As I was reading the novella, I was struck by two things. First, it felt like I was reading a story about being in a game world like World of Warcraft or Everquest had those things been melded with the daily practices of Internet usage (which can be partly true with the various add-ons for WoW). Also, the way he reduces complex operations, such as switching carrier lines or performing an action to protect himself (like a firewall or virtual private network) or probing another operator (port scan, denial of service attack, etc.), into gestures and realistic actions (like flying and navigating as a bird = charting communication networks).

Second, it is hard to imagine that this story was written in 1981! Furthermore, it, looking back from my personal experiences in the computer age, proves much more prophetic than Neuromancer (though both were overly optimistic regarding human-computer interfaces). TRON, released in 1982, seems to mediate between the worlds of “True Names” and Neuromancer.

I’m left wondering why so much more scholarship is written on Neuromancer than “True Names.” Is it because “True Names” didn’t achieve the circulation that Neuromancer did, or is it because it was too early to attract the attention that Neuromancer (and the cyberpunk authors) did?

If you haven’t read “True Names,” I cannot adequately stress how badly you should read it without burning out your EEG leads. Go read it, now.

You can find a copy online here.

Professor Masood Raja lent me his signed copy of Vandana Singh’s The Woman Who Thought She Was a Planet and Other Stories (2008) a few months ago. Mrs. Singh is an Indian science fiction and fantasy author, who also holds a PhD in theoretical particle physics. You may read some of her work and learn more about her on her official website here.

Due to my PhD reading lists and an enormous amount of other work, I have only just now got around to reading the short story for which the collection got its name, and I can only say, wow, it’s a really great story. “The Woman Who Thought She Was a Planet” is a whimsical answer to the more paranoid invasion stories of Philip K. Dick or the alarming nanotech transformations of Greg Bear. Her writing style reminds me of the fleshiness and texture found in the works of Ted Chiang and Ian McDonald. The “aliens” of this story are not from out there, but from the woman herself. She creates them, and they in turn care for the planet that gave them birth. Her creations, which she is trying to learn how to understand, and her changed behavior as a planet among human beings challenges the relationships of husband-wife/male-female while turning issues of class and face on their heads.

You should check out Mrs. Singh’s collection on the basis of this one story, and if you have the time, let me know what you think of the other stories.

Last night, Yufang and I watched ABC’s new science fiction drama, Flashforward, or what I lovingly call, “the show about the friendship bracelet of death.” ABC doesn’t have a great track record when it comes to SF, so I’m not expecting a long run of this show even with it starring Will Shakespeare (Joseph Fiennes) and Hikaru Sulu (John Cho). There is, however, a shadowy hobbit (Dominic Monaghan) and a would-be pirate (Jack Davenport) who may bring the fantastic into the mix and save the science fiction that ABC can’t seem to successfully execute.

I found this in a recent fortune cookie:

When the mouse looks upon the cat, there must be an escape route nearby.

Much space opera depends on this being the case.

I just got a copy of Heather Masri’s Science Fiction: Stories and Contexts from Bedford St. Martins as I build a science fiction course for (hopefully) future use. This is a really cool collection.

It is chocked full of fiction–short stories and excerpts–that are introduced by Masri. But that’s not the really slick feature. What I like about the collection is the thematic groups of stories paired with critical essays. For example, the first section on “Alien Encounters,” which includes stories by Wells, Weinbaum, Bradbury, Le Guin, Butler, Egan, and others, is paired with a selection from de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex, Jung’s The Shadow, and Fanon’s The Face of Blackness.  The “Utopias and Dystopias” section has A. E. van Vogt’s “The Weapon Shop,” Ellison’s “Repent, Harlequin! Said the Ticktockman,” Joanna Russ’ “When It Changed,” and more by Zamyatin, Knight, Varley, Ryman, and Hopkinson. With these terrific stories, there are Hannah Arendt’s Ideology and Terror: A Novel Form of Government, William H. Whyte Jr’s The Organization Man, and Jameson’s “Progress versus Utopia; or, Can We Imagine the Future?”.

Not everyone will agree with all of the selections, but I believe that this is a useful and well considered turnkey effort toward a theory centric science fiction course.

I enjoy watching SF on television, but I’m beginning to develop a tick from good show cancellations. I have to ask myself, should I invest myself in a particular show, knowing that it could get canned half way through the season?

What does this mean for SF show producers? Is there a way to develop a cost effective, low budget, high concept SF show? As we know from reading SF, the science fictional aspect of a story need not be overwhelming–it can be subtle. Can this translate well into a visual media like television, or do we need something visually awesome to let us know that what we are watching is SF?

I just received my copy of The Routledge Companion to Science Fiction today. After browsing through the entire volume, I’m amazed at how much amazing work is packed into this single volume by such a broad swath of the science fiction scholar community. I can see this anthology being useful in an SF survey course or as a companion for any scholar who wants a quick and thorough introduction to a particular field of study within SF scholarship.

In the screen capture above, you can see the starship Antares streaming away from Earth in the second episode of the ABC show, Defying Gravity.

When I first heard about Defying Gravity, I was very afraid that it was going to be a disaster despite Ron Livingston’s lead in the show. However, I took some time off from my SFRA 2008 Proceedings chapter revision to watch the pilot on Hulu yesterday.

The premise of the show is to send a manned mission on a grand tour of the solar system after our successful (albeit with casualties) mission to Mars. The hook for the show is that there is a bit of mystery regarding the replacement of two crew members at the last moment due to an undiagnosed medical condition, and a whispered true purpose to the mission (sounds like 2001: A Space Odyssey without HAL).

I believe that the show deserves a shot based on the pilot, so I’m going to continue watching to see how it develops. However, I am going to take the show with a healthy pinch of salt, because there are narrative tropes (e.g., cocksure and subordinate astronauts/pilots and affect-lacking deceptive administrators that deserve to be laid to rest) and some not-so-sound science and engineering that are unavoidably endemic to much SF television. I will say that its use of flashback and dreams add to rather than detract from the show’s ability to tell its story.

You can catch episodes on ABC, Sunday nights at 10:00PM EST, and for a limited time on Hulu here.

Call for Papers

1st annual and founding conference of the Gesellschaft für Fantastikforschung
(GFF)(Association for Research in the Fantastic)

Fremde Welten – Wege und Räume der Fantastik im 21. Jahrhundert
(Strange Worlds – Paths and Spaces of the Fantastic in the 21st Century)

University of Hamburg, Germany – 30. September – 03. October 2010

The success of Joanne K. Rowling’s Harry Potter novels, the Wachowskis’ Matrix-trilogy and Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings has put a worldwide spotlight on themes of the fantastic, forcing academics to reevaluate the genres and to grant them prominent position in literary or cultural criticism. The overwhelming appeal of the fantastic – in any of its facets – has not gone unnoticed by the media and has led to intensified academic negotiations of the genres. In Anglo-American culture this popularity met with existing structures, such as the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts (IAFA) or
the Science Fiction Research Association (SFRA), which in turn welcomed the newfound public and academic interest.

In German culture, on the other hand, academics involved with the fantastic are without networks, orga ni zation or affiliation. It therefore seems the ideal moment to establish an Association for Research in the Fantastic [Gesellschaft für Fantastikforschung (GFF)] as a basis for linking German language scholarship in the fantastic with its international counterparts and thereby making this scholar ship more visible and accessible, and allowing for international exchange. To this end, in October 2010 the University of Hamburg will hold the first annual and founding conference of the GFF. The conference, “Fremde Welten – Wege und Räume der Fantas tik im 21. Jahr hundert” (“Strange Worlds – Paths and Spaces of the Fantastic in the 21st Century”), is emphatically conceptualized as international and interdisciplinary. It conceives of the fantastic in its broadest definition as an umbrella term for all fantastic genres, such as fantasy, horror, gothic, science fiction, speculative fiction, as well as fairy tales, fables and myth. The interdisciplinary approach of the GFF includes research interests from fields such as literature, film, tv, culture, art, new media, architecture and music as well as incorporating impulses from sociology, anthropology, historical science or philosophy. The
international approach is guaranteed by the bifocal orientation of the
association as well as the conference. On the one hand, it reaches out to German speaking scholars working in the field, but on the other expressly encourages membership by international scholars working on German language fantastic.

The conference emphasizes the fantastic in its importance and relation to popular culture and understands it as a reflection of power relations and conflicts of interest. The popular anticipates these conflicts and expresses it before other social discourses can. By definition, the fantastic is able to negotiate alternative worlds and transgressive experiences of time and space, and thus represents a paradigmatic field of inquiry for cultural spaces. With historically specific developments of the 21st century in mind, the fantastic allows us to reveal social changes as no other genre does. What is the popular appeal of the fantastic grounded on? What alternatives does this cultural production offer?

The conference “Fremde Welten – Wege und Räume der Fantas tik im 21.
Jahr hundert” aims for a re view of the status quo in German language
scholarship of the fantastic, as well as open up a dia logue with international research done in this field. It intends to unite researchers and scho lars and to initiate an exchange of ideas. In reference to the conference title we therefore ask con ference contributors to consider the following questions (among many possible others): What paths have led the fantastic to its position today and which ones lie ahead? Which spaces has the fantastic entered or perhaps established?

The organizers call for proposals to be handed in by April 1st 2010. Proposals are possible as paper presentations (paper sessions of up to 3 presenters, 20 min each), panel discussions (moderated, with 3-5 panelists) or author readings from all areas of the fantastic, either in German or English. Please send your proposals of no more than 250 words, with a short biographical note and contact data per email to: lars.schmeink [at] uni-hamburg.de Any further information can be acquired at the same address.

Organization:
Lars Schmeink
Universität Hamburg
Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik
Von-Melle-Park 6
D-20146 Hamburg

Prof. Dr. Astrid Böger
Universität Hamburg
Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik
Von-Melle-Park 6
D-20146 Hamburg

Prof. Dr. em. H.-H. Müller
Universität Hamburg
Institut für Germanistik II
Von-Melle-Park 6
D-20146 Hamburg

You may be wondering why I’m writing about this event. You may also be wondering what the heck is a ‘home guy.’

Xuei-Hen Ju is a Taiwanese blogger and translator of English language SF and fantasy novels including Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings, but he originally majored in electrical engineering. He is considered a ‘home guy’, originally because of his education, and later because of his passion for what we in the States would consider geekdom.

Home guy (阿宅) is a term that was originally reserved for folks who majored in computer science in school, but now the term has an expanded meaning that encompasses someone who is shy, plays video games, and reads comic books (girls are a marginalized minority in this group but there are definitely some out there). Home guys are aligned with geekdom, fandom, otaku, and other marginal groups who are passionate about some aspect of pop culture, SF, fantasy, etc. Due to these cross cultural connections, I wanted to mention the Xuei-Hen Ju’s work and the home guy phenomenon to an English language audience.

Xuei-Hen Ju uses his blog to promote his own kind of ‘homeness.’ In many ways, he encourages other home guys to break out of the reductionist and stereotypical boxes that have in the past confined and stifled social acceptance of home guys. Through his blog, books, and the 725 event, he promotes a socially aware and proactive sense of what it means to be a home guy.

Like an otaku Tony Robbins, Xuei-Hen Ju inspires other home guys to follow their passion and tap into their enthusiasms, not as a cross to bear but as a marker for their sense of self. Also, he tells others that anyone, despite their educational background or personal condition, can achieve personal happiness–that it is up to each home guy to achieve what it is that he wants. He connects masculinity to his vision of the home guy by rallying others to maintain social justice (e.g., if you see someone abusing a dog, it is the home guy’s duty to call that person out) and do something with passion. The subtitle of his site is 熱情從來不是被找到的，而是奮戰努力才能獲得的！(Passion is never to be found, but gained by fighting!).

His idea about what it means to be a home guy may be skewed toward men more so than women. During his posts, he does occasionally insert pictures of attractive girls during an otherwise non-girl related post just to pause or breakup the flow of what he may be talking about.

However, he is conscious of respect for women when he threw the 725 event, because he warned the other home guys to not hit on girls in attendance (but they could do what they wanted to outside the event). If you click through to the 725 event post with pictures of the event, you will see a number of girls in the audience, and some of the Star Wars cosplayers were women, so there are home girls/gals, too.

More about the 725 event: I definitely recommend you clicking here to read (if you know Chinese) and see the pictures of the extremely successful event. There was music, Star Wars cosplay and demonstrations, presentations, and video game play on the 400″ screen. There are men, women, and children in the audience. And, the audience beat out an earlier torrential rain storm that killed power to the adjacent movie theater and shopping mall. Folks from all over Taiwan converged on Taipei to go to the free event, and they were determined to go come hell or high water (literally).

I liked the idea of the event being free, and I don’t exactly know how it was pulled off. Perhaps there was corporate sponsorship, or Xuei-Hen Ju used his own money to pay for the space and the setup. Directly, he didn’t get any money by hosting the home guy get-together, but he did sells some copies of his popular book, which he would personalize for attendees (and those not there–but by saying “loser, why didn’t you come out?!”). Also, there are the Home Guy Army t-shirts that are in some of the pictures. Oh, and the event itself wasn’t advertised anywhere else, except on Xuei-Hen Ju’s blog. Essentially, he told his blog following, home guy friends to “Come here on this particular day and let’s show everyone what we can do.”

You should definitely check out Xuei-Hen Ju’s blog, and if you know Chinese, you should find out more about home guys and Taiwan fandom. From talking with Yufang (who was sweet to tell me about the 725 event, and who I asked to help me with the translating and descriptions), Taiwanese popular culture is an amalgamation of cultures from surrounding countries. It seems that much of the culture consumed in Taiwan comes from other places, but I suspect that there must be a local flavor to the way that other cultures are interpreted, consumed, and enjoyed by home guys and every other Taiwanese person. I think that more work should be done on SF fandom in Taiwan, because that country and its people are more unique than many due to their position as a cultural crossroads.