During my review of the film Primer, I discussed an essay by Pam Noles and noted that I would get back to her central topic soon — after all, I was riffing on her issues about the underrepresentation of nonwhite people in science fiction and fantasy literature and media, but riffing in a very odd way. (You can read the Primer review if you want to know more.) It’s taken me a while to get back to the issue, but now I’m ready to say something about it. The first word that comes to my mind, as a white male …
Category: REVIEWS
Yellow Dust Fever
Today was the worst Yellow-Dust-From-China day I’ve seen yet. The whole city was smoggy, to a degree comparable to the smoggiest I saw in Gurgaon — which was shocking at the time — and everyone I saw responded to it. The people climbing the stairs at my station, on the way home, dragged their feet as if they were fifty years older than they really were. It was awful. Lime advised me to go to a pharmacy and get a face mask for my trips outside, and of course, like a dope, I said it wasn’t for me. I mean, …
A CHINK IN THE ARMOUR
A CHINK IN THE ARMOUR is a documentary about stereotypes of Chinese people. Nothing you don’t already know, but there are a couple of amusing moments. via Angry Asian Man
VS Naipaul Interview
This interview I found worth reading. Via A Glimpse of the World.
For You Fellow Aspirants
You may not see anything new here but it’s worth looking at Robert Sawyer’s Letter to Beginning Writers just the same.
Why Sing We?
Music gives biologists fits. Its ubiquity in human cultures, and strong evidence that the brain comes preloaded with musical circuits, suggest that music is as much a product of human evolution as, say, thumbs. But that raises the question of what music is for. Back in 1871, Darwin speculated that human music, like bird songs, attracts mates. Or, as he put it, prelinguistic human ancestors tried “to charm each other with musical notes and rhythm.” But more recent work by scientists suggests that music might have played a much different role than this — bonding groups of early humans together …
Urville, France and Other Imagined Places
Apparently I missed out on the attention that was lavished upon this film about am autistic artist who has created an imaginary city in France. (That link is to a video page. I’m partly posting it so I get a chance to see it on my other PC; it’s not loading well on the laptop so I’ll try at the office.) I found the link on Maureen McHugh’s blog, but apparently boingboing also had a post about it. It triggered for Maureen a post on worldbuilding, which is interesting. I haven’t actually gone on a binge of mapping and worldbuilding …
Elizabeth Bear’s 10 Things Learned From Writing Popular Fiction
There are some excellent points in ten things I have learned from writing popular fiction. A few favorites are: 2. It helps if you honestly like to blow stuff up. Or at least write about blowing stuff up. 3. All books are broken. Some are less broken than others. Some are broken in ways that a particular set of readers do not mind in the least. If you can find out the group of people who do not mind the ways in which your books are broken, you have identified your target audience. Unfortunately, this fact does not excuse you …
Solaris author Stanislaw Lem dies
Octavia Butler passed away last month, and now SF author Stanislaw Lem has passed away. SF has lost two bright stars in a short time.
The New York Review of Books: Who Killed Christopher Marlowe?
A fascinating question, isn’t it?