Fantastika – Page 7 – Wis[s]e Words

Rocket Girls — Hōsuke Nojiri

Published on March 22, 2016Leave a comment

Cover of Rocket Girls

Rocket Girls/Rocket Girls: The Last Planet
Hōsuke Nojiri
214/250 pages
published in 1995/1996

Morita Yukari came to the Solomons Islands to look for her long lost father, who disappeared on his honeymoon seventeen years ago, leaving behind her pregnant mother when he went out on a walk to look at the moon. She has little hope of finding him, but feels she has to try after hearing rumours of a Japanese enclave on one of the islands, which led her to Maltide. What she doesn’t know is that the enclave is the Solomon Space Association which is attempting to create a manned rocket capability but having little success with their new booster which keeps going kaboom. So they decide to go back to their older design, but that has less weight lifting capacity so the race is on to shave off as much weight as possible, including from the astronaut. Who promptly flees. Various things happens, Yukari gets caught up in it and when the SSA director sees her, he has the bright idea to turn her into an astronaut — no weight loss needed for a high school girl weighting only fifty kilos.

My schedule at Mancunicon

Published on March 17, 2016Leave a comment

What with it being barely a week before Mancunicon kicks off and the programme having been published, what better time to lists the panels I’ll be appearing on? N-not that I expect people to go to them just of course.

The Year Just Gone and The Year Ahead in Books — Saturday 11:30 – 12:30, Room 8&9 (Hilton Deansgate)

What kind of year was 2015 for the speculative genres? What were the patterns, the trends, the themes? Do the awards shortlists announced so far reflect the year as we read it? And — for a change of pace — what are we looking forward to in 2016?

Johan Anglemark (M), Martin Wisse, Niall Harrison, Nina Allan, E.G. Cosh.

Book Reviews in the Age of Amazon — Sunday 13:00 – 14:00, Deansgate 3 (Hilton Deansgate)

It has become a cliché to say that reviewing has changed in the digital era. In place of relatively few “gatekeeper” reviewers in relatively few venues, we have a commons where anyone can review if they choose – and where, increasingly, simple volume of reviews is a determinant of a book’s success. In a world where reaching the magic number of 50 Amazon reviews can have a significant impact on an author’s career, is reviewing moving from something that anyone can do to something that everyone should do, if they can? What are the implications of such a shift, for the nature of reviews, and for the relationships between readers, authors, and publishers? And who wants to be the party-pooper who brings a favourite author’s star average down?

Chris Kammerud (M), Glyn Morgan, Sarah Pinborough, Martin Wisse.

A Future Europe — Sunday 17:30 – 18:30, Room 6 (Hilton Deansgate)

By the time the Helsinki Worldcon arrives the UK may no longer be a part of Europe in a political sense, but in an artistic sense the two will no doubt continue to mingle. What European characteristics and strands can be identified in British SF? How have European ideas shaped British futures, and vice versa?

Martin Wisse (M), Anna Feruglio Dal Dan, Karo Leikomaa, Christopher Priest, Ivaylo Shmilev.

Note that little “m” after my name? That means I’ll be moderating the panel, which will be a first for me.

Unexpected treasures

Published on December 1, 2015Leave a comment

Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones reference in Dantalian no Shoka

Dantalian no Shoka is a 2011 well written weird mystery anime series with a decidedly bookish bent, set in the nineteen twenties. It stars an ex-World War i fighter pilot who inherits his grandfather’s title and estate, but in return has to take care of his mystical library, which this being an anime, comes in the form of a gothic lolita girl called Dalian. I’ve been watching it off and on for the last couple of days and episode four was a particular delight. Not only was it basically an adaptation of Misery, with a deranged fan keeping a writer prisoner, killing him each day to motivate him to write the proper ending to his trilogy, there was also the shipping war between her and Dalian about which of the characters should end up with whom and as the icing on the cake, a shoutout to Delany right at the start of the episode. Which you just don’t expect to see in an anime, even such a literary one.

A blue screened future

Published on November 17, 20151 Comment

Future Visions: Original Science Fiction Stories Inspired by Microsoft features work by Elizabeth Bear, Greg Bear, David Brin, Nancy Kress, Ann Leckie, Jack McDevitt, Seanan McGuire and Robert J. Sawyer, “also includes a short graphic novel by Blue Delliquanti and Michele Rosenthal, and original illustrations by Joey Camacho” and is available for free from the usual ebook retailers.

An interesting sort of vanity project for Mickeysoft. I would be more excited about it if not for the authors involved, who with the exception of Elizabeth Bear, Ann Leckie and Seanan McGuire are not exactly exciting nor the first ones I think about if I want science fiction writers with a firm grasp of the future. Rather, collectively this group seems to have peaked somewhere around the introduction of Windows 3.11.

Who’d think the kids don’t read their Asimov

Published on November 5, 2015Leave a comment

I really want to argue against Adam-Troy Castro’s argument here that

nobody discovers a lifelong love of science fiction through Asimov, Clarke, and Heinlein anymore, and directing newbies toward the work of those masters is a destructive thing, because the spark won’t happen. You might as well advise them to seek out Cordwainer Smith or Alan E. Nourse — fine tertiary avenues of investigation, even now, but not anything that’s going to set anybody’s heart afire, not from the standing start. Won’t happen.

By objecting that, actually, I so did discover a lifelong love of science fiction through Asimov, Clarke and even Nourse — The Mercy Men was one of the first sf novels I’ve ever read– but considering that happened a good thirty years ago, it’s hardly relevant to what actual young people would read. Even back then, something like I, Robot was several decades old and outdated in its technology and sociological attitudes both, but not so that I noticed as an eight year old reading it for the first time. Almost all children’s fiction I read was like that after all, set in some nebulous present that was clearly not mine: like the Bob Evers series, originally written in the fifties and early sixties. I read all that without caring or noticing much that these were old books, therefore I’m not sure that kids today can’t read in a similar way, even if there are no mobiles or computers in them.

On the other hand, there were a lot less opportunities to find science fiction thirty years ago. We only got cable tv in 1987 or so, our family’s first computer in the same year, no internet until the mid-nineties, etc. etc. There are just so many more ways in which you can get your first taste of science fiction today, that you certainly don’t need to seek out writers who’ve been dead longer than you’ve been alive. On the gripping hand however, some of the young adult stuff I read back then is still being sold today, with little problems though perhaps with some updates.

The rampant sexism and whitebread worldview of much socalled golden age science fiction might be more of a problem. Asimov might still be barely palatable due to his lack of female characters in general, though when they show up, they’re usually awful. The same goes for Clarke, though he was slightly better and few of his characters were well rounded humans anyway. Heinlein? Oy, Heinlein is very much a curate’s egg — parts are excellent, but some are hideous. At this point in time, I don’t think new readers will miss much skipping all these authors in favour of those like Dick, Delany, LeGuin or Russ which had slightly more to offer than just the strength of their ideas.