Kevin W. Reardon wanted to be a well-known writer. He is. He doesn't seem to have gotten the message though -- after telling an editor who gave him a negative review should kill himself and his cat -- that really, not all publicity is good publicity. Now he's moved on to calling up and harassing bloggers who pan him.  I swear, he must log onto the information highway using the short keyboard.

So, I've always been a bit bemused by the fascination that SF writers have with Galactic Empires. But just now, something new grabbed my attention. We all know that in history, there's been a number of empires -- some of the more famous and powerful ones in fact -- have been headed by women: Elizabeth, Victoria, Catherine the Great, and so on. But here's the question: in SF literature, story, can one name an interstellar empire run by an Empress?

(note: planetary empires, of the sort headed by the beautiful queen just waiting to be impressed by a strapping Earthman don't count)

Hmm...I honestly can't think of any. And what does this say about Science Fiction and gender?

edit: My beautiful wife did point out a female GE empress: the Ahb empire in the anime/novels Banner of the Stars.

So, Mark Charan Newton has posted the latest iteration of the game SF fans like to play: doing a pre-death post mortum as to why Science Fiction (particularly hard SF literature) isn't as insanely popular as it was in the past. Since I've been hearing this sort of stuff for over fifteen years, I have little patience for this whinging, but I'll try.

In his article, Newton hits on all the Usual Suspects:

1. More women than men read books. And evidently, women's brains are unable to understand the complex concepts of Science Fiction.

2. Culture has caught up with our imagination: in other words, we're living in the future, and why bother reading Asimov or Analog, when you can read New Scientist...which is actually a SF magazine under false pretenses.

3. Literary fiction is eating up SF: Those villainous authors who get themselves placed in the general lit section of the bookstore are killing SF.

4. Modern Fantasy readers have seen Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings, and have thus lost the capacity for a literature of ideas.

From my perspective the big, Number one major mistake that Newton makes (Besides considering Warhammer 40K SF instead of Fantasy) is that he insists on blaming external factors for the decline in SF. He refuses to consider the point that the traditional SF genre itself has a number of problematic elements. For one thing, much of the corpus of the subgenre it is extremely badly written; it has terrible characterization, simplistic plotting, atrocious use of conventions and voice...in short, it's bad literature. In fact the whole "Literature of ideas" nomenclature is basically sleight of hand, where we're supposed to be so enraptured by the concepts that we don't pay attention to the obvious flaws in the writing.

If there's any aspect that the greater presence of women readers has had an effect, it's the problem that SF has pretty much been a "boys club" for fifty years, reflecting the interests and views of a select group of elitist white males. It can be argued that relatively few women are going to be interested in how the bronze-thewed heroic spaceman triumphs in trampling the alien culture through dint of his superior intellect, and wins the beautiful woman to be his bride (or at least gets to boink her). When you have allegedly modern writers like SM Stirling talking about how once you take electricity away women will happily go back to being domestic slaves, when you have writers like Niven and Zelazney and Heinlein and Card regarding women as alien objects that can only be schtupped, not understood...well, that's not going to go over well in a somewhat more egalitarian society. And that's not even taking into account the generally reactionary, ethnocentric, and in many cases downright archaic views that a lot of SF writers have.

In other words, as writer Alastair Reynolds succinctly puts it: "Much of it is rightwing, reactionary crap."Fantasy seems to have a bit of an easier time meeting modern literary standards oddly enough, or rather it doesn't fall back on the "literature of ideas" excuse, and that's why it's been increasing in relative popularity.

I honestly don't know what to think of this job offer, as seen on Craigslist:

Looking For WOW ARENA Healer who can also play a DK... (mountain view)

---

Date: 2009-09-17, 4:28PM PDT
Reply to: job-xkhdp-1379738943@craigslist.org ^{[Errors when replying to ads?]}

---

I need to hire a person to play World of Warcraft with me. This person must be at least a Rival+ in arena healing and be able to assist me in getting to arena rating of 2000+. You will need to be able to play at least 3hrs per day during the week and 5hrs over the weekend. You will also need to be able to play a DK to farm honor for items. You *MUST* be trustworthy, helpful, have vent WITH MIC, and not have an holy-then-tho attitude. I have a priest account but you may have to move your healer over to Eitrigg PVE. Must be able to start ASAP (like NOW)!

• Compensation: Pay is $50.00 (USD) per hour played and it goes up to $100 (USD) per hour played after rating of 1850 plus a bonus of up to $5000 (USD) for a rating of 2350
• Telecommuting is ok.
• This is a part-time job.
• This is a contract job.
• OK to highlight this job opening for persons with disabilities
• Principals only. Recruiters, please don't contact this job poster.
• Please, no phone calls about this job!
• Please do not contact job poster about other services, products or commercial interests.

I honeslty don't know what to think about this job offer: whether to be amazed at someone so obsessed with wow (and yet so estranged from online friends) that they need to hire a healer, to regard it with a cynical "nice work if you can get it" attitude...or to gnashh my teeth because I no longer have a WoW account.

The 2010 California Marriage Protection Act would follow up on Prop 8, by amending the state constitution to ban divorce in the State of California.  According to the author John Marcotte, this would be the best way to defend traditional marriage, and naturally all the people who voted for Prop. 8 will vote for this one, since they really just want to defend marriage.  After all, voting for Prop. 8 and not 2010CMPA would make them a bunch of homophobic hypocrites right?

The only problem with this joke is it may actually get on the ballot, and hen we'll end up with divorce being illegal in California.  And then we'll be dealing with swarms of Republicans screaming because they suddenly can't divorce...hm.  Maybe Mr. Marcotte has something here.

I just received a message from "Eventbrite" saying that I can now access online for Pacificon game material, saying in big letters:

Courtesy of bad_rpers_suck , we have an example of both a crypto-racist being pwned, AND an example of why one shouldn't rely on Wikipedia for all your information on the world.

With love from Zimbabwe

This is why I keep reading bad_rpers_suck; the delightful smell of schadenfreud in the morning.

(Nicked from James Nicoll's blog)

So to my mind, the big qestion about the Metabolists is this: was it a major post-modernist movement in architecture based around the idea of "large scale, flexible and extensible structures that enable an organic growth process"?




Or are they just architects who played too much with Leggos(tm)?





You decide!

The following video remix of Buffy the Vampire Slayer meets Twilight is interesting, not only for the editing and humor, but also because as a mash-up, it's compare and contrast as social commentary. It really points out the creepy nature of Edward's advances that Twilight fans tend to handwave away, and in the process, does more to comment on the misogynist nature nature of the horror genre than Buffy the TV series seemed to.

And oh yeah, it's pretty funny as well.

( Watch Video )

This thread on the "Bad_rpers_suck community reminded me of why I don't like the pastiche setting of  Legend of 5 Rings; the random mashing together of Chinese and Japanese elements just bugs me.   The best I can compare it to, is this:

"If the Cold War was done in the style of Legend of Five Rigs, the "Usa" and the "Ussr" would be major rival clans in the British Empire, engaging in massive amounts of courtly intrigue to gain influence over the King of England, Maria Stephanopolis-Brazil  .  Which clan will gain influence over the Porcelain Throne?  Check our card game to find out! " 

And of course the most powerful military weapon in the armies of the Empire would be the Walther PPK.  Families would hand their weapons down for generations, going back hundreds of years.  Head hurting yet?  I can go on....

So the other night, right before bed we were sleepily trying to remember where the line "stab you through your computer monitor" or some such came from.  We couldn't quite remember...I thought it was from a Penny Arcade comic or something, but I wasn't sure.

So today, five minutes with Google answered this Very Important Question.  It actually originally came from some unnamed IRC chat years ago, and the IMPORTANT thing is the context:.
So as you see, this was no mere random bit of misanthropy- this statement was provoked.  He's really talking about justified stabbing in the face. 

And now you know, most of the story.  Thank you Google.

That is, I can't decide which are more annoying: the gamers who believe they are real-life ninjas, or the gamers that believe they are real-life vampires.

Maybe I should do a poll on this.

Caged from a discussion on worst movie endings, this is a bit specialized: what movie adaption took a great ending to a book, and screwed it up? That is, at what point did you gape at the movie and scream "WRONG!"

For me? There's so MANY candidates, but for the one that made the worst impression, the one that made me realize that the studio just didn't care about the authors idea, we'll have to go back about thirty years or more. Back to a film I saw in school. Back to a grade school English project.

Back to "My Side of the Mountain".

<lj-cut text="The book was cool!">

The resourceful Sam Gribley runs away from home to live on a mountainside his family owns. In the process we get detailed descriptions of how he survives, and in the process learns independence, makes a house out of a tree stump, and tames a pet falcon named Frightful. In the end, his parents visit him, and decide to move out to the mountain with him. It's a great example of a kid developing independence, and parents accepting his decisions.


<lj-cut text="The movie though...">
A hunter shoots Frightful the hawk, and Sam decides to abandon his camp and go back home.

I mean seriously....what the FUCK!? Was Paramount so afraid of lawsuits from the parents of kids who would also go out in the wilderness, that they had to completely reverse the meaning of the movie? The book has adults accepting the kid's counterculture ways, and adapting to it; the movie has the kid abandoning his independent ways and returning to civilization.


So basically, we had an inspiring book turned into a depressing movie that was one more step in making me the cynic I am today. Bummer.

It's not quite a social fallacy, but it's one that I've seen often enough. Some fan sees something he doesn't like in an upcoming movie, and taking inspiration from by the old Trek fan campaign that kept the original series on TV for a season, he believes that the power of fans opinions can make or break a major production. I've seen it time and time again, in fan reactions to films ranging from Star Trek, to Star Wars, to Lord of the Rings: it usually involves some statement about how no true fan will go to see the movie, and they will get all of their friends to boycott it as well.

In fact, they usually resemble statements like this one I saw today:



Oddly enough, I've never seen one of these threats of mass action have an effect. But these fans never seem to stop believing that they have a power of numbers that just doesn't exist.

Or to be more accurate, an Israeli defense company goes pseudo-Bollywood in a video for the Indian defense ministry's annual air show. The result...is...not good. We have the flower -draped missiles, a George Michael clone for the male singer and the desultory dancers, but really what brings on the pain is the refrain: Dinga dinga dee!

Be careful watching this, lest one's love for Bollywood be damaged.

( Dinga dinga dee! )

Kudos to james_nicoll , who has made the sacrifice of not only watching the late, unlamented series Starlost, he's giving us reviews of the entire series. He'll freely admit that these are more like summaries, and that his reviews don't really convey the cheap sets, lousy special effects, and wooden acting. But his reviews at least are entertaining to read, especially when he gets more sarcastic in the later reviews.

And for those of you who really, really REALLY have to see the series that James is reviewing? Don't. It's bad. It makes old Doctor Who serials look like Bladerunner in comparison.

No really, you don't want to do it. Turn away. Read James' review and be content.

( OK, OK, but don't say I din't warn you... )

Over on io9, there was a discussion about bad science leading to good stories...which for some reason had a picture of Jeri Ryan involved. this lead of course to comments about her being biologically impossible, or a silicone-based cyborg.



But really, the article should have been about bad science leading to bad stories...because never mind the cheesecake factor of Jeri ryan, what's always ticked me off about the Borg is that they are so utterly STUPID. Yeah, this race of beings tht absorbes the cultures and technologies of a thousand civilizations has the strategic sense of a three-year old.

The ironic thing is, if the Borg were written with any sense, if they weren't so artificially stupid, Jeri Ryan would probably be the model for most of them, not the walking tin men. Smart Borg wouldn't come on like B-grade communists in their clunky, evil-looking cubes. They'd have sleek, cool-looking ships, and they'd have advance PR involving Jeri and equally hunked out guys, smiling and welcoming. They'd be cooperative, helpful, and have a message.

"Hi, we're the Borg. How would you like to expand your capabilities a thousandfold? How would you like to have the knowledge of a thousand civilizations? How would you like to never be lonely again? Try us: we're the future, and we're here for you." And of course anyone who voluntarily joins the Collective would also be smiling, and so happy they'd never want to go back.  really. 

Or more simply, "Hi, I'm Seven of Nine. Fly me."

But that's the difference between stupid SF and smart SF; the latter actually requires thinking about the concept a little bit. Stupid SF is fast and easy, and it's not hard for it to touch on a concept in a shallow manner. SF that actually gets you to think about something requires more effort than most scriptwriters are willing to give.
.

Is Warren Ellis capable of writing any character that's NOT an asshole?

I mean seriously, as far as I can tell, the standard Warrren Ellis character is a massive jerk (add breasts for female, penis for male), who's attitude is supposedly tolerable solely because they are always right. I mean, constantly, totally, utterly right. Even when they admit that they have no idea what they are doing, they are completely right.

Tell me people- has he ever done a character that doesn't sound like a gamer pundit on usenet, circa 1995? Inquiring minds want to know.

So over on Comics Should be Good, the question has arisen over the decline of the internationally-themed group.  Using the Blackhawks as an example, the author notes it's a pretty simple concept; you have each character from a separate country.  In the case of the Blackhawls, it was all of the countries occupied by the Axis.  The author suggests that the stereotyping involved in those groups lead to their disappearence, except for a few international groups like The Authority.

As for me?

The inner cynic in my quietly points out that back in the day, it was probably easier to do an international team that was acceptable to american fan tastes: several white guys (and possibly one girl) from America or Europe, and one grotesque ethnic stereotype from a non-European country. Today one has to deal with the ever-increasing knowledge that a truly international team should really be mostly non-white; Even for hardcore comic fans it’s harder and harder to disguise the fact that America and Europe doesn’t comprise 90% of the world’s population. Of course the simple alternative would be to actually make a superteam that was largely non-white. Yeah, like THAT’S going to happen.

I mean, look at how far we’ve come: Original Blackhawk had several guys from America and Europe, and one Chinese guy. Contrast this to the international superteam Authority that was referenced above, which has…several white guys and gals from America and Europe…and one Chinese woman.

You’ve come a long way, baby.