wisb-Guardian-Express

I think this may be the first time I've shed a tear during a zombie movie.  This short film deserves a feature film adaptation.  The concept is absolutely beautiful:  during a zombie outbreak, an infected father spends his last moments trying to bring is infant daughter to safety.

A+

On a recent episode of the Functional Nerds podcast, Patrick Hester posited that based on the prefix "professional" in "professional writer," those writers who do not make a living as writers technically don't count as pros.  I'm paraphrasing, of course, so I recommend actually listening to the podcast here (the comment appears around the 30-minute mark).  The idea is not a new one.  It falls within the same discussions about who gets to call themselves "writers" or "authors," and who has to suck a bag of too-bads and accept that they don't get to use a fancy label.  And it's likewise tied into the longstanding discussions about the term "professional" within our field, most notably in the fact that what the SFWA considers a "professional" publication has very little to do with whether one actually makes a living as a published writer.

It's from that last line that I'd like to suggest that while it's perhaps accurate to apply "professional writer" only to those who make a living as writers, the material realities of the writing life
make such a determination numerically meaningless.  So few writers actually make a living as writers, and of those that do make a living as such, most of them do so via a variety of writing avenues.  A midlist author of science fiction novels, for example, may fill in the enormous gaps from fiction publications with freelance work (essays, editing, etc.).  The number of authors who actually get to live off a single form of writing (Stephen King, for example, or Neil Gaiman...) comprises such a small number of all published writers out there that using "professional writer" on them alone wouldn't really tell us anything other than "these are the authors who sell enough books to pay a mortgage."  Since a great deal of non-writer folks likewise wouldn't fall within the domain of a "professional" based on how well they do in a given field, I just don't see why the term provides any use value if we apply so selectively.

And that's perhaps the big problem here.  What the hell is a professional writer anyway?  Would Harper Lee count as a professional writer?  She only wrote one book:  To Kill a Mockingbird.  But it sells so many copies every year that I suspect she could live quite comfortably off the various royalties and rights purchases associated with it.  Is she a professional writer?  By the standard of financial value:  yes.  By any other standard of professionalism?  Nope.  Most uses of the term professional apply to those who actually participate in the production of a "thing."  A doctor who has a practice or works at a hospital is a professional.  A practicing lawyer is a professional.  An author who sells one book and nothing else?  Well...

I suppose all of this is essentially a reflection about the state of the field of authorship.  In other fields, one can become a professional by "doing," but in the world of writing, I'm not sure there's an easy measurement for "professional" and "not."  Harper Lee is probably a professional writer, but the standards by which her professionalism would be measured wouldn't apply to someone like, say, Tobias S. Buckell, who still splits his salary between fiction sales and freelance work (I'm not sure how true that is today, though; he used to do these in-depth analyses of his yearly salary, but he's been quite busy lately).  In Hester's assessment, the former is instantly a professional writer; the latter is not.  Why?  What makes the distinction here?  Money can't be the only valuable distinction between the two.  There have to be other factors, too; otherwise, what's the point of calling anyone a professional writer if all you need to do to become one is publish one book and sell millions of copies?

Any thoughts?

This is just the beginning.  I'm going to make an announcement about this very topic after I pass my PhD candidacy exams in September.  For now, however, I'd like to offer a list of films I consider to be "the best" in the SF/F category for the years 2010-2013 (thus far).  By "the best," I mean "films I think are good movies as movies."  A lot of these films were quite popular when they were in theaters, but I'm not concerned by popularity here.  I'm only concerned with what I think are well-written and/or well-produced films.  A film with a thin plot can still be great if it does something more than just throw lots of action at the audience to hide its flaws (this is why you will see no Michael Bay films on the list).

And on that note, I will shut up.

The following are the top 10 SF/F movies released since 2010...for now (this list will change as I start to watch things I missed):

10.  Chronicle (2012)
While I'm not a huge fan of the found-footage film form, occasionally they are done right.  Chronicle is one of those times.  The semi-diary-format superhero story coupled with a narrative about the psychological impact of parental abuse and death stuck with me after I saw it in theaters.  I connected with the main character almost immediately, in part because I've had similar experiences (minus the super powers).  The director also does a pretty damn good job cobbling together the fictive pieces of the main character's film diary, gaps and all.  That earns it a spot on this list.

9.  John Dies at the End (2012)
This movie is weird.  Really weird.  But it's also the kind of brilliant mix of camp and horror that one expects from Don Coscarelli, Jr.  If you haven't seen the film (and like Coscarelli's work), I recommend watching it on Netflix.  I can't describe it to you.  It's, as I said, really freaking weird, and relentless in its descent into insanity.  It's sort of what I'd expect someone who just saw Cthulu to dream as they slowly fall to pieces.  Only John Dies at the End is hilarious, surreal, and dark.

8.  Pacific Rim (2013)
You can learn all about my love for this film here.

7.  Pumzi (released in the U.S. in 2010)
The only short film of this list, Wanuri Kahiu's incredible dystopian film Pumzi took academic circles by storm in 2010.  For such a short work, it manages to bring a lot to the table:  a thoroughly African setting (I suspect there are cultural clues specific to Kahiu's native Kenya, but I know too little about that nation to say for sure); a fascinating post-apocalyptic "green utopian" society; and some interesting uses of technology.  I'd say the film is cliche, but the semi-mystic undertones and the ambiguous final vertical panning shot over a seemingly threatening climate on the other side of the mountains make this one of the best films released in the last three years, if only because I've had some intense discussions about that ending.

6.  Another Earth (2011)
While action and straightforward SF films are wonderful when done right, sometimes a character drama in an SFnal universe can make for exceptional cinematic experiences.  Brit Marling and Mike Cahill's Another Earth uses its SF premise (a planet that looks suspiciously like our own earth appears suddenly in the sky) to provide an extended metaphor about second chances.  The interaction between Rhoda (Marling) and John (William Mapother) as they both come to terms with the horrors of their connected pasts (unbeknownst to John, whose family was killed in a car accident caused by Rhoda) had me captivated all the way through.  And like all good character dramas, the ending provides an ambiguous solution to the primary conflict in the narrative.  It's just a damned good film.

5.  Elysium (2013)
You can find out what I think about this movie here.  I'm likely to write several blog posts about the film, though.  I think it's actually quite an intelligent film, despite all the critics who call it propaganda, stupid, pointlessly utopian, and so on (it is neither of these things).

4.  Hugo (2011)
The only children's film on this list, Hugo's charming story about family and French cinema deserved a lot more love than it got when the awards season came around.  Asa Butterfield's exceptional performance as the title character, along with equally strong performances by Ben Kingsley and Chloe Moretz, added depth to an already exceptional and brilliantly-imagined film.  It most certainly belongs on a top ten list for children's films from the last decade!  For now, I've stuck it here.

3.  Never Let Me Go (2010)
I'm a sucker for Carey Mulligan films, I guess.  This low-key dystopia centralizes the personal growth and development of a trio of clones who will one day have their organs harvested by the British state.  I saw this film for the first time with my sister, and I recall the feeling of dread and horror that arises in the final moments -- feelings that just wouldn't exist without the direct focus on these three characters as characters.  It's not a film for everyone, but I think it's easily one of the best SF/F films ever made.

2.  Cloud Atlas (2012)
This one shouldn't surprise anyone.  The Wachowski sibling's adaptation of David Mitchell's epic novel of the same name didn't get a lot of love from the traditional SF crowd, but I wasn't surprised by that in the slightest.  More critics and viewers loved Prometheus than Cloud Atlas; I think it's fair to say that the former is a steaming pile of glittering shit stained with oils made from petrified dinosaur crap (here's what I really think about that movie...).  Cloud Atlas, however, is an incredible journey into the interconnected lives of individuals existing across various time periods.  Every time I see the film, I make new connections between characters, discover new ambiguities and symbols, and get lost in the lives of its various characters.  I don't know how else to say this, so I'll just be blunt:  Cloud Atlas is the best film of 2012, rivaled by nothing else whatsoever.

1.  Inception (2010)
What?  He picked Inception for his #1?  How typical!

Yes.  Yes I did.  Why?  There are a lot of reasons, really:

1. It's actually quite an amazing work of SF.  The multiple layers (literal and figurative) of the narrative and the almost haunting examination of the human subconscious are part of why this film got the attention it otherwise deserved.
2. It seemed like people couldn't shut up about this film.  Sometimes, the mark of a great film is found in its influence on the conversation surrounding film in general.  Blog posts and articles were consantly being written about the meaning of the symbols (such as the top at the end) in Inception.  Academics were up in arms about all the layers.  For a solid three or four months, this film was all people could talk about.  And rightly so, because...
3. The film is amazing on almost every level (see #1).  Even the music was incredible!

Note:  It's entirely possible that some films have been left off this list because I haven't been able to see them yet.  And how could I?  There have been something like 200 SF/F movies released in the U.S. alone.  Imagine all the Japanese, Chinese, Indian, etc. films we've all completely missed out on!

The fine folks at Flavorwire recently released a list of 50 SF/F films they think everyone should watch (technically, there are 63 titles on the list, since they counted series as one).  I figured it would be fun to turn it into a meme.  So here you go:


BOLD = You've seen it!

1. E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
2. Pan's Labyrinth
3. Moon
4. The Fellowship of the Ring
5. The Two Towers
6. The Return of the King
7. The Princess Bride
8. Labyrinth
9. Men in Black
10. Edward Scissorhands
11. Mad Max
12. Princess Mononoke
13. Spirited Away
14. Gattaca
15. Primer
16. Blade Runner
17. Fantastic Planet
18. The Wizard of Oz
19. The Secret of Roan Inish
20. Dark City
21. The Matrix
22. Time Bandits
23. Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark
24. La Jetée
25. Brazil
26. Metropolis
27. Big Fish
28. Solaris (original)
29. Jurassic Park
30. Alien
31. Aliens
32. Orpheus
33. Dark Star
34. 2001:  A Space Odyssey
35. Avatar
36. Back to the Future
37. Star Wars IV:  A New Hope
38. Star Wars V:  The Empire Strikes Back
39. Star Wars VI:  The Return of the Jedi
40. Close Encounters of the Third Kind
41. A Clockwork Orange
42. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
43. The Fountain
44. Sleeper
45. City of Lost Children
46. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
47. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
48. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
49. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
50. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
51. Harry Potter and the Half-blood Prince
52. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Pt.1
53. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Pt.2
54. The Day the Earth Stood Still (original)
55. Donnie Darko
56. Invasion of the Body Snathers (original)
57. Ghostbusters
58. Being John Malkovich
59. Akira
60. The Terminator
61. Terminator 2
62. Strange Days
63. Serenity

I count 49.  That's not bad, methinks...  How did you do?

Apparently, the following short film is a collaboration between a fashion designer and a photographer.  There's something to be said about the fashion industry giving attention to roleplaying games, I suppose.

In any case, this video is kinda strange and kinda awesome at the same time.  And Elijah Wood has a small part, for what it's worth.

Enjoy.

I've been wildly anticipating the next Neill Blomkamp film for a long while.  Now it's finally here, and I've joined David Annandale and Paul Weimer to talk about it in the current episode of Shoot the WISB.  Go check it out after you see the movie yourself!

On August 11th, Badass Digest released a Trekkie-voted ranked list of all the Star Trek movies to date (plus Galaxy Quest, for some reason).  It's a strange list, to say the least.  Why is Galaxy Quest on there?  Other than the fact that it's a mostly-direct parody of Star Trek, it isn't actually a Star Trek movie.  And why did they stick Star Trek Into Darkness at the end, when it's obviously not the worst film on the list?

OK, so I have a good answer for that last question.  We talked about this a little in a recent Shoot the WISB episode.  Basically, the reversal of the Khan narrative probably came off as a slap in the face to Trekkies.  I even think it smelled disgusting, even though I kind of like the idea of switching things around.  After all, Spock isn't supposed to be an emotional man, so the idea that he'd break down after the supposed death of Kirk adds some weight to the moment.  But...it wasn't handled well.  There wasn't enough character development; the death of Kirk was handled in the way you'd expect a comic book to handle it:  he's dead...wait, no, not really, here's some magic *poof.*  At least in Wrath of Khan, Spock died.  He was dead dead dead.  The film never says "hey, we'll magic him into existence...right at the end."  If you've never seen Search for Spock, you really do think the guy has friggin died.  And that's a big deal.  The audience sometimes needs that slap in the face.

But I digress.  Prepare to be pissed off.  The following is my ranked list of Star Trek movies, minus Galaxy Quest:

12.  Star Trek (you can see why I still hate the film here and here)
11.  Star Trek:  Insurrection (the villains just didn't do it for me; it felt too much like an unnecessarily extended episode of the regular show, and the absurdity of the plot never seemed to gel or follow through for me, despite some nifty action sequences in the end)
10.  Star Trek V:  The Final Frontier (I want to like this film, but too much of this film's central elements are ridiculously underdeveloped; for example, both Sybok and the "god" thing at the end are given almost the same amount of characterization, despite the fact that the latter is only in the film for maybe seven minutes -- we never really know who Sybok is, except that he's kinda nuts)
9.  Star Trek:  Nemesis (there are certainly a lot of problems with this film, most notably in the convoluted plot; however, Tom Hardy does a fantastic job as Shinzon, and Captain Kirk really does almost get sucked dry like a character in a vampire movie, which seemed pretty cool to me)
8.  Star Trek Into Darkness (though I quite enjoy this sequel to Abrams' first ST film, it certainly suffers from reboot-idis; case in point, the fact that the writers could not include Khan in this version of the universe without making annoying and poorly conceived references to the original Wrath of Khan.  More on my thoughts, along with some others, here)
7.  Star Trek:  Generations (I think if I watched this movie again, I'd like it a lot less than I do in my memory; that said, I love the continued development of Data as a character, let alone the fact that this film really does give a lot of closure to the original TNG series -- plus, saucer separation = awesome)
6.  Star Trek III:  The Search for Spock (the one thing the original ST movies did well was comedic development between the principle cast; having Spock's katra, or soul, trapped in McCoy's body pretty much makes for comedic gold.  Add in Christopher Lloyd as the villain and you've got a pretty decent ST film)
5.  Star Trek VI:  The Undiscovered Country (while the villain doesn't have quite the prowess of Khan, his obsession with Shakespeare adds a certain creep factor to this otherwise straightforward political assassination thriller -- overall, I thought it did pretty damn well for itself, particularly considering the political implications of an alliance between the Federation and the Klingon Empire)
4.  Star Trek:  First Contact (the Borg are probably my favorite villain species in the entire ST franchise; the best part of this film, however, involves seeing humanity make that first stretch to the stars and all that comes with it)
3.  Star Trek:  The Motion Picture (I know a lot of people hate this movie, but I've always found it infinitely fascinating; it kept with the original narrative of exploration at the heart of the show, and the discovery itself was so cool)
2.  Star Trek II:  The Wrath of Khan (you all know why this is in the top two slots; everyone loves this movie)
1.  Star Trek IV:  The Voyage Home (my grandma loved this movie, and so she made me watch it...a lot.  Obviously, it still has a special place in my heart, and it played a crucial role in my childhood love of whales and the ocean.  Also:  the movie still makes me laugh)

And here's my ranked list of Star Trek TV shows:
6.  Star Trek:  the Animated Series (it exists, and that's good enough for me)
5.  Star Trek:  Deep Space Nine (there are aspects of this show I really like, but the fact that it takes until season two for anything interesting to happen and that some of the actors are just horrible makes me unable to move this higher on the list)
4.  Star Trek:  the Original Series (it's classic, I know, but I didn't grow up on the original series, so I can only put it in the #4 slot because of its classic nature -- don't kill me)
3.  Star Trek:  Enterprise (everyone hates this one for some reason; I liked the attempt to have a single narrative riding through everything and the focus on humanity as the new kid on the proverbial block.  I'm also in agreement with one of my professors, who suggested that what makes this series so interest is the fact that humanity basically gets its ass handed to it...a lot.  That makes for a lot of interesting narratives)
2.  Star Trek:  Voyager (Captain Janeway is my favorite starship captain in the entire ST franchise; I also love the use of the Borg later in the series...and Neelix makes me happy.  There are certainly some plot issues here or there, but there are some fascinating explorations of the consequences of war and other social issues in this series.  I loved it when it was on the air in my younger years)
1.  Star Trek:  the Next Generation (the series introduced us to the Borg, who may be the greatest ST villain ever, and it was a damn good anthology-style series, with some cool stories and characters; it was also the first ST series to give us a genuinely non-humanoid character who had to grow piece by piece from start to finish -- oh, and there's a great episode where Geordi basically falls in love with a computer simulation...without brain manipulation)

And that's my list.  You're free to threaten death in the comments.

Open Road Media is running a sort of awareness campaign / sale for novels which essentially defy categorization.  There are quite a few interesting books on the list, so in case you're interested in that sort of thing, here are the details:

Jonathan Carroll. Edward Whittemore. Robert R. McCammon. James Morrow. All of these authors have written novels that defy our understanding of conventional genres. More than just literary fiction, these novels rejoice in the fantastic and the sublime.

Since their initial publication, many of these stories have been categorized as science fiction, fantasy, magical realism, and “other.”

This week, Open Road Media is celebrating these tales of the in-between. Novels that, for one reason or another, refuse to be categorized.

We encourage you to take a look at the ten ebooks we’ve selected and expand your conception of genre fiction. The titles with the asterisk* will be on sale for $3.99 or less until August 20th.

1. The Summer Isles* by Ian R. MacLeod
2. From the Teeth of Angels by Jonathan Carroll
3. Black Light by Elizabeth Hand
4. Sinai Tapestry* by Edward Whittemore
5. The Eighth Square* by Herbert Lieberman
6. Expiration Date* by Tim Powers
7. Mine by Robert R. McCammon
8. The Broken Land* by Ian McDonald
9. The Only Begotten Daughter by James Morrow
10. The Long Trial of Nolan Dugatti by Stephen Graham Jones

Cross genre boundaries and join the conversation this week. Feel free to share your thoughts on your site, or contribute to ours. Even our authors are speaking out. “The real reason I write across genre lines,” explains Stephen Graham Jones,” “is because I want to see cool stuff.”

You can find details about the books on sale here.

There's an interesting question behind all of this:  what are some of your favorite genre-bending stories?  And so that's the question I'll leave you all with:

What are some of your favorite genre-bending novels, short stories, or films?

Some time back, I talked about the path I hope the studios will take for a film adaptation of the Justice.  Since such an adaptation will naturally include popular characters like Wonder Woman and Flash, I felt compelled to talk about why the studios had to approach the whole venture carefully to avoid the pitfalls of camp that continue to plague the characters.  Now, I feel compelled to talk a little bit more about Wonder Woman, and it's all Tansy Rayner Roberts' fault.

Last month, Tansy Rayner Roberts took a stab at the reasons why people think Wonder Woman won't work in film.  I agree with Roberts that most, if not all, of the reasons are pretty dumb, especially the argument that movies with female superheroes are stupid.  Nope.  Nope nope nope nope nope.  There are certainly bad movies which include female superheroes, but those movies suck because they are bad movies, not because you're being asked to root for the ladies.  Not surprisingly, people do actually go to movies involving female superheroes.  Shocking, I know.  I mean, how the frak is that even possible?  It must be witchcraft...or a Kenyan government conspiracy involving the IRS.

Anywhoodles.

Roberts' rightly points out, in agreement with Shoshana Kessock on Tor.com, that one of the major "problems" with Wonder Woman concerns her explicit feminist nature:

I think Shoshanna at Tor is right on the money with her article – the “problem” with Wonder Woman is that most people don’t know how to deal with an unapologetically feminist character. Writers panic. Executives panic. The way that women in particular are written in Hollywood is so vastly different to the way that superheroes tend to be written, that when the two concepts are combined, fear and cosmetics companies and ice-cream tend to get thrown at the resulting mess until it goes away.

I also agree with this premise, which is why I like the idea of Wonder Woman as a character, even though I think she frequently falls prey (in the public consciousness of her character) to a certain kind of campy optimism.  Done right, she could make for a profitable and, well, qualitatively good franchise of films.  I'd love to see some well-written Wonder Woman movies.  Watch her battle to save the Earth and for equality.

Of course, the character hasn't always had this optimistic feminist view of things.  I don't know if Roberts has read the recent Flashpoint crossover event, but I would certainly like to hear her opinion on the portrayal of Wonder Woman and the Amazons in that particular set of comics.  If any major event in the DC universe has been officially put in the studio's list of "stuff we're not going to put on the screen...ever," it would be Flashpoint.  Well, there are probably other things in there, and some sexist jackass is probably sitting in an office somewhere thinking about ways to kill (in the comic book definition of the word) Wonder Woman after turning her into a "misandrist" villain.  Maybe not...

I actually really liked her costume in Flashpoint...

For those unfamiliar with the comics, I'll briefly explain the main thrust of the Flashpoint event, though I won't tell you how the event got started, as that would ruin the reveal at the end.  Basically, something happens and the entire DC universe is rewritten, changing the entire power structure of the Earth.  From the first few comics, we learn two crucial things:  Wonder Woman and Aquaman had originally agreed to marry in order to unite their kingdoms, but an assassination plot led to the death of Wonder Woman's mother (i.e., the Queen), followed by a massive war between the two kingdoms.  Half of Europe is under water, the United Kingdom has been taken over by the Amazons, and all is chaos.  In the middle of all of this, we learn that an entire faction of the Amazons (enough that Wonder Woman's ignorance of their doings is rather difficult to believe) has been doing two things:  1) enslaving or killing men, and 2) subjecting women to genetic and psychological re-wiring to make them part of the Amazons, too.  Can you see why this wouldn't work all that well on film?

Now, I'm not one to make grand Men's Rights claims about misandry (these claims are, to put it bluntly, brainless).  I don't buy into the idea that feminism is the hatred of men.  I've never met a feminist who hates me because I have a penis; I have met men who hate women because they have vaginas.  But setting aside the motivations for the power games in Flashpoint, the simple fact remains that the Amazons are not portrayed as particularly positive feminists.  If anything, I wouldn't call them feminists at all in this alternate universe.  They actively express their hate of men, engage in activities which involve the oppression of men, and manipulate, destroy, and/or augment women in an attempt to inject new blood into the ranks.  They are, in effect, pretty much frakking evil (Wonder Woman, as I've noted, may not actually know what is going on under her nose; either that or she's naive as hell)(truthfully, there aren't that many "good people" in the Flashpoint universe).  They're kind of like a literal representation of what anti-feminists imagine actual feminists are like.  You know the narrative:  they run around trying to think about ways to oppress men, keep everything for themselves, ruin society, and so on and so forth.  Basically, they're an idiot's wet dream.

I bring all of this up because I think it's important to recognize that Wonder Woman as a character can, as Roberts points out, ruffle feathers, in no small part because she is, largely speaking, an open feminist and advocate for women's rights (in my experience, anyway).  Flashpoint, however, is a terrible deviation from her positive narrative.  And it's canon.  It's part of her development in the modern age of comics.  Studios will avoid it like the plague for what they think are good reasons.

And this costume.  Down with the impractical ones!

But we should be glad they they won't touch it either.  I've not read every Wonder Woman comic, but I can honestly say that I really disliked her character in the Flashpoint crossover.  There are so few glimpses of her apprehensions about certain actions (invasions, etc.) that I found myself actively hoping someone other Aquaman and his people would end it all.  That's not actually a good thing, and somehow I don't think the Flashpoint narrative helped alleviate the sexism embedded in the comics industry.  Then again, I suppose that's painfully obvious.

All this is an attempt to say that any comic book film adaptation is a gamble.  There are narratives in just about every franchise that don't belong on the big screen.  Can you imagine a classic X-Men comic appearing in film form?  In the first five minutes, Jean Grey would have four horny mutants reminding her that she's just there because she has breasts.  Wonder Woman is just as susceptible to bad narrative conventions.  I hope they take her seriously as an individual, but not so seriously as a superhero.  By that I mean this:  her feminist ideals should remain central to her character, but the studios have to tread lightly, as the comic industry has a history of handing the reigns for female characters over to men who couldn't write a female character out of a box without any walls; as a superhero, however, I can only hope that they update her look, drop all the ridiculous invisible airplane stuff, and go right for the meaty camp villains (the comments in Roberts' post suggest some fun Greek monsters, if I recall correctly; those would work quite nicely).

But I'm sort of rambling about all of this.  What do you all think about Wonder Woman?

I ban this forever.

(What follows are some random thoughts I had while re-watching James Cameron's Aliens.  I'd love to open up a nice discussion about the film, so feel free to leave a comment agreeing/disagreeing with or adding to my argument(s).)

I've always loved the relationship between Ripley and Hicks.  Obviously, it's implied that there's a significant romantic link between them, but the film makes light of it through jokes, in part so the very real problem -- survival in the face of certain death -- never falls prey to the romantic narrative underneath.  And there's also a sense -- for me, anyway -- that Ripley and Hicks don't
actually have to develop a romantic relationship for there to be something between them.
A lot of people also read Aliens as a narrative about maternity.  I've started to think about the narrative as a metaphor for unexpected parenthood (and child mortality), too.  If you think about it, the first chunk of the film focuses on Ripley's return to the world; one of the reveals is the death of her child, whose death she cannot prevent.  While an inaccurate metaphor for infant mortality or some equally naturalistic death of one's child, these sections of the film seem remarkably like a story about a parent dealing with the death of a child.  In this interpretation, Burke takes the form of a father (I can't think of a single mention of the biological father of Ripley's daughter, so I assume one of the two is out of the picture -- probably Ripley, which is unusual in the real world).  Since Burke represents Ripley for the Weyland-Yutani Corporation, who seem to be the ones in control of everything, he also acts as a kind of father figure in the remotest sense.  Her relationship with him, as such, is strained by his link to the Company and to her past (i.e., the death of her child, etc.).  I also think there's something profoundly disturbing to read into Burke's actions near the end of the film, in which he tries to infect/impregnate Newt and Ripley with xenomorphs (a rape and child abuse metaphor?).

The other maternity narrative is one we've all probably heard before:  Ripley's "adoption" of Newt.  I think of Newt not necessarily as the adopted child in a traditional sense, but more as a discovery of a child you didn't know you had.  Ripley jumps into the role of mother figure quite naturally (she is technically a mother, after all), but she also seems to acknowledge the distance between them.  These two elements suggest to me that Newt is supposed to take the place of an unexpected child.  But I'll admit that this idea is not as thought out as I would like.
I won't suggest that Aliens is a perfect film from a feminist perspective, but it's hard to imagine it as anything else.  Every aspect of the narrative involves questions about the place of women in worlds that for so long have been the domain of men.  After all, in 1986, women didn't serve in combat positions in the U.S.  In Aliens, they do (even Ripley, though she sort of gets roped into it).  Women are shown doing a lot of things our culture likes to tell them they can't do.  They can have children and work jobs "meant for men."  They can serve in the military, use weapons or heavy machinery, fly complicated aircraft, fight for themselves, and on and on and on.  True, most of the women die in this movie, but so do most of the men.  This is one of the reasons why I love this movie.  It doesn't pander to a masculine audience in the same way as other SF action movies.  Ripley isn't eye candy here.  She doesn't run around bending over so you can see her toned abs or the curves of her breasts or her toosh or whatever (not that she's not physically attractive, mind, but most of the characters in this movie end up covered in filth and wounds; the whole Megan-Fox-bends-over-a-car-so-we-can-stare-and-her-tumtum wouldn't make any sense in that context).  If anything, what makes Ripley such an attractive character is the fact that she is a character.  And, honestly, I think she's probably the greatest female protagonist in all of science fiction.

But maybe I'm stretching with that last statement...


Note:  I may return to this film for the Retro Nostalgia feature.  Keep an eye out for that.

This is what happens when Adam Callaway and I are bored and talking to one another on Google+.  We turn into Shakespearean wannabes!  Enjoy:

Me: I am made of air. 

Adam: More like water.  

Me: Nay, careful knave, for I am beseeched by sun bursts in this blessed hour of whitefall. Have at thee!  

Adam: Let’s do this.  

Me: In whose blessed light hath thee been scorned, knave? By what weighted fringe hat thy ears been boxed in pheasant rank! Wouldest thou fell the beast who birthed thee if thee could see thine eyes turn life to minstrels?  

Adam: Ahhh…my jest! By the final gray rays of Urth’s dying sun do I curse thee.  

Me: Curse! Curse, say thee? What breath breathed in blank halls giveth thou such petty gift? Forsake thy oath for squabbles of pilfered magic, sir?  

Adam: Pilfered?! Surely you jest. These arcane tongues are hard earned in the deepest catacombs of Baldric caverns, where the great gray eye of Sol cannot peer. It is there that magics breed in silence. It is there that I harvest them.  

Me: Pilfered, most dearly, for in thy trek to those dank caverns you tender the trips of your fallen gardens. Haste thee to rend souls to flour for Urth, for thy cultish fancies. Haste thee to scoop matter from cantankerous old fool whose minds are but trifles before Urth. Nay, you are no sorcery, Mandrick. Thou art the whistler of demons, whose sad songs make plight in the halls of emperors. 

Adam: Aye. I do whistle for demons. And the demons come for me. I draw them into my breath, nurture them in my lungs with sweet, longing words of innocence lost and promised revenge, release them with a poisonous flick of my many forked tongue. They flee into the world, the world of this cinder Urth, so long removed from glorious golden light, to rend holes in the flesh of our world, sink there teeth into the severed ganglion of humanity's last bastionic hero, and drink. Drink deeply my demon dogs.

I've been inspired, you might say, to talk about something I've had the itch to talk about since I started reading the Hugo Awards voting packet.  I blame Justin Landon and Jonathan McCalmont for daring to talk about stuff, especially since they have a skill for ruffling feathers (with love, of course).  Over at Staffer's Book Review, Landon criticizes the SF/F convention circuit for, as he puts it, privileging the voices of those without credibility; though Jonathan McCalmont appears to agree on the issue of quality, his post at Ruthless Culture takes a somewhat different track, arguing in the end that the problem with fandom is its insularity:

On the other hand, I feel that traditional fandom has become so attached to its own history and institutions that it would rather see those institutions die than allow them to change in a way that would encourage younger people to join them...I think that genre culture should start reclaiming the word ‘fan’ and use it to denote not some inferior species of genre-lover but someone who actively participates in making genre culture a more interesting and vibrant place despite having no professional skin in the game. Fans are not passive consumers… they are the people who keep the conversation going.

First, I recommend reading their posts in full.  I've, perhaps inaccurately, summarized their points rather briefly, and I'm certain Mr. Landon will despise me forever for having failed to quote from his article (sorry, Justine!).  Second, I see my own view of fandom falling somewhere within McCalmont's; my criticisms of what qualifies as fan culture have always been informed by my own perceived contribution to the field in the capacity of a non-professional.  But my contributions are not explicitly non-professional, and it is here that I think I diverge from most definitions of fan culture.

One of the things that bothered me about the special Blade Runner edition of Journey Planet (included in the Hugo Awards voting packet) was the editorial perception of fandom:  "However I never wanted this issue of Journey Planet to be another crop of academic articles about Blade Runner. JP is a fanzine, after all, and I wanted to gather articles that give voice to the less academic side to the film’s wide fanbase" (5).  Though the latter half of the quote appears to provide a reasonable motive -- we wanted to explore the non-academic side of things -- the emphasis on fanzine implies that there is something distinctive between the two categories:  fan and academic.

I am all of the following:  a published academic in the genre field, a fan, an aspiring/publisher writer, and a geek.  These are not mutually exclusive categories.  The problem with assuming that they are is the same problem with trying to categorize genre fiction in general:  the distinctions do not exist in any stable form.  It is, after all, entirely possible to write academic articles as a fan, with the perspective of a fan in mind, primarily because an academic does not automatically cease to be a fan by engaging in academic discourse, nor does his or her contribution fall outside of the domain of the fan simply because their contributions are related to their possible profession.*  These seem like distinctions made by people who have an agenda of their own, or who derive some form of use value from maintaining a strict separation, as if keeping academia out of fan production would protect the latter from the former.  Whether Justin Landon and Jonathan McCalmont realize it, their previous posts about fanzines and/or the Hugo Awards have contributed to this very discussion.

Yet the term "academic" has its own fuzzy internal distinctions.  Some academics are actually professionals, engaging with their chosen field in an explicitly professional manner (i.e., they make a living doing it); others are perhaps professionals in trade, but their contributions are informed by their love for a particular thing; and still others may simply find that the culture of academia, particularly in genre fiction, offers its own kind of fan community.  I see myself as a combination of these.  Though I expect to pursue a career in academia, my contributions have always been informed by my love of genre.  I would not have become an English major and pursued science fiction if I had not already developed an interest in the subfield.  There is also the fact that academia is an inherently curious discipline, though it certainly has its own problems of insularity.

To illustrate what I've said thus far, I turn to the International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts (commonly known as ICFA).  Though the vast majority of the content at every ICFA could be called "academic panels," few who attend the conference would say it exhibits the stereotypical functions of academia:  stuffy, fusty scholars who drone on for 20 minutes about yadda yadda this and yadda yadda that.  In the two years that I have attended the conference, the atmosphere has always been vibrant.  Fans (in the traditional sense), academics (who are often just fans who like to think endlessly about the meanings within literary work), and professionals (authors, critics, and so on who, well, are actually published or otherwise notable) all attend this conference.  As I've said before, however, these distinctions are far from absolute, so the types of people who attend are often mergers of supposedly rigid categories:  professional writers present papers; traditional fans head panels about their favorite authors; critics and authors discuss their own work or the work of others; and so on and so forth.  You might say ICFA is a little incestuous...

I've attended and presented at the conference for the last two years (and the Eaton Conference in California the year prior).  There's a reason why I'll keep returning:  this is one of the few conventions where I actually feel at home as a fan.  The discourse of the convention is my discourse.  I can rant aimlessly about my love of Battlestar Galactica just as I can have an intense discussion about the systems of capital (or lack thereof) in Star Trek.  And then there's drinking by the pool and just shooting the shit, as they say, with authors, critics, readers, and so on.  For me, it's the perfect experience, one which I always miss when I have to leave at the end of the festivities.

But I digress.  I'm rambling.  The point is this:  "fan" is not monolithic.  It does not have a stable meaning, and the implication that some people aren't really fans by dint of participating in a different discourse than one's own should ruffle some feathers.  I may not understand the purpose of the content of many fanzines, but I recognize that the people who write that stuff are fans.  I'm a fan too.  A very big frakking fan.

So say we all.

-----------------------------------------------------

*I say "possible" here because quite a few academics don't actually make a living as academics.

I have many favorite comics, like I have many favorite novels, and so on. But the great thing about loving lots of stuff is that it’s much harder to run out of things to talk about. So here are a few of my favorite comics/runs from across my reading history, and a little about my relationship to each.

This is the oldest of the entries on this list, but one that stood out in my mind. I’ve always been a Cyclops fan, probably largely because I spent a lot of my youth being a Good Kid ™.  I followed the rules, wasn’t a rebel, and so on. Characters like Wolverine or Jubilee didn’t really resonate with me. But Cyclops, the long-suffering earnest leader of the X-Men, he stuck with me.

And in this mini-series, where Cyclops and Jean get catapulted into the future to raise Scott’s son, Nate (who later becomes Cable), I think the thing that really stuck with me was seeing a functional couple having adventures together, as partners.

I’m also endlessly interested by dystopian settings, and the challenges of growing up in harsh circumstances.  Like in many things, my genre education was fairly non-standard, and The Adventures of Cyclops and Phoenix was part of it – teaching me about dystopias before I’d even heard of the term, let alone read foundational texts like Brave New World, 1984, or Fahrenheit 451.

In the parallel world where I’m a recently-minted PhD, one of the classes I’d offer is “The Planetary Guide to 20th Century Pop Culture Genres.” The class would use the comic series Planetary as an interpretive lens for examining 20th century pop/pulp genres (pulp, western, supers, golden age sci-fi, super-spy, Hong Kong action, etc.). Because for me, that’s what this series is – a way of re-interpreting a wide swath of 20th C. pop culture.

The series itself ran from 1999 to 2009, and I followed the series month-to-month almost that entire run.

The central premise of Planetary is that the 20th Century pop culture genres – pulp, superheroes, atomic horror, kaiju, etc., are all real. And the job of the protagonists, members of Planetary, are “Archaeologists of the Impossible,” discovering the secret history of the 20th century and fighting to keep the world strange and wonderful.

The full story is much larger and more magnificent, taking a knowing, deeply intertextual trip through 20th Century pop culture. Warren Ellis is one of my all-time favorite comics writers, and his partnership with John Cassaday on this series is simply incredible.

I highly recommend this series to any pop culture fan, especially if you are fond of re-interpretations of cultural history like Red Son, Astro City, or Soon I Will Be Invincible.

One of the best “change one thing” science fiction comics that I’ve ever read, I also love that Y: The Last Man had a complete 10-volume arc, then ended. The ending works, the character arcs are rich and fulfilling, and then it’s done. One of the criticisms of comics as a medium that I hear and acknowledge most keenly is the fact that its serial nature can make it very impenetrable for a new reader. Where do you start? Will this series ever end? And so on.

Well, Y: The Last Man has been complete for five years now, and still stands out in my memory as one of the best whole comic book stories ever told.

Yorick Brown, the titular last man, is a loser. He’s an amateur magician without much life direction, who is on the phone about to propose to his girlfriend (who is in Australia) when the phone goes dead. The phone goes dead because at that moment, across the world, every other male mammal in the world is dying  grotesque death. Except for Yorick’s pet capuchin monkey.

The story that follows spans across the world, and, by necessity, is full of amazing, complex, dynamic female characters, who largely drive the story. If you or someone you know is put off with the (abysmal) way that women are depicted or treated in comics, this series is a fine contrast to that trend.

Wonder Woman is my favorite mis-used character in DC comics. She’s the least popular member of DC’s Trinity (Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman), despite the fact that I think she’s an incredibly interesting character.

The Hiketeia is one of my examples to people of how awesome Wonder Woman can be when handled well. The Hiketeia was the first time writer Greg Rucka worked with Wonder Woman, and his success with the story is a likely contributing factor to him landing the role as the series’ regular writer for an extended (and very well-received run).

In The Hiketeia, Wonder Woman is honor-bound to protect a young woman who is executing a Greek ritual of vengeance known as the Hiketeia. This puts her in direct opposition with Batman, who is hunting the girl as a criminal and murderer.

The Hiketeia shows the entire conflict from Diana’s perspective, highlights her conflict between honoring tradition and protecting life. It also features a fantastic fight between her and Batman, where she wipes the floor with the Dark Knight, because, well, she can go toe-to-toe with Superman, and WW doesn't have a Kryptonite-analogue for Batman to use against her.

But ultimately, it is the characterization of Wonder Woman as thoughtful, determined, and compassionate that makes this story a winner in my book. It’s one of the best Wonder Woman stories I’ve ever read, and is marvelously stand-alone, which makes it a good book to use when saying “No, really, Wonder Woman is awesome. Read this.”

Being a lifelong comics and supers fan, I am a total sucker for stories that let me re-examine familiar tales.

Marvels is all about re-examining huge moments of Marvel comics history from the perspective of the man on the street, casting the heroes as larger-than-life figures, nearly forces of nature.

Also, did I mention that Alex Ross does the art? That his paintings are probably the greatest Fine Art supers images in the business? No? Well, that. Ross’s painting style gives the series an instant feeling of historicity, of being something set a step aside from traditional comics storytelling, which proves an excellent approach for this mini-series.

Marvels follows news journalist Phil Sheldon as he reports on and experiences four iconic moments in Marvel comics history: The battle of The Sub-Mariner and the Human Torch (the first one), The juxtaposition of the wedding of Sue and Reed Richards with an anti-mutant mob, Earth’s first visit by Galactus, and finally, the death of Gwen Stacy. A veteran Marvel reader will have access to the interiority of the main players in these moments, but Sheldon is just an observer, forced to try to come up with his own explanation for the Marvels’ motivations behind their actions in the moments. In changing the frame, and giving one POV character across decades of Marvel history, Marvels is as much a work of self-reflection on the universe’s key moments, a meta-narrative, as it is a story unto itself.


Michael R. Underwood has been reading comics since he was six and living in Brooklyn. His parents would let him handle the recycling, and he took the deposit money to his friendly local comic shop to buy issues of X-Men, Spider-Man, and whatever looked awesome that week.

Mike is the author of GEEKOMANCY and CELEBROMANCY, as well as the forthcoming YOUNGER GODS series. By day he is the North American Sales & Marketing Manager for Angry Robot Books. In his rapidly-vanishing free time, he games, reads, and studies historical martial arts.

You can find Mike on his website and on Twitter @MikeRUnderwood

Sometimes, blowing off steam is exactly what you need after a hard day in the mundane job. Sometimes you want to wander in an alien landscape, with not much more of an agenda than to kill mutant creatures, cannibals and other assorted beasties.

Sometimes, you want enter the world of Borderlands.

Borderlands was an action role-playing first-person shooter video game developed by Gearbox Software in 2009. Set on the planet Pandora [Which has nothing to do with the movie Avatar], a down-at-the-heels dry and desiccated planet, the plot revolves around how the main character, a soldier of fortune, is looking for a legendary Vault of alien artifacts that many have looked for, and died for, in vain.  Will you be any different?

You, however, are special. In Borderlands, you get to play one of four characters, each with special abilities and powers that give you an edge in the dog-eat-dog word of Pandora. From Brick, a tank of a character who can go berzerk and take on enemies with his fists, to Lilith, who can phase out of existence, to the solid soldier Roland and the sniper/hunter Mordecai, the gameplay at base may be the same for each character, but their individual powers and styles make for four different game experiences.
And what an experience. The physical puzzles, such as they are in the game, are pretty simple. You aren’t playing this game to recapture the experience of Myst, you are playing to shoot and kill things, and occasionally press a button needed to finish a quest. The game uses a quest-for-hire system to help the character get experience and money to buy the equipment needed to continue the main plot. The treasures are all weapons, health aids, shields and other geegaws that help your character kill things more easily, or survive in combat, or aid your powers. Its extremely stripped down and basic.

The stylized graphics look comic book like and are striking for pushing that aesthetic and making it work. And even though this is a shoot-em-up,  there are moments of character humor, too, especially with the claptrap robots.
This is the game I play when I want to blow off steam, and not think about things too much. I don’t have to think too hard. And shooting a shotgun into the face of a raving little midget running at you with an axe is surprisingly satisfying. And killing a particularly difficult monster gives me a real high.

I haven’t picked it up yet, but there is a sequel with four new characters and a new plot:  Borderlands 2.  Ain’t no rest for the wicked, indeed.


Not really a Prince of Amber, but rather an ex-pat New Yorker that has found himself living in Minnesota for the last 9 years, Paul “PrinceJvstin” Weimer has been reading SF and Fantasy for longer than Shaun has been alive. In addition to pitching in at Skiffy and Fanty, he can be found at his own blog, Blog Jvstin StyleSF Signal, the Functional Nerds, Twitter, Livejournal and many other places on the Internet.

Finally!  A month without seas of old stuff.  Awesome job, folks!

Here's the list:
10.  The Politicization of the SFWA? (A Mini-response to Michael Z. Williamson)
9.  Month of Joy:  "The Joy of City Stomping" by David Annandale
8.  Movie Review:  The Wolverine (2013)
7.  Link of the Week:  Speculative Friction (the website is still up, actually, though nothing new has been posted in a while...)
6.  The Vigilante in American Mythology (Brief Thoughts) #monthofjoy
5.  Top 10 Cats in Science Fiction and Fantasy
4.  Week of Joy (Day Seven):  "The Genre Books That Influenced & Inspired Me to Read & Write" by Stina Leicht
3.  Orson Scott Card is a Yard Shitter (and a note on Redeemability)
2.  Top 10 Overused Fantasy Cliches
1.  8 SF/F Writers Who Changes My Life (#WeekofJoy)