monday or the Monday before it. In Quebec, it is known as National Patriotes Day (Journée nationale des patriotes).
Note: way back when I always wondered why Geddy Lee sang "on the 24th of May" on Lakeside Park from the Caress of Steel album (and it's not exactly his favourite song). But eventually I found out why.

Russia: Moscow, Trans Siberia Express, Novosibirsk & solar eclipse

2008-08-18T13:49:00.018+01:00

A short roundup of my trip to Russia. On Sunday July 27 Peter, Bram and I took the 09.30 flight from Amsterdam to Moscow. Thanks to the wonders of early internet check-in (I got up at 03.30 the previous night) we had a row of exit seats. The lady from our travel agent picked us -- and several other people -- up from Sheremetyevo 2 (I've been there when there was only one Sheremetyevo, which was the designated international airport, and Domodyedovo, a hundred kilometres away and to the south of Moscow, was the designated domestic airport, so a transfer included a two to three hour drive around Moscow, back in the Iron Curtain days), and took us to our hotel in the North of Moscow.

Customs & immigration went smooth, and after a quick bite in the hotel we went to the Moscow subway, armed with a map, and in the early evening walked around the Red Square. It was decidedly strange: on the one side there is the Kremlin with Lenin's tomb where the Cold War Soviet Union vibe still resonates, while on the other side there is the GUM department store, which -- at that time in the evening -- with its tacky, Christmas-season-like lightning formed a very strange, capitalistic contrast, not unlike similar department stores in London and New York. The State Historical Museum and St. Basil's Cathedral formed a better complement to the Kremlin.

In a way, it typified modern Russia: the communist old mixing with the capitalist new in an often clashing way: ugly concrete living blocs adorned with screaming billboards and shining neon ads, babushkas in the streets and on railway stations selling Russian staple foods along with typical Western sweets, mostly western cars riding on crowded roads overseen by -- what I asssume to be -- traffic controllers who looked more like KGB agents.

My friend Peter remarked upon it first: Russia, or at least central Moscow still looks and feels like a police state. I started noticing it more and more after he said it: there are security people everywhere, and it was impossible for us to see if they were the local police, state agents, military, or private security people. Just that there were a lot of them. Moscow doesn't have the huge number of CCTVs that London has, but more than makes up for it in security manpower.

The Russians themselves, though, seemed undisturbed by it, and carried on as if it was business as usual (maybe it has been worse). The few times that we almost lost our way -- both in and outside the subway -- people were very friendly and tried to help. And I never felt unsafe in the way I would in the seedier part of most big American cities, but that is probably because we never got into the seedier part of Moscow.

The next day we took an extended walking tour through Moscow, and the cultural clashes continued: old Zadkinesque statues alongside kitschy advertisement columns; two identical flats: one turned into a modern hotel ("Golden Ring Hotel" IIRC) while the other remained a Soviet era, grey concrete block cum living appartment; the Ministry of Foreign Affairs: an old building defaced with aircos hanging out the windows; a statue of Peter the Great on the Moskva River (next to the old chocolate factory) that redefines ugliness; the TASS headquarters ("The press bureau that kept announcing that the fall of the decadent west was imminent," I said jokingly, "and they would have been right if the credit crisis had come twenty years earlier.") across the street from a Delifrance coffeeshop (even if it might not have been an official Delifrance outlet, it sure looked like one, and the cappuccino was great); The Cathedral of Christ the Saviour from which a huge bridge crosses the Moskva River: at the oppsite end there was some modern artwork that didn't quite work; and more that I'm not coming up with right now.

There also seems to be a tradition for couples to pledge their (eternal) love on the bridges over the Moskva River by putting a padlock, with the names of the partners written or engraved on the lock, on its fences. There even was a bridge where special -- well, I can only call them -- 'trees' were installed where lovers could snap their locks on its special branches (This was the Luzkhov Bridge: you can find almost anything out on the internet these days). Typically, the fences and/or trees closest to the middle of the river where had the highest lock density. Nice.

Ellen and Freek, our other two travel companions, arrived later in the day by train, and joined us later on. We went around the Red Square again (they hadn't seen it), although this time in daylight. At least the GUM department store looked less tacky. We had an excellent, if somewhat expensive dinner in a steakhouse, figuring a good meal might be in order since we didn't know what to expect on the Trans Siberia Express.

The next day, Ellen and Freek went on an early morning subway trip to check out several metro stations, while Bram, Peter and I took it easy and walked around the local area around our hotel and shopped some stocks for the train trip. The local park wasn't anything special, but one certain 24-hour shop -- nearby the subway station -- caught our interest: it didn't sell food or drinks but solely mobile phones! I guess it's of the utmost import to be able to get a new cell phone 24/7. Oh Brave New World.

In the afternoon we got on the Jenisej train of the Transiberia Express. Because we had booked a year in advance, we were able to get first class cabins: other eclipse travellers we spoke with had to settle for second class ones. The difference? Well, first class cabins have only two bunks -- that double as sitting benches -- while second class cabins have four, and third class cabins have 6 or 8 (not sure). It's the difference between being with 2, 4 or 6 to 8 people in the same space, which can add up the lobger the trip takes.
I only took the Moscow -- Novosibirsk leg, which takes 48 hours. I understand that the full St. Petersburg -- Vladivostok line takes seven days. And there are no showers: only two toilets with little wash basins per wagon, meaning that you have to share the same washrooms with considerably less people in first class than in second or third. I can believe that a third class cabin will not exactly have the most pleasant smell at the end of a full tour, and why hardened Russians live through it by the liberal application of vodka.
Therefore, it's advisable to get out at interesting places like Novosibirsk (mostly because of the solar eclipse), Irkutsk and Ulaan Batar (OK: so my freinds switched over to the Trans Mongolia Express).
There's a schedule -- all in Moscow time -- that tells you where and for how long the train stops at every station. It's important to know, as the train does not blow a whistle or give any other sign when it leaves: it just leaves. If you miss it, well, too bad. I have heared a story from an experienced Russia traveller that this indeed happened to a friend of his, and that in the Soviet era. That man through he was in deep trouble, while the local train station manager took him to his house, had his wife cook some extra potatoes and borsht, put him in the guest bed, and put him on the next train 24 hours later. No problem, and this must have happened many times before.
But we didn't want to miss the train, as then we would have missed the solar eclipse in Novosibirsk. So we took care when we got out for a quick glimpse at several stations, where people sell local food and drinks (see the picture to the left). Also, every wagon has two poborskis -- train stewards would be the best translation I think -- who keep the wagon clean, are available 24 hours a day (that's why there are two: they take turns), and warn unexperienced travellers how long the train stays at every station, and even urge you back on board if necessary. Our poborskis were two blond Russian, middle-aged women who took care of us like mothers.

There was also a restaurant wagon, and while the menu was completely in Russian (and my cyrillic had gone quite rustic over the years), there was a fellow passenger who translated it into English. The food was actually quite OK, and there was also plenty of beer, wine and other drinks. So we only ate food bought at stations for breakfast and lunch -- we had to try that, as well, and some sausages were quite nice -- and had dinner at the restaurant wagon.

Apropos Russian beer -- there will be more beer in the Denvention post -- I mainly found the following ones:

--Baltica: lager from St. Petersburg;
--Stary Melnik (Old Miller): lager from Moscow (I think. Update: from the Efes brewery in Moscow, if I believe teh intarwebs);
--Siberski Corona (Siberian Crown): lager from somewhere in Siberia (Update: it's located in Omsk);

There are much more local beers, but these three were the ones we saw the most. Also, both in Moscow, along the Trans Siberia Express, and in Novosibirsk a wide range of import beers was available: from the inevitable Heineken, Budweiser and Carlsberg to Hoegaarden (half-liter bottles in a supermarket in Berdsk, a village nearby Novosibirsk) to Efes (lots of it in Moscow: a Turkish invasion? Update: they seem to have a brewery in Moscow, which also brews Stary Melnik, which explains a lot).
Anyway, all three were perfectly drinkable, although not really special. Decent lagers, as they go, and since the average temperature was around 28-29 Celsius, they went in well.

So, after a pleasant two-day stay in the Jenisej train, we arrived in Novosibirsk. Novosibirsk is not a very pretty city, to say the least. Actually, the train station was one of the better-looking buildings. However, our hotel was somewhat outside of Novosibirsk in a suburb (or separate village: hard to say) called Mosorow. A local man from the travel agency picked us up from Novosibirsk station and took us there: the next morning, he was also the driver of the bus we hired so we could get to a good spot to watch the solar eclipse. The hotel was luxurious for Russian standards: I suspect it's a resort for better-off Russians. Now, however, it was filled with solar eclipse enthusiasts: two women from Belgium, a group from Portugal, a couple of Americans and five Dutchmen. We had a good meal, and the next day was the big day.

August 1: solar eclipse day. We found out that our driver and bus were the same one who picked us up from the station, which was fine in all things but one: our driver didn't speak English. But with maps, GPSs, hand and feet we got in the direction where we wanted to go. The plan was to go to the shore of lake Novosibirskoye, which is the huge water basin of a dam in the River Ob, mostly meant to supply Novosobirsk and surrounds (the third largest city in Russia with more than 1,5 million people) with water.
The idea being that in the middle of Summer time, clouds form easier overland (the land is then quite warm and water easily evaporates from trees and greenery), while the do not form over relatively cool lakes like Novosibirkoye. We certainly hoped so, because the evening before it was very cloudy, and cloudy weather and rain were forecast for Novosibirsk on August 1. And indeed it was a cloudy day, but as the day progressed the cloud cover thinned.
First we set out to find a bank (we were running out of rubles), and eventually found one in Berdsk. Then we did some shopping (food and drinks as we didn't know where we would end up) in a Berdsk supermarket that was very well-stocked, and had an ATM on which our cards worked. They even had cold half-liter bottles of Hoegaarden: what could go wrong?
Thing was, our driver didn't know the way around that part very well either, so he had to ask around a lot. Eventually we ended up on a little beach resort: the actuall beach was about threee metres down, and the resort had food stalls and a beer tent. I'm fairly sure this (Google Map Location) was the place. There were a few more busses down there, as well, but the place was easily big enough to hold all those people. Mostly Russians, although there was a group of Belgians from the Antwerp observatorium.
So this was my first solar eclipse where there was beer available (others were in the middle of the Zambian highlands and the Australian desert, hours away from habitation). Also, while there were clouds forming all around the lake, they dissipated over the lake, giving us a clear shot at the sun.
By the time first contact came around, the sky was virtually cloudless. Everything went fine. Now, every solar eclipse is different and what I found special about this one was the following:

It was the first one I saw across a body of water. Normally we try to avoid the sea (too much potential for cloud formation), but here it worked fine. As second contact neared you could see the sun's reflection in the water get dimmer. Also, as the shadow of the moon came from the northeast, this was the first time I actually saw it coming (it moves so fast you have to be in the right spot to see it coming from afar);
Because of this, I could see the first diamond ring exactly on time (if you look too early -- without eclipse glasses, you're temporarily blinded and miss part of the totality. So timing is very important: in the previous two solar eclipses I missed most of the first diamond ring);
There were -- I believe -- at least two planets visible nearby the sun/moon totality: Mercury and Venus (need to check this);
There was only one prominence, at about two o'clock, which was to be expected as solar activity was at a minimum;

(Added August21):

I didn't expect to see little inverted sun sickles in the shadows of shrubs and trees because it was so windy. But I was wrong: in the wavering shadow of a tree I saw a cornucopia of long sun sickles that were quite big, as well.

I'm waiting for my friends to return from their more extended trip, so I can place some of their pictures of the eclipse. In the meantime, Odd Høydalsvik has some good images here.

Then it was back to the hotel to celebrate another successful solar eclipse. I couldn't celebrate too hard as I had an early morning flight to Moscow (I travelled back home much earlier than my companions because I wanted to attend Denvention), for which I would be picked up at 03.30 AM. To put insult to injury, however, my travel companions would be picked up at the same time -- the hotel was some 30 kilometres from downtown Novosibirsk -- even though their train would only depart at 11.20 AM.

So, as I got down at half past three, very sleepy, and checked out. It wasn't as easy as that, though, since the hotel people claimed I had damaged the bathroom door in my room. Now, when I entered my room two days ago, I did notice that there was a very slight dent in the bathroom door, but I assumed the hotel knew about it and dismissed it. But no: they claimed I did it, and demanded a 10,000 rubles (approx. $500 or 350 euros) payment for it.

Well, I have been travelling around the world very extensively. For 5 years with my previous employer, and for over 10 years with my current one (I settled back into a less travel-extensive job three years ago) I have spent on average 200 to 250 days a year abroad sleeping in hotels. That's some 3500 nights spent in hotel rooms, give or take a few hundred, and I've never had a problem like this. To be absolutely clear: I *never* damage hotel property. I was extremely pissed off.

By that time, my friends were also there, and they -- especially Peter -- supported my arguments. We went back up to my room to photograph the extent of the damage, asked for names of the people involved and when they weren't forthcoming took their pictures, then coughed up the money. After all, with a plane and a train to catch, what choice did I have?

Finally, an act of inspiration on Peter's part, we demanded a receipt in English. This was taking very long, as none of the hotel employees spoke English very well. It was taking so long that I was thinking about forgetting about the receipt, because missing the plane and train would be even more expensive, when suddenly the hotel people dropped all charges.

That was typical: it confirmed my suspicion that I was being conned all along. Anyway: I am used to checking damages of a rental car before driving off (to avoid future conflicts), but never have experienced this with hotel rooms. Let's call this a lesson learned.

Anyway, I made my domestic flight with time to spare. So while I was waiting for the boarding call, somebody walks up to me and asks me if I was Jetse de Vries. Since I was still fuming a bit, I hardly noticed the first time. Then I found out it was C.A.L.: an Australian author (who otherwise prefers to remain pseudonymous) whose story "The Rising Tide" I had lifted from the email slush and which we subsequently published in Interzone #204. The author was also on a Trans Siberia Express/Solar Eclipse tour with a group of Australians, and they were on the same flight.

Just when crossing the Siberian taiga for 48 hours (and then barely covering a third of it) the world had become enormous to me, in that moment it immediately became small again. After my initital bafflement, I had a great talk with the author, and was said when we had to part ways at Sheremtyevo airport Teminal 1 where the author's group had a connecting domestic flight to St. Petersburg, and I had to go to Terminal 2 for my international flight to Amsterdam. The meeting lifted my spirits back up to their post-eclipse high, though.

I had to wait 7 hours at Sheremtyevo, as my connection time to the early morning flight to Amsterdam was too short, and I had to catch the late afternoon one. Got over that with coffee, lunch, beer and reading Racing the Dark, Alaya Dawn Johnson's debut novel (another writer I lifted from the IZ slush: actually the very first one. "Third Day Lights" -- Interzone #200 -- was reprinted in the Cramer/Hartwell YBSF 11). It comes highly recommended (and with a little warning: she lets her characters suffer. And I mean suffer hard before things get somewhat better. If they get better), and Alaya sent me a story set in the same world earlier this year. It's called "Far and Deep" and will appear in a future issue of Interzone.

Finally, I got home at around 10 PM after a very long day (timewise, it felt like 04,00 AM the next day to me), so I reisited the temptation to start up the computer to hundreds of unanswred emails and went to bed. Two days later I had to catch my flight to Denver for Denvention, on which more in a later post.

Holiday 2: Denvention

2008-07-23T11:53:00.005+01:00

My WorldCon schedule (preliminary and subject to change, obviously):

(NB: updated August 4.)

Tuesday August 5:

flight to Denver from Amsterdam via Detroit. Scheduled arrival at Denver airport at about 20.15 hrs. Hope to see Roy Gray at the same airport (arriving with a different flight), and also Pete Butler.
Then to the hotel and fight jetlag the Australian way(1);

Wednesday August 6:

08.00 -- 11.00: set up the TTAPress/Interzone dealer's table with Roy and Pete (dealer's room opens at 12.00 hrs: our table is -- as far as I know right now -- 1106. Map here);
11.00 -- ??.00: lunch and cultural exploration of Denver (evil minds might name these activities differently);
??.00 -- ??.00: maybe return to dealer's table in time before it closes at 18.00 hrs. Then drinks-shower-dinner-party (sequence subject to change);

Thursday August 7:

10.00: open up dealer's table;
11.30 -- 12.30: Panel (program item 101 in room 501): "How do eBooks change writing - an eBook writing primer". With Darlene Marshall, (m) Dave Howell, Jetse de Vries, Traci Castleberry. I believe Pete Bullock is on that one, as well. (Update: no he isn't. He's on three other panels on ebooks, namely program item 155: "Choosing a ebook format: technological & economical considerations" on Thursday August 7 at 14.30 hrs, coinciding with my 'Aliens' panel, and program item 492: "eBook pitfalls: what are the publishing, sales & production traps?" on Saturday August 9 at 11.30 hrs, and also program item 547: "A Passion for Electronic Publishing" on Saturday at 16.00 hrs; Good!)
12.30 -- 13.00 (or so): Business lunch;
14.30 -- 15.30: Panel (program item 157 in room 503): "Aliens - Writing about what you don't know", for which I am the moderator. With (m) Jetse de Vries, Larry Niven, LE Modesitt;
17.30 -- 18.30 Panel (program item 220 in room 503): "Life After Rocket Science". This is a last-minute add, so I'm not listed on the programming yet. With (m) David Summers, Ian Tregillis, Margaret Bonham, Mike Potter.
18.30 -- onwards: evening activities as in Wednesday;

Friday August 8:

10.00: open up dealer's table;
13.30 -- 15.00: meet up with very good friend in preparation for very good event;
13.45: Signing? Que? Scrolling through the program is see that program item 339, in Hall D, is a signing with Jetse de Vries, Lawrence M. Schoen, Michael Bellomo, Walter Hunt. To quote Manuel from Fawlty Towers: "I know nuttin'." This wasn't mentioned in any email sent to me, and I most certainly did not volunteer for it, as I really don't have anything -- like a collection or a novel -- to sign. And I don't see hordes of people with the anthologies or magazines in which I've appeared (with a short story) to be signed. Also, my meeting of 13.30 is *very* important (a commitment I made without knowing about this signing item), and I will give it priority. So I won't be there. Strange, nevertheless.
15.00 -- 17.00: possibly back to dealer's room;
17.30: Sidewise Awards (item 427: in the Sheraton, 2nd level, Tower Court D), where Chris Roberson's "Metal Dragon Year"(Interzone #213) is one of the short form nominees,
17.00 -- 19.00 (or later): more preparatory activities;
19.00 -- 20.00: quick dinner, liquid dinner, and a shower (first two optional...;-);
20.00 -- 23.00: Pyr party! Don't miss this one, as I can tell you it will be great.
23.30 -- 00.30: Panel (program item 411 in the Sheraton, Terrace Level, Capitol Room): "Lovers in the Slipstream", which I should be moderating. Yes, straight after the Pyr party. Like the "Sex and the Singularity" panel at EasterCon, this should be fun. Or a trainwreck. Or both.
01.00 -- onwards: party. I believe Baen is holding a party that night, probably in the Presidential Suite;

Saturday August 9:

10.00 -- 11.00: Reading (program item 464, at the Hyatt in Agata A). Indeed, at 10 am, after what promises to be a very intense Friday. Could be fun, or a disaster. At my first reading ever at Interaction, I was scheduled at the same time as Terry Pratchett, which amused my brother no end. Still, 6 people showed up, about 5.5 more than I expected. It remains to be seen if I can top that number...
12.00 -- 18.00: predominantly dealer's room presence (to make up for the previous days when I'm mostly not there);
18.00 -- 20.00 Hugo pre-party;
20.00 -- 22.00 (or thereabouts): Hugo Awards Ceremony;
22.30 -- ??.00 Hugo losers party;
??.00 onwards: more parties;

Sunday August 10:

10.00 -- 14.00 dealer's room. Break off after, or maybe even during that;
15.00 -- onwards: second cultural and gastronomical exploration of Denver with the usual suspects.
18.00 (or thereabouts): Dead Dog party;

Monday August 11: recover.

Tuesday August 12: Fly home.

Wednesday August 13: Arrive home. Fight jetlag the Australian way(1).

(1): Way back in December 2000 I arrived in Fremantle at about 17.00 after a very long flight. Taped to my hotel room door was a message: "We're in this-and-this [name forgotten] pub. Hurry!"

That was from the Australian superintendent and his boss, for whom I was doing the dry-dock job. I took a quick shower, and went to the pub. Where I was greeted with a cold beer, and my remark that I was very tired and jetlagged was met with the following response:

"Mate, just get drunk"

"?" *slight bewilderment*

"I mean it: jetlag can last longer than a week. A hangover only lasts one day. Just get drunk."

I complied.

Holiday 1: Solar Eclipse

2008-07-22T10:43:00.010+01:00

Or: a short dip into Russia.

Sunday July 27 I will -- together with two friends -- fly to Moscow. Two other friends will travel by train (they want to do the whole coast-to-coast thing by train, so go all the way from Amsterdam -- not strictly at the coast -- to Beijng -- also not strictly on the coast. It’s the thought that counts...;-). From Moscow the five of us will be taking the Trans-Siberia Express to Novosibirsk, arriving there on Thursday July 31. The next day we hope to witness the solar eclipse as the line of totality crosses over Novosibirsk and lake Novosibirskoye.

On August 2 I’ll be flying from Novosobirsk to Moscow, and after a lengthy stopover continue onwards to Amsterdam. Then it's back home for two days, then back to Schiphol on Tuesday August 5 to fly to Denver for Denvention. Fly back from Denver on Tuesday August 12, arriving at Amsterdam Schiphol on Wednesday August 13, then back to work the Monday after.

They say some people use holidays to rest...

We had a pre-eclipse meeting in Amsterdam last Saturday, where -- amongst many other things -- I found out that, as nerdism goes, I’m small beans. To wit:

Me (after the discussion was about all the far-off places the recent eclipses take place -- Zambia, Australia, Libya, now Siberia, next year China, the Pacific [French Polynesia or Easter island] in 2010): “Why can’t an eclipse take place somewhere nearer by, like Texel(1).”

Friend 1: “Well, the 1715 eclipse went over Texel.”

Me (incredulous): “You’ve got to be kidding me! For the record: I was joking.”

Friend 1: “It’s true(2): I just remember those things.”

Me: “You are the Übernerd: I bow my head in deference.”

Friend 2: “One doesn’t talk to [friend 1], one consults him.”

Through Futurismic, I am aware of the geek hierarchy. Now I wonder if there is a similar nerd hierarchy(3). As solar eclipse nerdism goes, my friend should be in the very top, possibly only being overclassed by Fred Espanak. But even of that I am not certain.

As it is, my fascination with solar eclipses began in 1999, although it always simmered below the surface as one of the phenomena that you should see at least once in your life (like polar light: I once commissioned a shrimp freezing plant on a Russian fishing vessel when they were fishing for shrimps in January just below Spitsbergen. Air temperature was about -19°C, it was dark all day, and on top of that there was no warm water for the first five days. But I’ve witnessed several displays of spectacular Aurora Borealis, which made it all more than worthwile). Back then, my friend Peter left our holiday in Western Australia a week early to witness the solar eclipse in France. I thought he was crazy.

Peter had some bad luck in France, though: it was completely cloud-covered. Still, he wanted to experience a solar eclipse in clear skies, and the next chance was June 21, 2001: on his birthday. He asked if I was interested to come along, and I did.

Basically, though, I still felt a bit like one of our guides -- Nico -- in Zambia: not an enthusiast, but more to check out what all the fuss was about (and see a place you don’t normally go to in the bargain). It was incredible, and I’ll quote Nico: “I thought all those solar eclipse freaks were crazy. Now I am one of the crazy people.”

So if you wish to remain sane, do not go there.

(1) Texel is a small island just north of Noord-Holland.

(2) Indeed, it’s true. See this link, for example.

(3) And not the Geek→Nerd→Dork hierarchy about cool stuff that goes either like:

Geeks design it;

Nerds buy it;

Dorks break it;

Or:

Geek: Understands, creates & fixes really cool stuff;

Nerd: Understands & collects really cool stuff;

Dork: Confused by really cool stuff.

It's Alive!

2008-07-21T12:34:00.029+01:00

The three or four people that might still check in here once in a while have noted that it’s been awfully quiet in May and June. So a quick update near the end of July.

First of all: the training centre of the company where I work has moved house in June and July, while at the same time the already planned training sessions (and they're planned a year in advance) had to continue. Hence a very hectic period in which less urgent (read: not directly income generating) diversions like writing and blogging fell by the wayside. This is also the reason I decided not to run an email reading period (in May) for Interzone, as I had no time to read submissions, and response times would have gone through the roof.

I'm going on holiday by the end of the week (more about that in the next two posts), and then we have settled in our new working home. Now a quick update of things that happened in the past couple of months:

----Fiction:

My story “The Third Scholar” has appeared in the “SF Waxes Philosophical” anthology edited by Ahmed A. Kahn, released by ZC Books. The anthology has been reviewed at Andromeda Spaceways (where the ‘cosmological virtuosity’ is admired, but the ‘occasional flippancy of tone’ and the ‘lack of descriptive detail’ diminish ‘the feeling of reality necessary to properly engage the reader’. I am now whipping my frivolous self with realistic descriptions), and mentioned on Ted Kosmatka’s blog.

My story “City Beneath the Surface” has appeared in Postscripts #1 4. Postscripts #14 has been reviewed in The Fix (which states I avoid ‘going down the obvious routes’: for instance my humour is ‘something subtler’, although the reviewer ‘did groan at one joke’), and to my surprise I received a couple of emails where people were very complimentary about the story.

My story “Cultural Clashes in Cádiz” (which originally appeared in Creative Guy Publishing’s Amityville House of Pancakes vol. 1, which is not available anymore) is slated to appear in “A Mosque Among the Stars”: an anthology featuring SF and fantasy stories that portray Islam and/or Muslims in a positive light.

“Transcendence Express” (originally in Hub #2 -- the last print version -- reprinted online in Hub #44, and available as a podcast on Escape Pod #122) is longlisted on the British Fantasy Award for short story, together with 45 other stories (with some very good IZ stories among them). Nice, although it probably won't make the shortlist. Possibly more news on the story later (like 2009), which I can’t discuss yet.

Apparently “Qubit Conflicts” received an honourable mention in the Dozois Year’s Best SF #25, and Dozois even mentioned me -- however shortly -- as a writer to watch in an SF Signal Mind Meld. Maybe Gardner needs to check his prescriptions?

----Non-fiction:

My interview with Greg Egan -- flippantly titled ‘Beyond the Veil of Reality’ -- was published in Interzone #216 (indeed: a Greg Egan interview in the ‘mundane SF’ special. Life is full of frivolous ironies). Eamonn Murphy on SFCrowsnest called it ‘quite interesting’, while Blue Tyson called it ‘excellent’.

My usual column about writing in the BSFA’s Focus (for Focus #52) was about ‘writing about what you don’t know’, and got mixed up with Dev Agarwal’s piece. Martin McGrath is mortified about this misattribution, while I am merely amused (only those who do nothing make no mistakes). Should be good for a beer and a laugh at a Con near you.

(Quick update): I forgot to mention that I have written the introduction to Gareth Lyn Powell’s collection The Last Reef (after the same-titled story that originally appeared in Interzone #202 and is available online), which will be launched on August 9 in London. Unfortunately, I can’t attend as I will be at WorldCon in Denver. With its typical swiftness, The Fix has already reviewed The Last Reef (and even mentions my intro). Highly recommended (which reminds me that I should pre-order a copy of the limited hardcover myself).

Apart from that, my fiction writing has slowed to a trickle, and the very few (two) stories that I have doing the rounds consistently keep getting rejected.

Next week I’m travelling to Novosibirsk for the August 1 solar eclipse, and the week after that I’m going to Denver to attend Denvention. More about that in the next two posts.

Real Life Pessimism

2008-04-29T09:33:00.011+01:00

At the day job we get quite a few trade journals, one of them being ‘Technisch Weekblad’ (“Technical Weekly”), and the April 19 (week 16) issue had an interesting column by Frits Prakke called ‘De informatisering van alles’ (“The Informatisation of Everything”).

I’m sorely tempted to translate the whole piece ad verbatim, but I must respect the author’s (and the magazine’s) copyright, so a summarisation filled with paraphrases will have to suffice.

He starts his column with reminiscing how his forefather of a few generations ago moved from a small village to the big city, not only because the city offered more opportunities, but also because there was much less social control. ‘The big-scale industrialisation has done miracles for our privacy’ (paraphrase).

Cut to 1989, where he has become a technological advisor, and he is in a think tank meeting about the future of information technology. ‘Would the robot replace industrial labour? Would the rise of the fax machine change the wholesale business? Would the Dutch metal industry survive?’ And more. According to some engineers sensors and data storage were the bottlenecks. The economists meant that the mild recession instigated by the mismanangement of the Bush (senior) government would soon become a worldwide crisis.

All of a sudden a well-dressed Englishman, a technical guru flown in to participate, joined the discussion saying that everyone was too pessimistic and too short-sighted. He stated that the development of the computer would lead to ‘the informatisation of everything’ (sic): all human actions and its effects would be logged continuously, be searchable, and at ever decreasing costs. This would not only improve the productivity and quality of labour, but also increase safety and help the environment.

At that meeting, this was met with disdain: everybody bombarded the guru with questions about how this was technically feasible, and lamented his lack of concrete answers. The think tank concluded: ‘bullshit’.

That was 1989, before the internet, google, and ubiquitous cell phones with cameras. Nowadays, when one buys – say – a raincoat (always handy in Holland), one can check on the manufacturer’s website where it’s designed, where the fabric comes from, where it was stitched together, and where it was distributed, and the carbon footprint of the jacket. And I’m sure all of you – especially those in the UK – are aware of how much the government can monitor your movements.

The column ends with the columnist mentioning how his daughter calls him, while riding her bike in the centre of Amsterdam, probably in sight of police cameras. He’s thinking of moving back to the small village from where his family originated (obviously because there is *less* social control there).

My take on this?

First: do not – absolutely not – assume that something is, by definition, impossible. Science and technology progress, often at a faster pace than we presume feasible, sometimes making the seemingly impossible reality in a mere two decades. So don’t take the easy way out by saying something *can’t* happen (which is a step worse than saying something *won’t* happen), but instead imagine it to be possible, and then attempt to extrapolate the consequences, because:

Second: no technology is ethically neutral. Each new technology will have both positive and negative effects on the life we live. The ongoing information revolution has improved our lives in certain areas (I’ll gladly admit that having information at my fingertips through the internet is a fantastic improvement, a killer app if you will), with the side effect that it also greatly lessened our personal privacy (governments and huge corporations know more about you than ever before).

Which brings us back into the realms of science fiction and my optimism rant: I like to think that if there were people that would be willing to think ahead, and think positively, that these would be prominent among SF writers. Nevertheless, my general impression is that the majority of SF writers (thank dog there are exceptions) predominantly portray how the future goes down the drain. Roughly speaking, greatly generalising (bear with me: I’m making a point, and sometimes a blanket statement works better than an overtly carefully worded argument that tries to take in every nuance, incorporates every exception, exception to the exception ad nauseam) they look like those think tank specialists who ridiculed the visionary.

Moreover, it’s much braver to visualise a better tomorrow, as most people simply won’t believe you. You’ll be ridiculed, dismissed, laughed at, and ignored. The mob sympathises with those who confirm their prejudices: life is shit, and things will get worse. I’m calling out to those who wish to stand out from the pack, and dare to lead the way.

Again: I’m not looking for euphoric utopias or pie-in-the-sky polyannas. But try to emphasize the positive aspects of future developments above the negative ones by acknowledging the latter (and attempt to rectify or lessen them) while being driven by the former.

Various Tidbits

2008-04-11T17:18:00.017+01:00

A quick roundup of the past weeks:

No Orbital report here: I live Cons intensely, but I don't blog about them. Nevertheless, Alex Fitch of SciFi-London interviewed Aliette de Bodard and me (and others) at Orbital about Interzone, writing, and the SF scene. Check it out at the audio section of the SciFi-London site, or here.
My story "Qubit Conflicts" (original in Clarkesworld #8) has been reprinted in Ennea or "9": the supplement to Greek national newspaper Elefthrytopia. Thanks to Angelos Mastorakis and Anna Boviatsi for publishing it, and to Nick Mamatas for being the first to take a chance with it. (Cover of "9" pictured above.)
Have been to Death Angel (the Bay Area thrash band) in both de Baroeg and Dynamo. Fantastic shows of a band that still plays as energetic and tight as when they started, some twenty years back. Phenomenal!
At the Dynamo afterparty (after Death Angel) it was good to talk to Andy Galeon (see picture, and other Death Angel members except Rob Cavestany: I didn't see him, unfortunately) after some 6 years or so.
Received the March 19 edition of "9" a few days later, to see that "Qub it Conflicts" went with two semi-abstract illustrations of a Greek artist whose name I can't transliterate due to my Greek being so poor (apologies for that). In both illos (see scans left and right), there are silhouettes of human faces, which is somewhat ironic as there are no humans at all in the story. Actually, there were a few direct human references in the original, but when Nick M amatas asked -- among other things -- me to remove those, I immediately realised he was right. I was afraid that the story might become too abstract without a few allusions to human philosophers, but Nick's comment showed me that this is the direction the story wanted to go in. That's where a good editor is worth his weight in gold: explaining the obvious to an author who just can't help being too close to his own story.
Went to Exodus in the Dynamo club, had another great night, met lots of old friends again (Exodus guitar player Lee Altus -- see picture -- being one of them), and the only drawback being that it was a Monday night, and I had to work the next day.
Another thing I can't help but wonder about is the barrage of haiku I unleashed in "Qubit Conflicts": did the Greek translators transliterate them into Greek haiku, or didn't they notice? It's actually what will make translating this baby into Dutch the biggest obstacle: *if* I do that, these poems need to stay haiku in Dutch.
Tonight (and I already went yesterday, as well): Threshold. A barrage of metal these past weeks, but I'm not complaining, only wishing I was twenty again (with the experience I have now). Oh well...

Nightlife Going Green

2008-03-20T11:22:00.009Z

Nighttown -- a concert venue in Rotterdam that is now bankrupt -- will reopen as a high environmental-friendly club renamed Watt.

They're expanding the capacity to 1400 people, but more interesting are the sustainable aspects of the makeover:

Solar panels;

Windmills;
Rainwater used as flushing water for toilets;

A 'greenwall': a wall from which plants literally grow;

Energy-efficient LED lights;

An energy-generating dance floor;

I especially like the last one: it's a product developed by Sustainable Dance Club, a Rotterdam company. Here's an impression, and here's how it's supposed to work.

I have been to Nighttown quite a few times, and I do hope that when it reopens as 'Watt', that they will program a couple of bands I'd like to see, so I can check out the venue, as well. Planned reopening date is September 4 (typically, guitarist Mike Watt played in Nighttown back in April 3, 2005: almost exactly two years ago).

Anyway, this is one of those things that make me optimistic.

Writers, Alzheimer, Death

2008-03-19T18:00:00.004Z

In the past 24 hours, two great writers died.

Arthur C. Clarke: a giant in the SF field. Not much I can add to the countless obituaries and appreciations, only a few personal notes. Although I read much more of his novels later, the ones I read first -- at the impressionable age in my early teens -- were also the famous ones: 2001: A Space Odyssey and Rendezvous with Rama. I saw the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, and while I didn't understand much of it at that time, it did make an enormous impression.

Even if he didn't invent it, Clarke was -- in his time -- the very best practitioner of 'sense of wonder': his best works imbued with an inherent pining for progress, and an overarching impression of awe, a transcendental quality if you like.

Hugo Claus (English Wiki): A Belgian, multi-talented artist (although he was mainly a writer) who wrote poems, short stories, novels, plays, screenplays. He directed movies and he painted. He was one of the Flamish writers I enjoyed very much when I read a lot of Dutch literature in my student days (along with Louis Paul Boon and Hugo Raes).

Hugo Claus suffered from Alzheimer's, and he had requested euthanesia -- according to Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant "he didn't want to suffer a long and very painful end like his father had." So he chose his moment of death.

Which leads me to Terry Pratchett, who has been diagnosed with a rare form of Alzheimer's. I am a big Pratchett fan, and while I'm an atheist and don't believe in fate, in this case it's almost as if the world tries to tell me something:

Match It For Pratchett.

I donated $50.

Optimism in SF: Is It Dead?

2008-03-09T13:09:00.019Z

On the one hand, this might seem a somewhat belated reaction to Jason Stoddard's blog posts "Strange and Happy" and "More Strange and Happy". On the other hand, my column in the BSFA's magazine for writers, Focus, published on January 2007, was about exactly the same topic. It is a recurring one.

So, to show where I stand for those outside the BSFA, I'm reposting it here:

Let’s face the future with a smile

In my first column for Focus under Martin McGrath’s stewardship (and thanks to Simon Morden for the previous years), I’d like to start with a challenge.
In the last couple of years, SF short stories have been predominantly dark and pessimistic. Not all of them – there are obvious exceptions, like for instance Jason Stoddard’s “Winning Mars” (IZ #196) – but the majority most definitely is. I was discussing this with the afore-mentioned Jason Stoddard, and we agree that it’s almost as if it’s forbidden to write an uplifting story.
Problem is, that writing a convincing optimistic story is difficult, very difficult. Or, to quote Gardner Dozois: “As someone who has written post-apocalyptic stuff myself, I can tell you that it IS easier. It's easier to write about how the current world went wrong than it is to come up with believable ways how the current world is going to survive and prosper (to say nothing of changing in unexpected ways).”
For example, High Country News (HCN) magazine put out a call to submissions for the 2006 Summer Reading Issue, calling for a short story that showed how things developed for the better in the American Midwest. They already had a dystopian story (Paolo Bacigalupi’s “The Tamarisk Hunter”), and wanted to offset it with an optimistic one, and they were willing to pay well (30 cents a word). “We’re not looking for an idyllic utopia, but a realistic assessment of people and their place in the landscape.” Many stories were sent in, none were taken. Or, to quote their Special Summer Reading Issue’s editorial: “Some interesting glimmers, but no one had a plausible explanation for how we might get from here to there.”
At LACon IV, Paolo Bacigalupi told me that the readers of HCN were both extremely well-known and highly critical about all matters Midwest, so that trying to write a convincing optimistic story about the American Midwest was like trying to pass a fictional story about a Theory of Everything through an editorial board consisting of Albert Einstein, Richard Feynman, and Edward Witten. Well-nigh impossible.
Also, Tor editor Patrick Nielsen Hayden had planned to edit an anthology called ‘Up’, filled with stories about how the future changed for the better. That was back in 2002, and as far as I know that project is still on ice.
Now, I’m not asking you to please the readers of HCN. However, I am getting fed up with all these dark and dystopian stories. I agree with Jason Stoddard when he said that Paolo (Bacigalupi) is a great writer, but that his stories sometimes make me scream in despair, because of their bleakness. And I sincerely wonder if writers *really* like a challenge.
So here it is: write an ambitious story about how the future changes for the better: one that is convincing, as well. As realistic and plausible as you can get it. Then send it my way when I re-open Interzone for email submissions (probably May 2007, but keep an eye on our website and Ralan.com), or to another market. Get it out there.
Of course, this doesn’t mean we should go back to unlimited, naïve optimism of the pulp era, or the 50s. It also means we shouldn’t aim at the romance genre’s HEA (happily ever after) as a prerequisite. No: we live in the 21^st Century, so give me a 21^st Century story. Let it be grounded in the real, but a real that is more than just nihilistic, cynic, diffident, or disinterested. The progress can be incredibly hardfought, the progress can be met with all possible resistance, have setbacks, and all. But in the end, let there be some kind of progress.
In short, give me a gritty pollyanna, and show me it’s not an oxymoron.
And, while we’re at it, let it be ambitious. Joe Sixpack getting a better job is trivial. Jane Doe winning an office argument is boring. Reach for the sky: try to find at least a partial solution, a partly positive development from the great problems of our time. You could do worse than reading through Edge’s article “What Are You Optimistic About? Why?”, where some of the greatest minds of our time answer exactly that question. Obviously, Jason Stoddard and I are not the only ones who are tired of this trend of depressive thinking.
Don’t be a part of the problem, be a part of the solution. Write that story: it’ll be a hard, enormously hard. But the reward is phenomenal. Be inspired, and then be an inspiration. Let’s face the future with a smile.

So, has this little 'call to arms' generated some upbeat fiction sent to Interzone? Well, judging from what I've seen so far the response is decidedly less than overwhelming. Not sure why, but here are three guesses:

Writers only like 'easy' challenges, not truly 'complex' ones. For example, if a well-known editor says he hates elves, then writers jump out of the woodwork with elf stories just to prove him he's wrong. However, ask them to do something that actually challenges their own assumptions -- a convincing upbeat story, or a convincing near-future story, let alone a combination of the two -- then the utmost majority logs off. Too hard.
The reasoning of 'How can you write an upbeat story in the current dark en depressing political and economic climate?'. Well, I like to think that good SF tries to be ahead of the curve, and that it tries to lead instead of follow, and that it might try to set a good example (and not *only* dystopias as dire warnings: if something's done to death...). Silly me for thinking that.
SF actually likes to wallow in self-despair, and loathes getting out of its self-imposed ghetto. Nothing worse than 'normal' -- or even young -- people being attracted to it, right?

Now, if there is a publisher out there interested in doing an SF anthology of upbeat stories, then I am hereby volunteering to edit it. Just goes to show I'm an optimist at heart.

(Side note: maybe we should become Hispanic.)