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Greetings:
And welcome to the latest issue of the Pyr ® newsletter. We're a few days late with this, I know. You can blame Mike Resnick, who delivered his manuscript for Starship: Rebel the very day I'd set aside for newsletter writing, and who lured me in with the first big spaceship battle scene he's ever written (or, as he puts it "First protracted battle I've done in 40 years, and the last one was with swords.") And well, it lives up. (And reminds me in a way of the big Cardassian assault on DS9, not that Mike would know what I was talking about.) Anyway, I thought the last Starship novel, Starship: Mercenary, was the best of the three thus far, and one of my top Resnick books of all time, and this one is even better. You'll see what I mean next Christmas. In the meantime... |
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A Whole New Look...
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 There are a whole host of things going on that are worth calling out. First of all, David Louis Edelman has just unvieled a whole new-look for his website, in support of the forthcoming debut of MultiReal. David is hands-down the most savvy online self-promotor I've ever met -- I pretty much used the old site as a How To model for beginning authors and bloggers -- and this is a major overhaul. So, all you authors, marketers, publicists out there - study it, analyse it, slavishly immitate it. And all you readers, well, there's 30 or 40k of content on the site, a fair percentage of it original, with more on the way.
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We're Not Gonna Take It!
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Meanwhile, Sean Williams has announced
he's boycotting Hollywood movies with dumb-as-rocks science in it. This
is pretty much in response to a private email I sent him and a few
others about Danny Boyle's film Sunshine, which I found to be beautiful
nonsense. (The film is basically a love letter to 2001, with a bit of plot from 2010 and Event Horizon
grafted on. Like a lot of Hollywood, the effects are amazing, the
acting top-notch, it substitutes depth for some pretty sounding
mumbo-jumbo, and the ending is astoundingly silly.)
Anyway, Sean says
that "From this moment henceforth, I refuse to see a serious science
fiction movie (i.e. one we're supposed to take seriously, rather than,
say, Fantastic Four) in which scientific knowledge and the people employed in the pursuit thereof are needlessly treated badly.
"In other words, I'm boycotting science fiction movies that contain
overtly crap science unless there's some kind of pay-off for putting up
with it.
"I don't think I'm being unreasonable. Is it so wrong to want
movie-physics (say) to bear at least a passing resemblance to the
physics surrounding us in our everyday lives? Or to wish that
scientists were rounded characters, with the same depth of being that
other characters in the movie enjoy? Failing both of these, could we at
least have something else in exchange? Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind explored powerful and thought-provoking themes through extraordinary direction and performances. Armageddon (like so many others in its league) did not.
I'm amazed that we settle for anything else. No one would watch a
thriller that wasn't thrilling or a romantic comedy with unlikable
leads. A movie set in post-war Italy wouldn't include the Grand Canyon
and icebergs just because the director felt like it. Why should the
relationship between science and science fiction be any different?
There's enough sense-of-wonder to be had out there without getting
things so terribly, terribly wrong--and good special effects are the
standard now, not the major drawcard they used to be.
Movies that let me down this way drive me mad. Since I don't want to be
mad, I'm going to stop supporting the Big Dumb SF Blockbuster industry.
No one in Hollywood will notice, I'm sure, but I'll feel better for it."
If only I could be that brave...
Incidentally, I just read Sean's Cenotaxis, a short novel (only a 128 pages) that I read on a recent p*** trip up to Buffalo to visit the parent company. You hear over and over that the novella is the perfect length for SF, and while this is technically a little longer than that, it brilliantly illustrates the point. It's set in the same universe as Williams' Astropolis trilogy, but can be read as a stand-alone (I did; I've yet to read Saturn Returns). I don't want to say much about it, but it's one of those beautiful SF set pieces where you have a prisoner and his jailor arguing in a cell -- only the prisoners unique relationship with time (think Slaughterhouse Five) means we get to visit a lot of other locations. Really, it's one of the best things I've read in years, and at 128 pages and $9.95, what have you got to lose. And we didn't even publish it, though if it leads you to pick up The Crooked Letter next, I won't complain, right?
Anyway, if Sean's boycott of dumb Hollywood means he has more time to write books like this, we all win! Meanwhile, this picture, swiped from his website, is submitted without comment:
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SFSignal on Short Fiction
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 SFSignal.com runs a regular feature called Mind Meld in which they ask a handful of SF&F notables a question. They've been good enough to solicit my opinion a time or two, and I'm always happy to sound off. This week's question doesn't involve me directly, but it's a topic dear to my heart. I found MIND MELD: Is the Short Fiction Market in Trouble? to be quite interesting and think you will too. Of course, I'm doing my part for the cause.
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And now a word from our sponsor...
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 My parent company, Prometheus Books, have put a few titles out recently that might be of interest to us SFnal types. The Coming Convergence, by no less than Analog editor Stanley Schmidt, is one of those looks at the way that key technologies like computing and biotech are going to come together to radically change everything. Stan looks at how this has happened in the past, and then projects forward to tell us how wonderful and/or terrifying everything's rapidly becoming. I haven't gotten my copy yet, but I'm looking forward to it.
 Then there's Feminist Philosophy and Science Fiction, edited by Judith A. Little, which features stories by such notables as Margaret Atwood, Octavia Butler, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Karen Joy Fowler, Ursula K. Le Guin, James Tiptree Jr. and more, along with discussion questions, recommended reading lists, and other material. Subtitled "utopias and dystopias," this anthology is divided into four sections: "Human Nature and Reality," "Dystopias: The Worst of All Possible Worlds," "Separatist Utopias: Worlds of Difference," and "Androgynous Utopias: Worlds of Equality." I've glanced at my copy, and it looks like an interesting book. At the very least, it's one that should be on the radar of anyone attending the forthcoming Wiscon.
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That's it for this issue. I've managed to get through it without overtly plugging my own, so if you like the approach, you can encourage me to do it again by buying a heap o'Pyr books anyway. And hey, look at all the new titles just added to the forthcoming books page. I didn't say a word about them, but they sure seem interesting. As ever, be sure to see the coupon at the bottom of this newsletter, and please feel free to check out our entire catalog and drop by our blog.
Have a Happy New Year,
Lou Anders
Editorial Director, Pyr®
an imprint of Prometheus Books
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