Category: SF

Who Thought Dryco Wasn’t Plausible?

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Well, I just cracked open the novel Heathern, by Jack Womack, which pretty much describes a world on its way from our familiar, 1980s world into the horror of the most dystopian of his Dryco novels. Here’s the first couple of paragraphs: A baby almost killed me as I walked to work one morning. By passing beneath a bus shelter’s roof at the ordained moment I lived to tell my tale. With strangers surrounding me I looked at what remained. Laoughter from heaven made us lift our eyes skyward. The baby’s mother lowered her arms and leaned out her window. …

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미래경 (Futuroscope) #3 Has Arrived

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This entry is part 53 of 72 in the series SF in South Korea

It’s been one of those weeks, seriously it has — and today, during my office hours, I was flooded with visitors (which is to be expected, as it’s Teacher’s Day today). In any case, one of the visitors came by to drop off a package that had been accidentally delivered to the wrong office. In it was my contributor’s copy of the Korean “mook” (magazine-book) fanzine 미래경 (Futuroscope) #3 (Spring 2012), which contains my article “Outside Looking In” (translated to Korean by Insu Hong). (For those interested, I’ll see if I can post a copy of the piece in English sometime …

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New Korean SF Movie(s)! 인류멸망보고서 / Doomsday Book

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This entry is part 52 of 72 in the series SF in South Korea

I haven’t added anything to the SF in South Korea series, in part because I’ve been consumed with other things, but also because I haven’t heard much of the doings about town. However, last night Miss Jiwaku and I took in the newest Korean SF offering —  titled 인류멸망보고서 (and Doomsday Book in English) and despite our worst fears from the advertising and marketing, the film is actually pretty good! (Miss Jiwaku even went so far as to say she felt it suggested a “way forward” for SF cinema in Korea. More about that later.) The reason we were worried was …

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Politics and The Hunger Games

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I haven’t read The Hunger Games or the other books in the series, in part because I hadn’t caught much buzz but also just because I’ve been busy with other things. (The first book has been on my shelf about a year, as have many other books.) But I hadn’t heard much of the buzz, like I said, but it seemed like a potentially interesting North American, SFnal treatment of the Japanese film Battle Royale, so I thought we might as well give it a shot. When I heard there was a movie coming out — which was not long before it did come out, by …

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Expat Authors and (American) SF

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Before I begin, a caveat: I’m not really so well-read on the lives of golden-age American SF authors. Not so informed at all, and so there may be an unreasonable amount of assumption in what I’m suggesting below. I would love to be corrected if I am way off-base. Okay, with that aside: lately, I’ve been studying the work of Ezra Pound, with whom I feel some affinity — despite his being a nut and a fascist — because he was both a writer and an expatriate at the same time. This got me thinking about how many major writers …

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Cantico del Seoul

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This entry is part 51 of 72 in the series SF in South Korea

by Gord Sellar The thought of what Korea would be like If space opera had a wide circulation Troubles my sleep, The thought of what Korea, The thought of what Korea, The thought of what Korea would be like If space opera had a wide circulation Troubles my sleep. 빨리 나가라! Now lettest thou thy professor, Now lettest thou thy professor Drink in peace! The thought of what Korea, The thought of what Korea, The thought of what Korea would be like If space opera had a wide circulation… Oh well! It troubles my sleep. (With no apologies to Ezra …

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A Particular American Fervency? (How It Might Connect to SF?)

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I just ran across a really interesting quote on American culture, which was embedded in a discussion of jazz, but seems to apply quite well to American SF as well. Apparently, from 1961 to 1965, a British literary critic named A. Alvarez ran a show on BBC radio where writers talked about the intellectual scene in the United States. Alvarez collected the interviews  in a book, published by Penguin in 1965, under the same title as the radio program: Under Pressure. One of the Americans interviewed was Robert Lowell, and he’s what he had to say about it: We have some …

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David Amram on John Coltrane and Albert Einstein

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Not long ago, I mentioned John Coltrane’s youthful interest in SF and pulp zines. But he was apparently also quite interested in science itself, something I’d suspected but don’t remember seeing confirmed as clearly as in this anecdote from David Amram, a French horn-playing jazz man who knew Trane in New York in the 1950s, and ran into him just outside a club, where Amram had just finished playing a set with Charlie Mingus. Coltrane was eating  a slice of pie, and: [Trane] said, “How are you?” I [Amram] said, “Everything’s fine.” And then he said to me, “What do …

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John Coltrane and the Pulp Connection

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Arguably one of the most significant musicians in American history (and unarguably one of the most significant saxophonists and jazz musicians ever), John Coltrane grew up in High Point, North Carolina. It might be a weird thing to bring up —  where he grew up, that is — except that, when we think about major artists, we so often imagine them having sprung into being fully-formed, if not in technique or approach, then at least in their essential selfhood. This is also often how we tell their stories: for example, in Coltrane: Story of a Sound (a book I’ve just …

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