Through the wormhole (links, 8/20/09)

Hmmm… I guess I should get one of these regular link features going around here, which are so popular around the blogosphere. I’ve been lazy, I admit; especially in the last few months, with nothing posted but book reviews. Anyway, I’m going to call it “Through the wormhole,” and I’ll try to do this at least a couple times a month, or more as time permits. Enjoy!

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It seems Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics need a few changes.

In the continuing quest to mine the past for movies to remake, Warner Bros. sets its sights on Outland.

UFO sightings seem to spike after big blockbuster sci-fi films. Well duh! Little green men like a good movie now and then too, don’t you know?

Are fantasy and supernaturalism having too much of an effect on science fiction? When it comes to tv and movies, I think there may be something to the author’s contention.

Sign of the times: ecological catastrophe stories are going mainstream, rather than being the sole province of science fiction:

In short, environmental fiction is moving away from its roots in science fiction and is becoming part of mainstream literature – as is revealed by some of the most recent novels to tackle themes of climate change and the like.

HBO is developing a series based on Robert Silverberg’s The World Inside. Consider me intrigued. I’ll watch it. The fact that I don’t have HBO presents a minor problem, though. Oh well, I’ll cross that bridge later.

This guy cautions that we shouldn’t let our imaginations runs so wild that we forget about real world problems:

Fantasists ponder a future of superlongevity, superintelligence, and superabundance—as if wishing will make it happen. Meanwhile, people are dying. [….] Reading a lot of science fiction (which I do, and which I heartily encourage) can lead a person to think that if something has been imagined, then it must be possible. This is one of the risks of enjoying speculative fiction, and it’s made more acute by engaging uncritically in a community of like-minded believers.

It’s a point worth making. I can see how unquestioning acceptance of certain SF premises could, theoretically, influence someone’s beliefs, behaviors, votes, etc. For example, if you believe it’s inevitable that humanity will create off-world colonies within the next century or two, you might not be too worried about overpopulation. Or if you believe that medicine and genetic engineering will cure all major diseases in the near future, you may not put as much effort into a healthy lifestyle. However, I don’t really know anyone who’s so out of touch with reality that they make such decisions based on what they see or read in science fiction. And rather than blinding us with unrealistic expectations, I think SF actually provides more of a beneficial effect, by highlighting different problems and situations that maybe we hadn’t thought about before. Still, the general tone of the article seems to be “let’s keep things in perspective,” and it’s hard to argue with that.

On the Truthiness of Simulation:

Fiction is not true, but it is like truth. It’s truthy.

Of course good fiction (books, movies, games) has a certain realism — or truthiness — to it. Otherwise we wouldn’t be able to connect to it at all, and it would be pretty useless.

To rate or not to rate; that is the question

I have a simple question for my readers, and I hope you’ll give me some feedback on this: would you like to see ratings attached to my reviews? Do you find ratings useful at all?

I have always had conflicting views on this matter. On the one hand, I feel that any review worth the keystrokes spent writing it should be able to get across how the reviewer feels about the book in question, and give the reader some idea of the book’s worth. I also feel the reader, if interested in the review in the first place, should put some time and effort into actually reading it, rather than glancing at a simple numerical rating and then perhaps just skimming the rest.

On the other hand, I’m well aware that my reviews are not always as good at conveying my thoughts as I’d like them to be, and maybe in such cases a rating might be a useful additional element.

Another reason I’ve shied away from ratings is because I find them rather slippery critters. I have a tendency to see them as relative rather than absolute. When I rate something, I have an automatic impulse to compare it against all other works of its kind. The problem is that new works are being encountered all the time, and so this relationship is constantly shifting. So if I come across a new book that blows me away, and I give it 5 stars, then I think of that other book I gave 5 stars last year that wasn’t nearly as good as this new book, so how could it really deserve 5 stars? If I do implement ratings here, I’ll have to find some way to fight this urge to constantly re-evaluate everything I’ve rated in the past. But I suppose I can get over that, and find a new way to think about it.

I’m gonna post a poll and see what the opinion is on this. Feel free to leave me any comments you have as well. I’m more than willing to add ratings, if enough people say they find them useful.

Contest: name a robot, win some books

The folks at Angry Robot, the new SF imprint from Harper Collins, are offering you the chance to win copies of the first seven books they publish. All you have to do to win is….. name that droid! That’s right, apparently part of the reason their robot is so angry is because it has never received the common decency of being given a name. I’m sure this can lead to some pretty serious identity issues, so why don’t you help out? Think up an appropriate appellation, zip on over there and enter it, and you could win some free books. Hey, what’s better than that? Good luck!

Some recent blogroll additions

I want to mention a couple sites I’ve added to my Blogroll in the last few weeks, to help send them some of the attention they deserve.

First is a relatively new one by none other than Frederick Pohl, called The Way the Future Blogs. He describes it as a sort of continuation of, or sequel to, his 1978 autobiography, The Way the Future Was. It promises to be full of fascinating insights into science fiction (both the literature and the business) from Pohl’s many years as both author and editor. I’ve been meaning to mention this one for a while, and now I have.

The other site is a reverse discovery, meaning I found it by following back a link to someone who found and linked to this blog. And when I visited, I liked what I saw. The Great Gnome Press Science Fiction Odyssey is a classy looking site and a nice homage to science fiction, especially older science fiction, and particularly editions from an old publisher called Gnome Press, which the blogger collects. I think it’s going to be fun reading about his experiences in pursuing his collection, and his reviews of some great SF from way back when. There’s also some good information on book grading.

I hope you’ll take a look, if you haven’t already.

The case of the fluctuating banner

You may have noticed over the last several weeks how my banner keeps changing. Yeah, I went through a few temporary ones while I thought about what kind of look I wanted to go for. And now I’m there. This one will be here for quite some time, so I hope you like it. I’m rather proud of it, if I do say so myself. It took me several hours of work; I don’t have Photoshop or anything comparable, only a few freeware programs I have to coax (threaten, beat, slap around) to get what I want out of them.

Anyway….. what do you think? Lay those opinions on me.

Laying down the law

My friend Omphalos has just launched a new blog, The Law and Science Fiction. It’s a topic he’s more than qualified for, being both an eminently well-read SF fan AND a lawyer. The blog will analyze and discuss various issues relating to the law and judicial systems as portrayed in speculative fiction. It’s going to be a very interesting project, and I hope you’ll all pop over for a visit. As an added bonus, his first article just happens to be about one of my favorite books ever. Go check it out!