Space War
Space Corps is coming. And when it does, it may never leave the ground.
Films That Could Have Been
There are far too many science fiction films that left us asking: what happened? Thankfully, three recent documentaries get to the bottom of it.
Book Review: Seveneves by Neal Stephenson
In a sense, it is the perfect speculative fiction novel, even as it pays unspoken homage to a similarly-themed book by very different authors from thirty-eight years ago.
Book Review: Elysium by Jennifer Marie Brissett
Picking a book at random from the “Hey check this out” list works out very well, at least this time.
Sightseeing!
Chris gets discombobulated. In space.
What Kind of Film is Neill Blomkamp’s Elysium
Mordecai Wiczyk of Media Rights Capital thinks that Elysium has an insurance policy to help boost ticket sales despite its disadvantages (including an R rating, no 3D version, etcetera). That potential upside is the relatability of the film’s politics
The Illustrated Man
My dad foisted Dandelion Wine on me when I was young and still homeschooled. It was to be, appropriately enough, the first book in my list of self-imposed summer reading. His copy was old, and falling apart, so we bought a new one that would be mine. Home from the Barnes and Noble, he immediately tore…
An Ambiguous Utopia
I just finished The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin, and despite the fact that I am probably not going to contribute much to the body of criticism surrounding it, I wanted to write down some thoughts. Also, this is my book club’s book for June, so any other members who read this will be…
“The Space Traders”
For those following the faux-controversy surrounding Barack Obama’s relationship with Derrick Bell, here’s a copy of Bell’s infamous short story, “The Space Traders.” As far as science fiction goes, it’s a pretty crummy read, but it does reveal the depths of Bell’s pessimism (perhaps understandable given his biography) about everything from race relations to economic…
“That’s What I Know, That’s What I Am”
Mr. Kain has graciously invited me to start posting on the main page here at the League, so a more official introduction is probably in order. Instead of writing about where I live and what I do, I thought a kind of genealogy of my political attitudes might be more helpful, and go a long way…
The Adventures of the Delineator: The Mark of the Assassin
~ by Jon Stonger From the Logs of Captain Dave: “Get the money upfront,” hissed Doc hissingly in my ear. We were sitting in a shady bar on the second planet in the Scorchemal system. A figure cloaked in a black hood sat across from us, his face hidden in shadow, which was mainly because…
The Adventures of the Delineator: They Lost my Luggage?
~by Jon Stonger This is the first in a selection of short stories from The Adventures of the Delineator. These tales follow the clueless Captain Dave as he guides the small crew of the Delineator thru the misadventures of space. Decker is the ship’s engineer: good with computers and only slightly clumsy. Doc is the…
Walker Percy’s Galaxy Quest
“[I]t is an established fact that a preponderance of religious imagery or an avowed religious intent can go a long way toward mitigating the science-fictional taint, which also helps explain the appeal to mainstream writers such as Walker Percy of the post-apocalyptic story, whose themes of annihilation and re-creation are so easily indexed both to…
Science in Sci-Fi film
John Holbo has a veryy good post up trying to classify the various types of science-fiction films by their approach and attitudes toward science. He lists quite a few – 1) pro-science/pro-rationality 2) anti-science 3) split the difference … and so on and so forth. It’s a very good piece, but I think Holbo is…
Gene Wolfe interviewed
Interesting stuff from the one of the League’s favorite science fiction writers. Of particular note is his pessimistic conservatism (“The government in Home Fires is doing the thing that I expect them to do now at any minute: to grab hold of General Motors and General Electric and whatnot, and say, ‘You’ve got to hire…
Bread & Circuses: A mini-review of Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins
I finished the third installment of The Hunger Games last night, Mockingjay, by Suzanne Collins, and my goodness what a read. All three books are absurdly intense page-turners bound to keep one up far past one’s appropriate bedtime. If you are married and both spouses are reading these at the same time, prepare for some…
Ender’s Game Trailer
After the leap…
Quote of the Day
The Texas Supreme Court cites Star Trek (and, well, Dickens):
The Future
In lieu of real blogging, I thought I’d throw out some ideas from Ian M. Banks’ introductory essay on his Culture novels (via io9). Here’s Banks on the future obsolescence of market economics: Concomitant with this is the argument that the nature of life in space – that vulnerability, as mentioned above – would mean…
Consider Phlebas
PHLEBAS the Phoenician, a fortnight dead, Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep seas swell And the profit and loss. A current under sea Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell He passed the stages of his age and youth Entering the whirlpool. Gentile or Jew O you who…
Disch, the Tea Parties, and the City
Here’s a good essay on Thomas Disch, the acclaimed (and slightly crazed) science fiction author. Disch is was an interesting character for all sorts of reasons, but his disdain for rural populism and cosmopolitan liberalism is what I found most appealing:
“The Hierarchy of Contempt”
After watching his excellent Bloggingheads dialogue, I stumbled across the website of Canadian science fiction author Peter Watts, which also happens to include free digital copies of his novels (so far, I’ve only gotten through Blindsight, but if hard science fiction is your thing, I think you’ll enjoy him). For the League’s scifi and fantasy…
Science Fiction Friday
io9 lists the best science fiction novels for fantasy fans. I’m not familiar with any of these selections, but I’ll go ahead and recommend Jack Vance’s Tales of the Dying Earth, Gene Wolfe’s Book of the New Sun, and Edgar Rice Burroughs’ A Princess of Mars.
Science fiction & God
This article at First Things by Robert R. Chase is a fascinating look at religious themes in science fiction. I’ve always felt that science-fiction was far less amenable to religion than fantasy, but thinking about much of the science fiction canon I’m not so sure this is true. Chase mentions both Lewis’s Space Trilogy and…
World Building
Via Alan Jacobs, here’s an interesting critique of modern fantasy writing from The New Atlantis:
A list of books from my childhood
Tyler Cowen and Peter Suderman have both compiled (non-definitive) lists of books which have influenced them the most over the years. I have thought about this some, and come to the decision that the books I read as a child were by far the most influential – far more influential than anything I read later…
Science Fiction Friday (II)
The ultimate guilty pleasure: Alyssa Rosenberg delves into the Star Wars expanded universe.
Science Fiction Friday
Because it’s my blog and I’ll post ephemera if I want to: The LA Times on Philip K. Dick and Orange County; io9 on the “soft” (ie not world-ending) apocalypse, which includes a shout-out to Crunchy Con favorite James Howard Kunstler, and finally, Alan Jacobs on Iain M. Banks’ acclaimed “Culture” series (which I now…
On noble savages and the humanity of the ‘other’
Sullivan nods approvingly at this passage from Conor on Avatar’s Na’vi: The problem with the noble savage cliche is that it is demonstrably untrue. The people who inhabited North America before the arrival of Europeans warred, died for lack of medicine, sometimes killed animal herds so unsustainably that they faced starvation — so despite the…
Avatar
I finally saw Avatar (in 3D) without anyone threatening to beat me up. It was everything I thought it would be. The 3D was cool. The glowing plants in the jungle were really quite pretty. The special effects were spectacular. But for all its spectacular spectacle, beneath the blue-skinned exterior there wasn’t really any meat.…
On the bounce
io9 has an interesting post on the appeal of Starship Troopers.
books
I think most of the books I’ve read and loved were written by conservatives or libertarians – the fantasy I’ve read was written largely by conservatives, I think because good fantasy plays on themes of decentralization (the villain often attempting to shore up and centralize their control) and tradition. The science-fiction often as not came…
