wisb-Guardian-Express

Readers of this blog probably haven't noticed, but the little chicklet/button for Feedburner disappeared from my sidebar about a month ago.  The Twitter one, however, has stayed fixed in place (mostly so people can easily find my account; the feeds for my blog are linked above the Twitter gizmo).  There's a good reason, too.

One of the things that I have noticed since the disappearance of Google Reader is the unreliability of Feedburner subscriber numbers.  They've never been terribly reliable, for sure, but the death of GR resulted in a massive drop off in subscriber numbers for my blog, and, it seems, a whole lot of weird fluctuations throughout the blogosphere.  For example, in a matter of hours (yesterday), SF Signal's subscriber numbers went from 19k, then down to 4k, then up to nearly 21k, then down to 15k, and so on.  For a site like SF Signal, I suppose those drops are meaningless, since the popularity of the blog can be easily measured via other means (a vibrant comments section
and site views).  For a blog like mine, where I babble about things I like, there isn't a whole lot of that kind of activity, so measuring popularity relies on subscriber numbers.

But watching the numbers for my blog plummet by hundreds after the death of GR made me rather anxious, and after a time, I became aware that I had put too much attention into how many people read my blog, and not enough attention elsewhere.  And since Feedburner, thus far, hasn't demonstrated the ability to catch numbers from cloud-based RSS readers (like Feedly), I also realized that there isn't a point even paying attention to the numbers anymore.  People read my blog.  They are now commenting more (in part, I think, because I took all of the barriers away).  Whether I have 400 subscribers, 800, 100, 12, or 47.5, I think there's something toxic about fixating on subscriber numbers, in part because that means energy I could spend on other things (you know, like blogging interesting things) is spent worrying about where my subscribers went and how I can get them back.  I've never spent a lot of energy on the numbers, but I've come to the conclusion that any time spent thinking about these things is stupid.

So I deleted the chicklet.  Feedburner is now merely a RSS dispensary for this blog.  And that's what it's going to be for the time being.  There's no point sitting around worrying about numbers.  If people hate my blog, then they hate my blog because I suck.  I trust that someone will tell me as much at some point.  If they love my blog, they'll comment or lurk forever (I will hunt down all of you lurkers eventually).  But it's time to move on now.  It's time to just blog about shit I like.

It's time to stop caring about the numbers.

A whole bunch of folks tossed out their nominations, so here's the stuff I'm going to finish in the next, say, month:

• FIN A post about ideological rigidity from a teaching perspective (with a side of SF/F)
• FIN A post of my hopes for SF/F in 2013 (which I can just update to 2014)
• A post about whether fiction can be too gritty (dragging up something from a long while ago)
• FIN A post about the weird "homo/bi-sexuality as deviance" narrative in The Following
• FIN A post about why self-published books frequently get snubbed by mainstream literary awards
• A post on the top 7 geek-related hobbies/jobs I'd love to do for a living
• A post about five SF/F books that deserve to be considered classics
• FIN A post about the possibility of a Worf TV Show
• A post involving a poll for writers (asking them if they played RPGs as a kid, if they still do, etc.).
• A love letter to Zach Snyder and Christopher Nolan (for Man of Steel)
• A post about upcoming remakes (Blake's 7, The Black Hole, etc.)
• A post about note-taking and citation software (a huge monstrosity of a thing...)
• A graphic novel review of The Coldest City
• A movie review of Cowboys & Aliens
• A book review of Harbor by John Ajvide Lindqvist
• A post about five SF/F books I can't wait to read...soon...
• FIN A post about the top 10 SF/F anime movies

I've put them in order from "received the most votes" to "received at least one vote" and thrown out all the ones you didn't vote on (which I'll save for later).  Though I will try to finish them in the order in which they are presented here, I'm going to leave that open enough so I can skip around if I feel inclined to do so (or for those posts that should be finished first because they're about fairly recent musings).

Anywhoodles!

I've been sitting on over 50 draft posts for a while now.  Some of these have been around for years, either because I couldn't complete them (which explains why they are not listed below) or because I forgot about it.  So here's the deal:  I've listed a whole bunch of these posts below, and you're going to help me pick the ones that get finished next.  All you need to do is a leave a comment with your favorites (you can list the numbers; pick no more than five or six, just to make it reasonably).  You're free to offer your reasons, though it's not required.

Here's the list:

1. A post about the weird "homo/bi-sexuality as deviance" narrative in The Following
2. A post about the possibility of a Worf TV Show
3. A post about why self-published books frequently get snubbed by mainstream literary awards
4. A post involving a poll for writers (asking them if they played RPGs as a kid, if they still do, etc.).
5. A movie review of Pacific Rim
6. A love letter to Zach Snyder and Christopher Nolan (for Man of Steel)
7. A movie review of _Olympus Has Fallen_
8. A post about upcoming remakes (Blake's 7, The Black Hole, etc.)
9. A post about ideological rigidity from a teaching perspective (with a side of SF/F)
10. A post of my hopes for SF/F in 2013 (which I can just update to 2014)
11. A post about why The Empire Strikes Back has gone from my least favorite of the originals to my almost favorite today.
12. A post about note-taking and citation software (a huge monstrosity of a thing...)
13. A post on the top 7 geek-related hobbies/jobs I'd love to do for a living
14. A movie review of The Hunger Games
15. A graphic novel review of The Coldest City
16. A movie review of Cowboys & Aliens
17. A post about whether fiction can be too gritty (dragging up something from a long while ago)
18. A book review of Harbor by John Ajvide Lindqvist
19. A book review of Dead or Alive by T.M. Hunter
20. A post about five SF/F books that deserve to be considered classics
21. A post about five SF/F books I can't wait to read...soon...
22. A post about the top 10 SF/F anime movies

Last month, Storyville posted a definition of literary fiction.  As with all definitions of a genre, it is functionally useless, in no small part because it offers utterly subjective criteria, most of which apply to such a wide range of literary forms that the attempt to define collapses under the weight of its own uselessness.  For example:

Often, literary fiction will be introspective, examining the thoughts and feelings of its main characters. There will be a deep study of a person or persons, showing us layers of experience, emotion, thought, and behavior.

OK, but what exactly does "deep study" mean?  Are James Patterson's Alex Cross novels not "deep studies" of Alex Cross?  If not, then how do you show or define a "deep study" in any useful way?  They don't say, so I have no idea.  Based on this vague definition, anything James Patterson has written (or put his name on) would technically qualify, but I suspect that's not what they meant when they came up with this definition.

All of the criteria are as poorly explained as the example above, which presents a very real problem:

What is literary fiction?  If we can't define it, then why are we talking about it?

It makes sense to me why we define the popular genres (science fiction, fantasy, romance, western, crime, etc.), even if we cannot approach a viable definition.  At the very least, science fiction is noticeably different from, say, an Alex Cross novel, most notably because of its settings, etc.  Though such "differences" are not absolute (hence the existence of cross-genre work), we can at least acknowledge the literary traditions of genres like science fiction.  Ultimately, the genres are useful only for the market:  to help readers find something like that other thing they liked.

Literary fiction, on the other hand, doesn't seem to have any true separation.  "Literary merit" doesn't actually mean anything, as what receives "literary merit" can exist in any genre (see the Western Canon -- there's all kinds of fantasy and SF in there).  And, of course, a science fiction novel can avoid what the folks at Storyville define as a "plot," too.  What makes it "not a science fiction novel" if it is, in fact, a science fiction novel?  The literarinessessess?
Over the years, definitions have become more and more meaningless to me.  This might explain why I prefer to think about science fiction in Delany-an terms:  as practice, not "thing."  His second collection of essays, Starboard Wine, for example, suggests that the best way to understand what science fiction is requires us to look at how science fiction works.  We can sit around arguing definitions until we're blue in the face, but if we look at how the narrative of SF functions, how the worlds are imagined and share common operations (in narrative terms), and so on, we might get just a little closer to understanding what science fiction is, even if we can never define it.

If there is a Starboard Wine or Jewel-Hinged Jaw for literary fiction, I haven't read it yet.  All of these definitions of literary fiction, however, haven't helped the "cause."  I don't think literary fiction exists.  It's an artificial category; it is abstract; it is meaningless.  When we define something as "literary fiction," we say nothing.  It is an unsolicited subjective opinion about the quality of a work, but not a definitive classification of that work.  And the more we keep talking about this divide between genre and literary fiction, and the definitions therein, the more I'm convinced that the latter never existed at all.

There is no such thing as literary fiction.  And once we all acknowledge that, we can shut up and move on with our lives...

I'm sure you've all heard about this Strange Horizons column already.  If not, go read it, then come back and read what I have to say (or don't...up to you).  As I pointed out by way of a link-laden question the other day, I really don't understand what the frak is going on in the SF/F community right now.  It's like a whole group of fans, writers, and bloggers decided they'd all take crazy pills as part of a New Year's resolution, and unlike every other resolution (to lose weight, to drink less, to tell your significant other that you've fathered (or mothered) nine children with an alien from Mars), they seem to have actually gone through with it.  And the crazy really hit the fan this month.

So here are some random thoughts about everything, written as such to avoid treading too far onto ground so many others have already covered:
Authors Commenting on Blogs
Honestly, I've never had an issue with authors commenting on this blog, though I haven't stated as such before.  But I've also never had (at least, in recent memory) one of those experiences where an author shows up and has a hissy fit in my own space.  If authors feel inclined to post here, they are free to do so (encouraged, even), but under the following caveats:

1. You understand that you do not control interpretation; it is the domain of readers.
2. You avoid being an asshole.

WTF is wrong with you, SF/F community?

I'll have another post in the near future.

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P.S.:  This post is not an opinion on the subject at hand (i.e. the content of the original Strange Horizons post).  Rather, it's all I have to say at the moment about threats of sexual violence in response to female bloggers talking about something as mundane as "authors commenting on reviewer/reader blogs."  I'm just flabbergasted about it all, to be honest...

Quick note:  I'm testing out a no-moderation, no-captcha commenting policy on the blog.  I realize that captcha may be one of many reasons for low activity on blogs in general, so I wanted to see what would happen if I removed the barriers.

So, consider yourselves my guinea pigs!

If you don't already follow Aliette de Bodard's excellent blog, I recommend you do so immediately.  When she's not talking about her amazing writing, she's usually talking about something equally fascinating.  And that's what she's been up to today!

Over on her blog, she has a wonderful post about other cultures, diversity in SFF, and a few other interesting things.  Go check it out!

I'm currently writing a relatively far future military SF novel (or revolutionary military SF, since it involves revolution).  One thing that I want to indicate about this future and its wide-reaching human empire is its relative inclusiveness.  Race is not as much an issue there as it is today, which means that the cast of characters I intend to show will embody a mixed world.

To make that clear in the story, I feel as though I need to identify several characters by their race (or everyone by their race, really).  But I don't want to in part because I really don't know how to go about doing so without essentializing or reducing characters to their race (or even identifying them by something that I personally feel has no say on one's character).  What exactly is the best method for introducing the race of a character (any race)?

I honestly don't know...and I'd much rather have an idea on how to go about it before shoving my foot in my mouth.

The comments are yours.

Spoiler alert:  Technically, I'm going to spoil this movie for you.  Not all of it, mind, but enough of it that you'll know the major plot elements and what not.  I say "technically" because nothing in this movie is all that surprising, except that it's horribly disappointing for any Riddick fan.  You already know the basic story; you just don't know the new characters.

What follows is not a review in the traditional sense.  There's no "structure" here.  I have so much to say about this movie that I've decided to rant my way through many of the things that I either enjoyed or hated with a passion.  So what you'll see below is a collection of thoughts, organized by titled sections.  You don't have to read it all if you don't want to -- pick and choose as you see fit.

OK.  Let's get to it.

I've seen quite a few films this year, but Riddick (2013) is the only one I'd give a Prometheus Award to.  What's a Prometheus Award?  Basically, this award should be given to every sequel or prodigal return which does everything wrong despite having every opportunity to get it very right.  Ridley Scott's Prometheus (from which the award would derive its name) is the epitome of failing to meet expectations.  You can find out why I think that here and here.

The premise of Riddick is this:

At some point after becoming Lord Marshall of the Necromongers, a reluctant-leader Riddick decides to hunt down his homeworld, Furya, which only Vaako knows about because the previous Lord Marshall deleted all the maps (except there were maps in The Chronicles of Riddick, so whatevs).  After convincing Vaako that he can have the throne all to himself if he'll just take Riddick to what remains of Furya, they head off into the night.  Riddick is betrayed by Vaako's men and left to die on a sulfur tomb planet (not Furya).  But it's Riddick, so he survives. 

While trying to survive on this hostile world (full of aliens and things), Riddick steals a strange dog-like creature puppy, raises it as his own, and then heads off to better pastures, where he discovers a mercenary supply outpost.  And then things fall apart.  Some super rainstorm is coming, and Riddick, for some reason, knows it means trouble (alien monsters!) and decides to trigger the emergency beacon at the outpost, set some traps, and then get off world.  Murder ensues.

There you go.

Now for my thoughts:
Logical Gap #1:  Riddick is Two Different People Inside His Own Head
Early in the film, Riddick tells us that he's been stuck on this sulfur tomb planet from hell because he essentially lost his animalistic instinct (or, in normal people terms, he got soft).  So he resolves himself, via internal monologue, to rediscover his animal instinct so he won't get stabbed in the back again.  OK.  Good so far.  Sounds fine to me.

Oh, wait, no.  So what Riddick's mind actually meant when he said that was this:  I want to get my animal instinct back, but really I'm just going to do what I've done since the end of Pitch Black and make attachments to other living things even though I just said doing so will get me killed.  Basically, Twohy sets up this perfectly acceptable narrative about Riddick's desire to return to his old ways, but then ignores it completely.  We never expected the character to keep his power as Lord Marshall anyway, so having Riddick return to his roots as a slick-shit killer (Toombs!) make total sense.  Only that's not what actually happens.  Instead, Riddick's first act is capturing a crazy-ear dog puppy to use as a guinea pig, but since the thing is so damned cute, he just has to raise it as his own.  And so begins Riddick's version of A Boy and His Dog.

None of this would be a problem, except that Riddick's internal monologue tells us that's exactly what he won't do.  So is it that Riddick is confused about his own terminology, or are we supposed to assume that Riddick's own mind is an unreliable narrator?  This is one of many logical inconsistencies in the film...
Emotional Buttons Not Pushed Properly
On the subject of A Boy and His Dog, it became clear to me that the dog critter thing was destined to die, and the film gives its mercenary characters numerous opportunities to do so.  We're supposed to feel suspense as the dog gets closer and closer to what is obviously set to be his death, but not because we feel for the dog (the only character worth caring about, honestly), but because it's supposed to do something to Riddick.

The problem?  Riddick has his little 15-second "I is sad about dead friend" moment, but afterwards he returns to his old self.  When he threatens Santana with death, we're supposed to think it has something to do with the fact that Santana shot the dog in the head, but the dialogue is so stilted that there's no way for us to separate "this moment" from any other moment in Riddick's life.  He always threatens death and then kills some character we're all not supposed to like anyway, but the reason we don't like Santana is the same reason everyone else doesn't like him:  he's a piece of shit.  Riddick knows this before Santana kills his dog, so what should have been a great opportunity for Riddick to go a little off the rails with crazy "you killed my dog, so I'm going to cut off half your face before I kill you" talk, he just says "you die in the first 5 seconds," giving other characters the opportunity to say "that was 5 seconds" after Riddick does kill Santana.
Basically, what we know about Riddick from the previous two films disappears in these moments.  We know he's not just a slick-shit killer (Toombs!).  He also has a kind of heart buried in all that super duper killing-ness, and occasionally it comes out or ties together in an exciting way.  Here, it all feels forced and confused precisely because the Riddick that Riddick says he's going to be and the Riddick we're actually shown aren't the same people.  So when that moment comes that we've all been expecting -- seriously, you know it's coming the moment they (Riddick and dog) become friends, so this isn't really a spoiler at all -- the emotional response is stilted.  It isn't there.  Which brings me to...

Writing, Dialogue, and Direction
The great thing about The Chronicles of Riddick was its willingness to engage in camp for the sake of the story.  There's no point at which we're supposed to completely take this world seriously anyway, so you might as well play it up with some really awesome lines of terrible.  That's what makes them so amusing, if you ask me.  Characters utter things like this:

Lord Vaako: This is your one chance. Take the Lord Marshal's offer and bow.
Riddick: I bow to no man.
Lord Vaako: He's not a man. He's the Holy Half-Dead who has seen the Underverse and returned with powers you can't imagine.
Riddick: Look. I'm not with everyone here. But I will take a piece of him. [points to Irgun]
Lord Vaako: A piece you will have.

It's punchy.  It's simple.  It's campy.  It's fun.

But in Riddick, the dialogue is so simplified, so basic, so drawn out for no good reason that what is actually a two hour movie feels like three and a half.  I can think of one great scene to illustrate this point:
Close to the climactic "the monsters are coming and we gots to get outa here" final sequence, the remaining mercenaries stand in a room around Riddick, who has been captured and put in chains.  Boss Johns sits down on Santana's box-for-heads and interrogates Riddick about his son (the Johns from Pitch Black), which would sound interesting if not for the fact that every five-word sentence uttered by any character at any point in this scene is followed by long stretches of silence.  These silences might also be interesting if the actors were doing something worth looking at, but they're just standing there staring.  That's it.  The moment should be tense.  When Riddick threatens Santana, we should see the disbelief (or terrified belief) in what Riddick is saying, played up for the audience because we all know Santana is going to die.  And that should appear not just in their faces, but in the dialogue.  Punchy, fun dialogue.  At least when Toombs captured Riddick and gave him his "what for," there was something actually going on there.  A history.  A conversation.  A very creepy conversation.  But not so here.  The whole scene drags out without supplying any useful tension, because nobody seems to know what is going on but Riddick (the audience doesn't either, really), and nobody seems to care.

The dialogue never escapes this problem in the film.  It's stilted and devoid of the brand of morbid humor and camp that made the previous two films so much fun.  The life feels like it has left the franchise here, and that's unfortunate given the potential to do something new with a franchise that, thus far, has never stuck with a single generic format.  Pitch Black was a scifi-horror flick; The Chronicles of Riddick was a kind of space opera; and Riddick is...umm...an intermittent scifi-horror flick with a side of post-apocalypse, revenge narrative, and bad commentary on human nature (well, Furyan nature).

Riddick feels like a film whose director has lost touch.  And that starts from the bottom up.  The script doesn't know what kind of story it's supposed to be, and the story it presents never escapes the repetition of franchise's original template.  Riddick is almost literally the same movie as Pitch Black in terms of its overarching plot, but less interesting precisely because we've already seen Pitch Black.  At the same time, it tries to be a bunch of other things, but the only story we really should care about is the repeat of Pitch Black.  And that's the problem:  there aren't any surprises for us.  We know Riddick is a slick-shit killer (Toombs!).  We know he's going to kill some people and then some monsters and get off the sulfur tomb planet.  We know this because we already saw it.  So when you have Riddick running around being a slick-shit killer (Toombs!), it's not a surprise anymore.  We know.  Now give us something else to work with.

Oh, don't get me wrong:  Riddick really tries to give us something else to work with, but really all it does is rip off A Boy and His Dog for 45 minutes in what I would describe as a snoozefest.  That's the other problem with Riddick's plot.  It may be cliche within its own franchise, and it may present us dragging dialogue and lackluster direction, but it is really just a boring damn movie.  There's no tension for Riddick.  We don't care about the mercenaries, so when they die, it doesn't matter (that's half true; we sort of care about a couple, but mostly we don't care because they're not people anyway).  Even though Riddick spends the first 10 minutes trying to survive on a hostile alien world, we soon figure out that, hey, he's actually going to be just fine and get back to slick-shit killing again (Toombs!), so there's no tension there.  When the aliens finally come, a few people die, but it happens so quickly and without any of the drawn out horror and worry we got in Pitch Black that it might as well not have happened.

This is perhaps why I am so disappointed in Riddick.  It's not good.  It's boring.  I guess it takes a special kind of awful to take a character like Riddick and make him as uninteresting or un-compelling to watch as a game of golf...but Twohy has managed that here.
Logical Gap #2:  He Done Tried to Kill You, But Nah, No Need to Notice, Bro
There are a lot of logical inconsistencies in this damned movie.  The one I'm going to talk about here completely tore me out of the movie-watching experience.

At some point during the story, Riddick had stolen some battery things from the merc ships as a kind of leverage to convince them to let him get off the planet.  When the alien scorpion things show up, the remaining mercs decide to let Riddick loose so they can retrieve the batteries.  Riddick, Boss Johns, and Diaz (one of Santana's remaining men) hop on their hovercycles and head off into the night, giving Riddick the opportunity to test out his brand new motocross tricks (err, hovercross?) for no apparent reason.  While riding on a narrow passage overlooking a canyon, Diaz bumps into Boss Johns and sends him careening off the edge; Johns barely survives and ends up sharing a hovercycle with Riddick.

And then moments later...nobody shoots Diaz or calls him out or says fuck all to him.  The guy literally just tried to kill Boss Johns and nobody seems to have noticed at all.  I'm not kidding.  NOBODY DISCUSSES IT!  Not a fucking thing is said.  Boss Johns acts like it didn't happen, and then they're all shocked and supa surprised when Diaz betrays them all and tries to steal the batteries for himself.

What?

WHAT?

WHAT?

How the fuck does any of this make any sense at all?  HE TRIED TO KILL YOU.  Why are you surprised?

Sense this film does not make...
Religion
We've had religious characters before.  You all know that.  You saw Pitch Black and The Chronicles of Riddick.  I've always loved Keith David's portrayal as Imam.  He's campy, sure, but all of the Riddick films have been, so his character always fit in as a sort of moral foil to Riddick.  But the important thing about Imam is the fact that we know enough about him to know he's a person.  He doesn't spout his religious stuff just to remind us that he's religious; it's a part of his character as a devout religious man (in Pitch Black, for example, we learn that he's on a sort of pilgrimage; his religious status grows in The Chronicles of Riddick, introducing his family and wider religious ties -- all this for a secondary character).

But in Riddick, our religious figure is Luna (Nolan Gerard Funk), who apparently has some religious psychological disorder which requires that he randomly prays and/or spouts lines about angels and what not for no apparent reason other than to remind us that creepy shit is happening.  There's no explanation for his religious belief.  He's just...religious.  And we know that because he randomly says religious things.  But at no point does any of this become important.  He could easily sit there and go "oh Jesus oh Jesus oh Jesus" every time weird shit happens and you'd get the same thing:  a set of pointless lines.  The difference?  At least "oh Jesus oh Jesus oh Jesus" would make sense in the context of a series of horrifying, bloody scenarios...

So we've gone from Keith David's Imam, who feels like a truly devout religious person with a definitive, lived-in past, to Luna, who might as well have spent the movie speaking in tongues for all the use he was.  His entire character makes no sense here precisely because nobody ever explains who he is.  Why is he with this ragtag group of sorta-mercenaries?  Why did he get involved with Boss Johns?  What was he doing before he showed up here?  Why does he randomly pray or babble about angels?  I don't know.  The film never tells us.  Instead, his religious stuff is presented as some kind of nervous tick, with the same depth and usefulness for the character as a pair of moldy socks.

Well, that is if moldy socks randomly flew at the camera in the middle of shots, reminding you that there are moldy socks here...just so you know about them.  In case you wanted to know -- you didn't, but the film wants you to know anyway...just so you know...about moldy socks.
People of Color, What?
There aren't a lot of things I like about this movie, but the fact that a huge portion of the cast are people of color is one of them.  Saladin Ahmed was just talking about this very issue on Twitter recently, and I recall telling him how much I'd like to see more films with PoCs in lead roles, too.  And here we are.  Riddick (Vin Diesel, who identifies himself as a PoC) is not the only speaking role for a PoC.  There's Diaz (played by Filipino and former wrestler, David Bautista), Moss (played by African American actor Bokeem Woodbine), Lockspur (played by Native American actor Raoul Trujillo), and Falco (played by Danny Blanco Hall, who is of African descent).  Most of these characters would be considered proper supporting actors, in the sense that they receive a decent amount of dialogue, such that if they were ever portrayed as actual people (see the next section), we'd actually know something about them.  We'll get into the problems with all this in the next section (womenz), but for now, I want to marvel at the idea of a relatively high-profile SF film containing non-minor speaking roles for Filipino, black, and Native American actors.  I can't think of any other American-made SF films doing anything close to that this year.

Now, don't get me wrong here.  I'm not saying that these roles are wonderful super duper amazing or anything.  They are flawed all around.  And there is the annoying fact that almost all of the PoCs are dead at the end, despite the fact that pretty much every character is incompetent in this movie.  But they're actually in this movie...in relatively large numbers (at least half the cast is a race other than white, and several of the cast members are Spaniards, which is interesting), and a few of them do a little ass kicking (mostly with guns, but that's OK)...and it's just a good thing that needs to happen more and more (the "existing in a movie" part, not the "dies by the end" bit).

Plus, Vin Diesel is in this, so it gets special points for that (I want him to read lullabies to me so I can go to sleep at night).

Objects with Boobs (*cough* I Mean Women)
Kameron Hurley has already discussed this on Twitter, but I'd like to take a moment to hash out some of the things I think is wrong with the way women are portrayed in this movie.

First, the only characters who get naked and/or killed for no clear reason are women (Riddick gets naked in one scene, but you can't see anything because he's in shadow, so it doesn't count).  The first few women we see are shown seconds later butt naked on a bed, doing some kind of sexy bisexual temptation bed dance for Riddick.  Apparently he's un-amused because one of them is a secret lady assassin (see the plot problems above).  The second woman gets shot in the back after being released by the mercs on Riddick's sulfur tomb planet...to which the Spanish bounty hunter, Santana, can only reply, "I was becoming attached" (or something like that).  After that, it doesn't really get better.  Dahl (Katee Sackhoff), who should be the most interesting female character in the whole movie, spends most of the film doing the following:

1. Standing around looking menacing
2. Telling people about her sexuality
3. Shooting a big gun, but only kinda good
4. Muttering a handful of lines that should be interesting, but really lack the umph her character deserves
5. Showing boob or otherwise getting sexually harassed and/or assaulted by the other male characters (mostly Santana, but Riddick gets in on the action later)

I'm Done...For Now
Yeah.  I think that's enough.  There's a lot more I could say, but I have to stop myself before this becomes a 5,000-word rant from hell.

If you saw the film, feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments.  I'm now going to watch something good to cleanse my pallet.


Directing: 2/5
Cast: 2.5/5 (for the simple fact that they're not actually used for anything worthwhile)
Writing: 1.5/5
Visuals: 4/5 (the only good thing about the movie; clearly they spent all of their $38mil budget making this pretty, because I doubt any of that money went to writing or paying actors to do much)
Adaptation: N/A
Overall: 2.5/5 (50%)
Inflated Grade: D+ (for lacking actual characters, a story we've already seen in Pitch Black, logical inconsistencies, and so many other issues)
Value: $3.50 (based on a $10.50 max)

Toombs!

I posted a truncated version of this on Rose Lemberg's post about some of accessibility problems at Worldcon this year.  Apparently one of the Worldcon staff members thought blaming people with disabilities was a better idea than simply saying "yeah, we screwed that up and we're sorry and here's how we're going to fix it."

Well, I've got an idea for how to fix it.  It's called the Simple, Step-by-Step Approach for Handling Disability at Cons for Convention Staff (or Sad Cocos for short).  It goes something like this:

1. Send emails and notices to all attendees requesting anyone with mobility issues to contact you.
2. Send those notices again shortly before the convention (a week ahead, perhaps) just in case the first message didn't arrive.
3. Keep a list of all equipment requirements for various panels and events at the con.  You should know where things need to be and when so you can properly coordinate.
4. Before the convention starts, go through all of the areas where attendees are allowed to go.  If any areas are not accessible, fix it right away.  Make sure you have enough ramps based on past attendance (I would say three is a bare minimum, but I could be really wrong there)
5. Tell your registration staff to be mindful of people with mobility issues.  They should check names against panelist rosters when folks come to register to make sure everything is covered.  I wouldn't recommend drawing attention to anything (this is where folks who actually have disabilities should jump in with an opinion -- please!)
6. If someone comes to the registration desk who is on a panel and has mobility issues, the staff should double check that ramps and what not are pegged to go to X location at Y time.  If you didn't know that this individual needed ramps, you should make a note of it on your schedule and update relevant staff about the change right away.  If for some reason you don't have enough ramps at a given time, consider getting another (if possible) OR finding a way to maintain that individual's dignity without making everyone aware that there's a ramp issue (perhaps move all of the tables to floor level between panels or something).
7. If someone complains about mobility problems at your con, you should contact them for specifics, apologize, and tell them you will try to fix it next time.  Don't argue about it.  Don't blame them for not getting in touch.  You're in charge of the damned event, so it's up to you to make sure everything is accessible.

There's nothing one can say about how awesome this is...so just enjoy it!

Over at his blog, author Tobias Buckell (Crystal Rain, Ragamuffin, Sly Mongoose, Arctic Rising, The Apocalypse Ocean...and a lot more) talks about his experiences at Worldcon, his thoughts on how cons work for him as a professional writer, and so much more.  It's my favorite post-Worldcon post thus far this year, so anyone interested in a pro-writer's perspective on the value of cons to writers should definitely read his post.

And then you should go buy a whole bunch of his books.  Basically, all of his stuff is amazing.  I won't pick for you.  Just...start somewhere :P

Anywhoodles!

This isn't an explicitly academic book, but I'm sure the academically-minded will find as much value in Ytasha Womack's upcoming Afrofuturism as anyone else who has an interest in the cultural movements within the SF/F field.  I first learned about the concept of Afrofuturism in an American Studies course on African American SF at the University of California, Santa Cruz.  We watched Sun Ra's Space is the Place, which I still think is a weird, but sort of brilliant film, and read a number of amazing works by folks like Nalo Hopkinson, Samuel R. Delany, Tananarive Due, Walter Mosley, and several others.  I mention all of this so you'll understand why I jumped up and down when I saw Womack's book on Twitter.

In any case, here are the details:

Synopsis

In this hip, accessible primer to the music, literature, and art of Afrofuturism, author Ytasha Womack introduces readers to the burgeoning community of artists creating Afrofuturist works, the innovators from the past, and the wide range of subjects they explore. From the sci-fi literature of Samuel Delany, Octavia Butler, and N. K. Jemisin to the musical cosmos of Sun Ra, George Clinton, and the Black Eyed Peas’ will.i.am, to the visual and multimedia artists inspired by African Dogon myths and Egyptian deities, the book’s topics range from the “alien” experience of blacks in America to the “wake up” cry that peppers sci-fi literature, sermons, and activism. With a twofold aim to entertain and enlighten, Afrofuturists strive to break down racial, ethnic, and social limitations to empower and free individuals to be themselves.

Published by Chicago Review Press (release date:  Oct. 1, 2013)

About the Author

Ytasha L. Womack is an author, filmmaker, dancer and futurist. Her book Afrofuturism: The World of Black Sci Fi and Fantasy explores black sci fi culture, bleeks, black comix, and the legacy of futurism.

She is author of the critically acclaimed book Post Black: How a New Generation is Redefining African American Identity and 2212: Book of Rayla. She is also the coeditor of the hip hop anthology Beats, Rhyme & Life: What We Love and Hate About Hip Hop.

Her films include Love Shorts (writer/producer) and The Engagement (director).

Ytasha is a graduate of Clark Atlanta University and studied media management at Columbia College in Chicago. She resides in the Windy City. 

She can be found on her webpage, iAfrofuturism.

Here's a context-less story to set the stage for this post:

Recently, I got into an argument regarding a popular SF/F character and sexism.  From my perspective at the time, certain features associated with that character were undeniably sexist and, by extension, ridiculous.  I still think there's a lot of sexism involved with this character, and most of the historical details that came up in the argument simply complicated what I was saying by getting rid of all the black and white, but I would be lying if I said my argument and perspective didn't change.  During that argument, I also made a rather flippant comment to an individual.  This led to someone else calling me a bigot and the offended individual's eventual demand for an apology.  I ended up closing the discussion thread and blocking one of the trolls.

One of the things that makes me uncomfortable about otherwise uncomfortable situations
(redundancy much?) involves that demand for an apology.  It's not that I don't think apologies are necessary in situations where you're wrong -- quite the opposite.  Rather, I think apologies must be arrived at from an honest introspection of self.  An apology made by demand is no more valuable than any statement made as a result of coercion.  For me, apologies should not be made in intense emotional states OR in response to an intense emotional state; doing so strips away comprehension and understanding.

So when I was told I had to apologize, I refused to do so (non-verbally).  Why?  Because I knew I wouldn't mean it at the time.  There's no way I could.  With all the accusations of bigotry and trolling, I was undeniably in an intense emotional state when that apology-demand was made, and that meant I couldn't think clearly about every aspect of the situation.

Apologies must be honest.  You cannot coerce apologies if you want them to mean anything.  In some cases, demanding apologies doesn't actually solve the issue (an offense), but simply provides a self-righteous barrier between the transgressor and the transgressed.  I, for one, don't seem much value in that.

What do you all think about demanded apologies?

And here they are:

10.  The Fan:  Discussing a Definition (in Dialogue w/ Jonathan McCalmont & Justin Landon)
9.  Shakespeare Roleplaying (or, the Ridiculous Things Adam Callaway and I Do on Google+)
8.  The #ThoroughlyGoodBooksbyPOC Reading List
7.  Star Trek Movies and TV Shows:  Ranked by Me
6.  Top 10 Overused Fantasy Cliches
5.  Talking About Wonder Woman and Her "Problems"...Again
4.  Around the Pod-o-Sphere:  Shoot the WISB on Pacific Rim
3.  Top 10 Cats in Science Fiction and Fantasy
2.  Top 10 Science Fiction and Fantasy Movies Since 2010 (Thus Far)
1.  Professional Writer = No Day Job?

In relation to this year's Hugo Awards, I am two things:

1. An unabashed crazy leftish pinko liberal hippy gerfferrmerrfle (whatever that is)
2. On the record for having disliked John Scalzi's Hugo Award-winning Redshirts (truthfully, I hated it)

There's nothing wrong with Scalzi's writing. This is a reasonably good novel (from what I've heard) with no real SF or literary merit beyond being a reasonably good novel. But he's been speaking truth to power about the degradation of women in SF along with other idiocracy and so he's beloved by all the hasbeen liberal neurotics who control the Hugo voting and balloting. Look to many more in the future as long as he toes the Party line. Huzzah.

Umm, what?

So let me get this straight.  Worldcon 2013 is just so jam-packed with liberals who have no standards that anything Scalzi writes will automatically win or get nominated because he says things we like to hear?  Logical fallacy says what?

First, how does Ringo account for all those other novels Scalzi wrote which didn't win or get nominated for a Hugo Award.  Was he just not liberal enough those years?  Did the secret conservative cabal take over that year?  Do you have to get in a pissing match with a sexist troll to earn the respect of the imaginary establishment liberals before winning an award?  He does realize that liberals don't Google-snoop every author to intentionally avoid nominating or voting for a novel they like, right?  Maybe there's a secret Google-snooping room somewhere...

Second, how do you account for all the folks who didn't vote for Scalzi's novel?  Are we all conservatives or closet conservatives?  Are we secretly objectivist monkey overlords from Nerpton 7, hell bent on rigging a relatively small literary award in favor of people who don't like seeing women treated like turdfactories?  Oh, I know!  In the Ringoverse, uh...conservatives were secretly denied voting rights and so they couldn't vote on the books and now they live in a camp somewhere (we'll call it Fartabulous Camp) where they eat oatmeal and watch re-runs of Charlton Heston movies.  No?  That's not it?  Damn.  And here I was getting my hopes up...Drat.

I won't deny that there are a lot of liberals in the SF/F world, but let's stop pretending for the time being that it's all puppies and flowers for us libbies, or that all it takes to get in our metaphorical pants is a bit of political pandering.  I agree with almost everything Scalzi says on a political level, but I didn't actually pick Redshirts because I didn't like it.  His politics didn't come into it.  I know a lot of folks of the liberal persuasion who did not vote for Scalzi's novel, whether on the nomination or the final ballot.  Shockingly, they were able to decide for themselves that they didn't like it (or they didn't read it).  Free will is a bitch.

So, with that being said, I would like to thank John Ringo for making me a fan of Redshirts.  It seems all it takes to convert us is for folks like Ringo to say demonstrably nonsensical things.  We should hire him to convince all our children to eat their vegetables...

I got back from Worldcon yesterday night.  Things are still a bit of a blur.  My mind has been dragged every which way by so many good feelings.  Truly.  Honestly.  So what follows is a recap of things I can remember right now, in a completely random and nonsensical order.  If I forgot you for some reason, please smack me in the comments.

Friends!
I went to Worldcon with my besterestestest friend ever!  On top of that, I met a lot of folks I consider to be friends, but whom I have not met in person.  Friendship is wonderful!

Yay!

General Reaction
I've never been to Worldcon (or any straight SF/F convention), so I didn't really know what to expect (I suspect the same is true for Jen, who came with me, but I can't speak for her).  Sure, a few folks offered a lot of opinions about it, but since we're all a little different, I didn't know exactly what to make of it all.  There were also those worrisome bits involving The Song of the South and what not prior to the actual event.

That said, I had an absolute blast.  I've been to anime conventions before, but since I've never been embedded into the anime world, I always felt a little like an outsider at such places.  At
Worldcon, the tables had turned.  I actually knew people.  More surprising was the fact that some folks knew me.  Nothing could really have prepared me for that.  In a weird way, Worldcon felt like the kind of place at which I belonged -- a literature-heavy SF/F/ bonanaza!  Would I go again?  Yes.  And if I can afford to do so next year, it'll happen.

Podcasting
We recorded a whole bunch of interviews and discussions at Worldcon.  Expect them to appear on The Skiffy and Fanty Show soon!  Needless to say, it was awesome.

WSFS Meetings
After hearing about the horror show on the first day of the WSFS meetings (from Rachael Acks), I decided I'd rather spend my days talking with people who won't make me feel like stabbing myself.  There's a podcast about this stuff coming soon...

San Antonio
It sucks.  The Alamo is about as unimpressive as the giant ball of twine in Cawker City, Kansas.  I get that you're not really supposed to leave the hotels and convention areas, but San Antonio made it so you never had a reason to anyway.  Maybe that's kind of the point.

Greycon
I'm not sure if this is normal, having never attended before, but the average age of a Worldcon attendee seemed to be in the area of 55.  More 20s-30s seemed to show up over the weekend, but they were insanely outnumbered by older folks.  We talked about this very thing in one of the recording sessions at Worldcon, which will show up on The Skiffy and Fanty Show page eventually.

Whitemalecon
There were an awful lot of white male folks at Worldcon.  Perhaps that has something to do with the venue, or maybe it's just a normal occurrence.  All I can say is this:  it's just weird.  That's how I feel about it now.  I spend my workdays surrounded by women, people of color, etc.  So going from a relatively (though incompletely) diverse space to one that seemed, at least from my view of things, nearly monolithic in form...well, it was just plain weird.

Programming
I'll break this down into mini sections:

1. I was genuinely surprised to see so many panels about SF from elsewhere in the world.  Based on some of my interactions with certain factions of the SF/F community involved in Worldcon, I seriously expected the world to get ignored.  Future Worldcons should certainly do more, but I applaud the effort.
2. The combat panel with Elizabeth Bear, Elizabeth Moon, etc. was quite interesting, though Jen and I were both surprised at the weird gender split:  this particular panel featured all women; the other combat-related panel featured all men.  I don't know what to make of that right now.  In any case, the panel was awesome.
3. I think we went to every panel on which Tobias Buckell was a panelist.  He was awesome.
4. Myke Cole did a stint as Lou Anders for a panel featuring authors I happen to really like.  He was hilarious.
5. Why were Scott Lynch, Nick Mamatas, Myke Cole, and so many other authors and professionals absent from the programming (with the exception of Myke, who moderated a panel)?  Seriously.
6. The most annoying thing about programming at Worldcon:  all the folks who have no business being on a panel about X because they are not reasonable authorities about X.  Jen and I went to several panels in which one or two of the panelists either didn't know why they'd been pegged for that panel or simply didn't belong.  Case in point:  the panel on the future of the US-Mexico border featured absolutely zero Mexican and/or Hispanic panelists (as far as I could tell).  Apparently what counts as "qualified to talk about the US-Mexico border" are "folks who live or lived near or crossed a border somewhere on the planet."
   
   This is probably the worst example, but we also saw a lot of panels about science or subgenres or writing that featured folks who simply didn't fit in.  There were so many professionals and knowledgeable folks at Worldcon, so it doesn't make much sense, to be honest.
7. Would it be possible to stop having panels about subjects SF/F peeps have been debating pointlessly for decades?  And can moderators start cutting these questions out from consideration?  Why are we still talking about the definition of space opera or loose explanations for the connection between science and genre?

Person #1:  The panels are done for the day.  How are we going to keep this party going?
Person #2:  With alcohol.  Lots and lots of alcohol.

The science fiction legend, Frederick Pohl, passed away yesterday.  Jo Walton has written up her emotional reaction to the news (while in attendance at Worldcon) here, which I recommend reading.

I may have more extensive thoughts later.  Right now, I'm jetlagged and incapable of fully taking in such news.  He was undeniably one of the greatest science fiction writers that every lived, and while he experienced an extraordinarily wonderful (and long) life, it is becoming clearer and clearer these days that so many of the folks who made the genre a genre will not longer be with us by the end of this decade.

He will most certainly be missed, not just by his family, not just by other writers, but by the entire community.

--End