science fiction – Page 44

I feel the need to who-viate

Published on September 23, 20122 Comments

Of course Doctor Who is no more than it wants to be, light Saturday evening sci-fi entertainment for the whole family, glitzy and fun, good enough for the hour it takes to watch it. Worrying about whether it should be anything more than this, at this point in time, is useless; it’s pretty clear its creative staff isn’t really interested. Therefore this post is really only for my own amusement, a short examination of what’s wrong with New Who without any expectation that it will ever change.

Last night’s episode was emblematic of New Who’s failings. It had an intriguing premise (little black cubes show up in their billions all over the world simultaneously, then do nothing. The doctor is intrigued, then bored, buggers off to go gallivanting across the universe, leaving the Ponds to deal with Real Life as opposed to Doctor Life, then almost a year later Things Start to Happen and the alien invasion really starts, only it turns out to be more of a weeding than an invasion, with some new alien baddy wanting to get rid of the human plague. In other words, starts off interesting, ends up being yet another overtly complicated alien plan easily spoiled by the doctor waving his sonic screwdriver around for a few seconds.

It’s also fairly incoherent, as the promise made in the trailer above, of the doctor coming to stay for a year just isn’t true, while the plot depends on some fairly big coincidence (the human transmitter needed to boast the signal from the alien ship to the cubes just happens to hang around the very same hospital as Rory works) to resolve itself and some of the bad guys’ actions (kidnapping people into their ship) just don’t make sense if their aim was extermination in the first place. All the fx, banter, witty asides and clever touches do only so much to cover this up even when watching.

In that regard it’s almost the opposite of the old Who, which for the most part was stodgy rather than glitzy, with low budget wobbly sets and cardboard monsters being made up for by good writing and acting, as well as more room to tell a story, not having to depend on just a one hour show to tell it, but being able to take four to six half hour episodes instead. that way the suspense of the little black boxes could’ve been build up and resolved more gradually, more in the background while the doctor went on other adventures, dealing with life on Earth while waiting for them to do their stuff…

Fandom should get its act together

Published on September 14, 2012Leave a comment

To cut a long story short: at Readercon Genevieve Valentine got (sexually) harassed by what turned out to be a high powered sf fan (don’t laugh). Readercon having a zero tolerance policy for that behaviour was supposed to ban him permanently, but decided to make it only a two year ban for reasons. Once Genevieve went public with the verdict and her disappointment about it, the inevitable internet outrage firestorm happened and it got changed to the lifetime ban it should’ve been in the first. In the process the problems fandom has with sexual harassement were highlighted once again, with various cons examinating their own processes for dealing with this sort of toxic behaviour. A good development all round, right? Perhaps, but it did take its toll on Genevieve, still dealing with fallout like this two months later:

You will find out that, seven weeks after a “sincerely regretful” admission of his behavior at Readercon, your harasser was put in a position of power at a con, overseeing volunteers. He cornered a woman to talk about how hard this has been on him; he spoke inappropriately to a woman while bartending a party, to the point that a stranger intervened.

You will see some people are wary of these reports, because they think that, having been named, the harasser’s behavior was under scrutiny. (That this should be an advantage of identifying harassers, or that any harasser could avoid censure by not harassing women, is, as of press time, not under discussion there.)

The fact that a known harasser can just stroll into another high profile voluntering position is depressing enough, but more so is the idea that so many people are wary of believing further accusations against him, for fear of, what, some sort of crusade against him, of women getting their kicks by inventing abuse and see him as an easy target? The first can be explained if nto excused by ignorance, the second seems more like a wilful denial, where it’s more important to absolutely exclude the possibility of a false positive than it is to believe the women coming forward with their own stories of harassement. I’m all for giving people the benefit of the doubt, but not when they proven already they can’t be trusted and have done nothing to remedy that.

The more I learn (secondhand) about how sexism, but also racism or transphobia and homophobia, operates, the more it becomes self evident how important it is to believe the victims when they report harassement, or it continues. Fandom as a whole still needs to learn that, though it is slowly getting better (I hope).

Oh fandom, please stop disappointing me.

Published on September 11, 2012Leave a comment

When I first discovered it fandom seemed so exotic, yet welcoming. That was old skool fandom, written sf only, which as far as I was concerned was the only fandom. These were my people and I felt safe there. But as has become clear, should have been clear for years if not decades if I had paid attention, that safety is relative. A white bloke like me? Little problems fitting in, but as racefail has shown, as various groping incidents have shown, it may be different for women or people of colour. Fandom is slowly, haltingly grasping for improvements, getting to grips with the idea that yes, it does have to care about racism, sexism, homo and transphobia and so on.

There is a lot of resistance to this idea however, best symbolised in the following quote from the somewhat shit stirring Overheard from the Smof Mailing List Tumblr, taking anonymous quotes from a convention runners mailing list:

“What really disturbs me even more is a rather marked generational divide, again, particularly around the sexual harassment. The most horrific abuse I’ve seen, and experienced, has come from thirty-somethings, roughly. Their eagerness to see and punish harassment worries and befuddles me. I wonder if we’re beginning to see the bitter fruit of helicopter parents and/or the notion that safe spaces are possible. (This latter is a hot button topic for me. No space can be made safe. Safer perhaps, but … I just want to say that I have never felt unsafe at an sf con and am completely boggled by the whole notion.)”

Sometimes it does look like an entire generation of older, entitled, largely white middeclass male fans have to die off before we can get any real progress going, but then I remember Frederik Pohl.

Double Vision — Tricia Sullivan

Published on September 4, 2012Leave a comment

Cover of Double Vision

Double Vision
Tricia Sullivan
377 pages
published in 2005

Karen “Cookie” Orbach’s life seems fairly mundane when looked at from the ouside: she hasa job with the Foreign Markets Research Division at Dataplex Corp, does karate as a hobby and a weightloss exercise, has no boyfriend or partner but does has a cat, eats too much out of stress and for comfort, reads a lot of science fiction and fantasy. The thing is, Cookie is psychic and while she did offer her services to the police, who believes an overweight Black woman reading too much Anne McCaffrey? Luckily Dataplex did see her potential and engaged her as a Flier, somebody who can see what’s happening in the Grid, an alien world Cookie can see when she watches television, where see can monitor the progress of the military expedition there and work as a reconnaissance flier for Machine Front, which coordinates the offensive.

Cookie’s mundane even boring life stands in shrill contrast to the dangerous glamour of the Grid. Despite being only a passive observer there, it is much more real to her, much more interesting. It matters, while her routine life outside of it doesn’t. It’s a feeling that any science fiction or fantasy fan can recognise, that idea that whatever fantasy world floats your boat is more important than what happens in real life, but for Cookie that fantasy world is real — or is it?

Be disappointed in Heinlein all over again

Published on August 23, 2012Leave a comment

If there really was one taboo subject in the old Usenet days of discussing science fiction, it was doubting the genius of Robert Heinlein. there were always acolytes and fanboys aplenty to explain away the homophobia, misogyny or racism that cropped up again and again in his work, or excuse the flawed logic or inconsistencies that could be found in them. Times have changed though and as new generations of sf readers have grown up, Heinlein has lost much of his former prominence in science fiction. Which means there has been room to start seeing the real Heinlein, not the idealised picture his fans have build up around him.

Ironically, it’s the self same fans who are helping to tear this picture down, as they are the only ones dedicated enough to publish things like a never send letter to F. M. Busby about freedom and race relations (PDF, starts at page 68). It’s full of gems like this:

Nor do I feel responsible for the generally low state of the Negro—as one Negro friend pointed out to me; the lucky Negroes were the ones who were enslaved. Having traveled quite a bit in Africa, I know what she means. One thing is clear: Whether one speaks of technology or social institutions,
“civilization” was invented by us, not by the Negroes. As races, as cultures, we are five thousand years, about, ahead of them. Except for the culture, both institutions and technology, that they got from us, they would still be in the stone age, along with its slavery, cannibalism, tyranny, and utter lack of the concept we call “justice.”

Which is straight out of any angry white nerd’s rant against political correctness ever written. So when was it written? 1964.