5 endearing charactaeristics of Kurt Vonnegut's fiction

Gavin Extence lists them at Omnivoracious. The 5-point bulleted list appears near the end of article, however; easily visible if you scroll down.

[via SF Signal]

Hal Clement's "Whirligig World" (essay)

Author describes the rigorous process, including consultations with Isaac Asimov & others, he went through in designing Mesklin, the world at the heart of "Mission of Gravity".

He also tells us: "I hereby give official permission to anyone who so desires to lay scenes there." "there" is Mesklin; according to the article, you can set a story there without worrying about copyright violations, provided that you "maintain reasonable scientific standards, & that's certainly an elastic requirement in the field of science fiction."

First published: Astounding, June 1953.
Related: Stories of Hal Clement.

Understanding pulps

Jess Nevins' "Where did science fiction come from? A primer on the pulps." at io9. [via Free SF Reader]

On "the approach of the pulp writers and magazines: an emphasis on adventure; the privileging of plot over characterization; the use of dialogue and narration as means for delivering information rather than displaying authorial style; the regular use and exploitation of the exotic, whether racial, sexual, socioeconomic, or geographic; simple emotions strongly expressed; and good always triumphing over evil."

Notes for me (to look up fiction).

1. "Philip Francis Nowlan's "Armageddon–2419 AD" (the story in which Buck Rogers debuted)".

Related: Fiction from old pulps.

Cory Doctorow on "itch to copy is in human genes"

Link.

"Three or four billion years ago, by some process that we don't understand, molecules began to copy themselves. We are the distant descendants of those early copyists - copying is in our genes. We have a word for things that don't copy: 'dead'."

Related: Stories of Cory Doctorow.

Bud Webster's "Past Masters" archive

One of the better sf columns on the web has been unusually unlucky - Helix where the column originally appeared shut down; now JBU, its new home, is shutting down too.

Bud tells us that all his previous columns now have an archive at Galactic Central.

Bud Webster's tribute to William Tenn

In JBU, #24 (April 2010).
Note: This is the last issue for JBU. I'm not sure how long this article will stay online at link above, but I suppose it'll be there for at least 2 months that a typical JBU issue stays current?

Noteworthy parts:

1. Some stories named.
   
   Of the ones I've read among the ones he names, two are especially good: "Child's Play" (download MP3) is in a sort of tribute to Henry Kuttner & C L Moore, & "Down Among the Dead Men" (download text scans as part of a larger package) is an interesting team building story for managers.
2. I used to think that "Of Men & Monsters" was his only novel. Webster lists another one too, "A Lamp For Medusa".
3. A few authors named. I've read all except Goulart - had not even heard his name; Webster says he was a humorist.
   
   PS: Robert Sheckley is often described as a humorist but only one of his half dozen odd stories I've read - "Hunting Problem" (download) - has actually worked for me. Anyone care to suggest a few really funny titles? (I've read that famous story about TV reality show where a man has to escape his own staged killers - that one didn't work for me).
4. There is a Tenn bibliography at end.

Related: Stories of William Tenn.

C J Cherryh on history of sf publishing in the US since 1970s

At Book View Cafe.

"Literary fiction"

Rachel Swirsky quotes A D Jameson: '“Literary fiction” is what I’d call a super-genre that pretends, a la Derrida and Foucault, to not be a genre at all. It calls other things genres to subordinate them, and to deny its own genre elements. Which is what the ruling power usually does: it calls itself nothing (other than normal or correct), and calls everything else something.'

When can you blame author, if unhappy with a book?

Cherie Priest has a little crisply-written primer on the subject.

[via John Scalzi]

SF reviewerspeak

A huge, still continuing, series of tweets under the hashtag "#lazycriticslexicon" that define, in funny plainspeak, common words used by reviewers for criticism & for story classifications.

[via io9]

Frederik Pohl on the last days of Arthur Clarke, & their joint novel "The Last Theorem"

Link.

PS: I finished "The Last Theorem" last week; should have a post soon - whenever "soon" happens. It's the fourth or fifth novel waiting a post - in company with one by Jack Vance & another by Hal Clement!

Related: Stories of Arthur Clarke, Frederik Pohl.

Robert Silverberg critiques Arthur Clarke's fiction

At Asimov's.

Related: Fiction from Asimov's; fiction of Robert Silverberg/Arthur Clarke.

Why read short fiction?

Megan Kurashige has some arguments on why more people should be reading short fiction rather than novels. [via Bibliophile Stalker]

My own reasons have been "accident" & "impatience". I was mostly a novels man till about 2 years back.

When I started Arthur Clarke Fansite, I began reading all fiction Clarke ever wrote - at whatever length - microfiction ("siseneG") to novel series & collaborations. I currently have several dozen posts on his short stories & a couple of dozen on his novels & some on his collections, but the most interesting thing this project showed was: overall, his short fiction is way more interesting compared to his novels! For those short on budget or time: just buy his Collected Stories, & about the only really interesting story of his you will miss is the first story (of 4) in "2001 A Space Odyssey".

When I started Variety SF less than 2 years ago, I was very impatient: I wanted to quickly cover the breadth of the genre. Novels simply take too long to read, though I still read some.

Curious Google Trends data about the genre

In most cases, actual search data gathered by Google tells us that, year-on-year, the absolute number of people looking for things science fictional is dropping, though more content is being generated! What am I missing?

Caveats:

1. Everything except searches for relatively young authors currently in news & with a significant web presence - Charles Stross, Cory Doctorow, John Scalzi, & Neil Gaiman. And even these are steady rather than growing, except Gaiman who is both growing & outstrips even Doctorow by a factor of 15. And Doctorow's most popular searches have nothing to do with sf; they're mostly about his activism. Authors like Ted Chiang & Mike Resnick have too few searches for Google to bother; Greg Egan is searched for a bit more, but is insignificant compared to Big 4.
2. None of the publishers register on Google's radar - not even Asimov's & F&SF.
   

Major types.

"Horror fiction" has too little volume.

Fiction by size.

There is too little volume of traffic for "flash fiction" & "novelette".

Some big shots.

Adding Arthur Clarke to the list makes the data unreadable because of huge spike for his searches around the time of his death last year. But even he has been showing consistent downward trend.

Paul Kincaid on award nominees & identifying the genre's best

Link. [via John Scalzi]

Charles Stross does some 21st century future gazing

Link. Technology, politics, religion, ...

Cory Doctorow on a key defining attribute of steampunk

In a post titled "Love the Machine, Hate the Factory", at Make, #17.

Amazon "Kindle 2"'s text-to-speech features

Cory Doctorow answers some recent blabbering of a gentleman named Roy Blount, Jr, president of (US-based?) Author's Guild. In language far more civilized than I would have used.

Bud Webster's "Past Masters" series moves to Jim Baen's Universe

From now closed Helix SF. And remains accessible without login at new location.

His is one of the more interesting columns appearing in online sf world - introduction to the works of one forgotten master in each column for those who were not reading sf a generation back.

I tend to look only for recommended readings - so his columns tends to appear too long. But they often do contain good recommendations.

Unfortunately, my featured posts feed cannot pick his columns up automatically since the JBU Columns feed is buggy. I guess Past Masters should be appearing once every two months at JBU.

His February 2009 post is about C M Kornbluth. Not many recommended readings I didn't know about (only "The Remorseful"), but he gives a long Kornbluth bibliography at end.

"Science fiction is a literature of ideas"

While this statement is heard often, interpretation seems to vary so much in the sf community.

I personally prefer a story that focuses on a single idea, & looks at some aspect of it in great detail.

A story that is an encyclopedia of "ideas" nearly always puts me off.

1. The so called "ideas" tend to be half-baked both because of their sheer quantity, & almost as often, because author himself is not clear on what these "ideas" mean.
2. As a reader, the only way I can read these stories is by shutting my mind off, & treating the sentences as so much drivel. Occasionally I'll give up within first two dozen sentences, sometimes several dozen pages (yes - I sometimes feel lazy putting a bad story down - sheer inertia!).

Am I among the minority in being put off by "ideas" stories as opposed to "a single idea", or even better, "a single aspect of a single idea"?

Of course, there are occasional exceptions. "Doc" Smith's Lenseman immediately comes to mind. I guess I can enumerate some more if I spend some time thinking about it. But there aren't many.