Dr. Jason W. Ellis' Blog on Science Fiction, Computers, Artificial Intelligence, LEGO, Skateboarding, and More
This artwork moves through the city’s streets. All sides of this JFT Scrap Metal company’s box truck features exquisite paintings that include pop cultural references and uniquely original imaginings. The last image’s science fictional cosmic scene with a UFO is signed by Valentin Vewer.
Science Fiction (SF) writer, mathematician, and futurologist Vernor Vinge died last week on March 20, 2024. He is remembered in Locus, The Register, File 770, and Ars Technica. He has a robust entry in the Encyclopedia of SF here.
I wish that I had know about his novella “True Names” (1981) much further back, perhaps before I had read William Gibson’s Neuromancer (1984), which had already set the stage for my thinking about fiction involving computers and cyberspace. In “True Names,” Vinge came closer to what was and might have been, especially considering the Crypto Wars and the clipper chip. Though, it was perhaps serendipitous that I discovered Vinge’s stories when I was spending as much time in virtual worlds as out.
Some years after reading Vinge’s works, I pitched his novel Rainbows End (2006) as a First Year Experience (FYE) reading at Georgia Tech, but the reading went to another story that I had also suggested.
I am glad that I got a chance to hear him speak at the International Conference for the Fantastic in the Arts in 2008 where he was a Guest of Honor.
I was taking photos of objects on my desk and this configuration of Little My and The Groke from Tove Jannsen’s Moomin standing in front of Fox Mulder’s UFO poster from The X-Files gave me a chuckle. I thought, if only there had been a “The Moomins and the UFO” book. A quick Google search reminded me that there had been an episode of the Japanese 1990-1991 Moomin anime in which UFOs visited Moominvalley titled “A Close Encounter With Aliens.” A child alien visits, officialdom searches for him, the Moomin characters discover his technology, Moominmama is accidentally shrunk, Stinky steals the shrink ray machine, it is destroyed, and the child alien’s parents show up to collect their little one and set things right. I want to believe (in Moominvalley).
While I was working on Yet Another Science Fiction Textbook (YASFT) OER that I released earlier this week, the slow motion disaster of the 2023 Hugo Awards given at the Chengdu, China Worldcon began unfold. When the voting nomination statistics were released (as is required of each annual awards committee), we learned that some works and writers were removed for being “not eligible” without explanation. These included R. F. Kuang’s Babel in the novel category, which had already won the Nebula and Locus Awards and was considered a contender for the Hugo; Xiran Jay Zhao for the Astounding Award; the television adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman for Long Form Dramatic and Short Form Dramatic (there is a provision that a work can’t stand in two categories, but to remove it from both categories instead of letting it remain in one beggars belief); and Paul Weimer for Best Fan Writer. In addition to these perplexing ineligibilities, some folks, Heather Rose Jones’s part 1 and part 2 analysis being the most thorough, looked closely at the balloting numbers and discovered some strange results that didn’t jive with past award voting trends. Adding to the mystificaiton , the awards committee chair refused to fully explain why those works and authors were deemed ineligible before final voting. Then, Locus reported that the Worldcon Intellectual Property (WIP), which holds the service marks for the World Science Fiction Society including the Hugo Awards, has censured some of those involved in this past year’s awards and some of those individuals have resigned.
And now, following the release of a collection of emails and files from within the awards committee by ones of its members, Chris M. Barkley, who received the files, and Jason Sanford have published a report on the emails that states, “Make no mistake; the 2023 Hugo Awards were censored because certain authors and works were deemed to have too many political liabilities, at least from the viewpoint of the Chinese government. While it’s unclear if this was official censorship from the Chinese government or self-censorship by those afraid of offending governmental or business interests, we can now be certain that censorship indeed took place.”
The fallout continues. The 2024 Glasgow Committee seems to be more cautious and transparent throughout the process now. They sent out a press release outlining their steps moving forward and to announce the resignation of Kat Jones, one of the administrators who helped with the Chengdu Hugo Awards Committee, from the position of Hugo Administrator at Glasgow.
Looking ahead, there will be more questions for potential host countries with laws that might not permit, for example, a work with LGBTQIA+ characters winning. And, there are calls for changing how the awards are administered so that they are divorced from the convention and are properly audited by an independent organization.
The story has been picked up The Guardian here and here, and Esquire magazine here.
It’s hard to adequately express the big fat asterisk that will appear by the 2023 Hugos and its award winners as a result of this. There are still unanswered questions about whether this was self-censorship or external censorship. Any censorship is of course bad, but the latter seems less bad, considering what could be involved in terms of pressure or threat, than the former, considering someone could have spoken up, called it off, or done something to get things back on track. More details might yet be revealed. Regardless, I hope that positive change comes for the Hugos to make them resistant to this kind of duplicity.
I’m very happy to announce the launch of a new open educational resource (OER) that I’ve been working on for awhile!
It’s called Yet Another Science Fiction Textbook (YASFT). It’s over 60,000 words and includes additional resources that can be helpful for readers, students, and instructors.
YASFT is released under an Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International Creative Commons License. It’s freely available to be read as it is. However, if anyone would like to use it in another way, there are licensing terms that must be followed: “This license requires that reusers give credit to the creator. It allows reusers to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon the material in any medium or format, for noncommercial purposes only. If others modify or adapt the material, they must license the modified material under identical terms.”
You can find YASFT under the Teaching menu above or directly here.
Its abstract and table of contents are included below.
Abstract
Yet Another Science Fiction Textbook (YASFT) is an open educational resource or OER, meaning it is freely available for anyone to use and learn with. It provides a chronological history of Science Fiction (SF) with an emphasis on literature and film, and it includes other useful resources, such as a glossary of terms, an extensive list of SF definitions, additional resources, a syllabus with hyperlinked readings available online, and video lectures. It tells a story, but not the only story, about SF history. It’s also an experiment in using generative artificial intelligence (AI) to assist with editing a large body of text, in this case over 60,000 words.Table of Contents
Front Matter
What is YASFT?
Who made YASFT?
Why was YASFT made?
Why is it called YASFT?
How can YASFT be used?
How was YASFT made?
Acknowledgements
Preface
Origins of Science Fiction
Early Fantastic Stories
Scientific Revolution
Age of Enlightenment
Romanticism
The Gothic
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
Science-Saturated Novel
Victor Frankenstein’s Hubris
Critique of the Age of Enlightenment
Tabula Rasa
Proto-SF
Historical Context
Edgar Allan Poe
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Jules Verne
H. G. Wells
E. M. Forster
Pulp SF
Historical Context
Overview of Pulp SF
Hugo Gernsback
E. E. “Doc” Smith
C. L. Moore
Edgar Rice Burroughs
H. P. Lovecraft
SF Film Serials of the 1930s and 1940s
Buck Rogers
Flash Gordon
Golden Age SF
Historical Context
Overview of Golden Age SF
John W. Campbell, Jr.
Isaac Asimov
Ray Bradbury
Robert A. Heinlein
Frank Herbert
Tom Godwin
SF Film Through the 1950s
Film vs. Literature
Early SF Film
1950s SF Film Boom
Forbidden Planet
New Wave SF
Historical Context
Overview of New Wave SF
J.G. Ballard
Harlan Ellison
Philip K. Dick
Samuel R. Delany
Star Trek
“The City on the Edge of Forever”
Feminist SF
Historical Context
Beginnings of Feminist SF
Definitions of Feminist SF
Joanna Russ
Marge Piercy
Pamela Zoline
James Tiptree, Jr.
Ursula K. Le Guin
Octavia E. Butler
Afrofuturism
Steven Barnes
Tananarive Due
Nalo Hopkinson
Nnedi Okorafor
Cyberpunk
Historical Context
Coining the Cyberpunk Term
Cyberpunk Characteristics
William Gibson
Sprawl Trilogy and Stories
Hermes 2000 and Floppy Disk eBooks
The X-Files, “Kill Switch”
Bruce Sterling
Pat Cadigan
Contemporary Science Fiction
Historical Context
Ted Chiang
N. K. Jemisin
Cory Doctorow
Charlie Jane Anders
Martha Wells
Mary Robinette Kowal
Ken Liu
R. F. Kuang
SF Film from 1960 Onward
1960s
1970s
1980s
1990s
2000s
2010s
Global Perspective: Taiwanese SF
Brief Taiwanese History
Taiwanese SF Overview
Taiwanese Fandom
Cultural Comparisons
Issues with Translation
How to Keep Up With Science Fiction
Appendices
Appendix 1: Glossary of Science Fiction Terms
Appendix 2: Chronological List of SF Definitions of Science Fiction with MLA Citations
Appendix 3: Further Reading
Textbooks
Readers
Teaching
Online Research
Appendix 4: Sample Syllabus with Hyperlinked Readings
Appendix 5: Lecture Videos
Appendix 6: Version History
Dynamic Subspace 