Your screenwriting skills are very much in evidence – as is the imaginative free-reign you’ve allowed yourself.

I read the new Houllebecq book and ‘Riddley Walker’ this week, along with Red Claw, and the uniqueness of worldview and approach to writing in your novel was just interesting as in those.

Anyway, I’m darn glad you got hooked despite not liking the covers…

http://www.nesfa.org/boskone/

http://www.alisoneldred.com/th.....s-0-1.html

I’ve been meaning to do that blog of your covers based on the wonderful book you gave me at Eastercon – it’s in the works and will DEFINITELY check with you to make sure I’ve got the right images up.

By the way the three low-budget horror films that I recommend for inspiration for those who want to make good films with little money (i.e. invest in a story!):

* Pontypool, Writer: Tony Burgess (based on his novel); Director: Bruce McDonald
* Maléfique, Writers: Alexandre Charlot, Franck Magnier, François Cognard; Directed by Eric Valette
* The Devil’s Business, written & directed by Sean Hogan

The last film is new and I saw it at Frightfest this year. All of them manage to be scary too, despite the fact they are all basically stories about a few people in a room.

Sounds like things got, errr, interesting at the awards night after I had pushed my way through the Brighton crowds back to the railway station.

Still, at least the police didn’t shut Brighton down due to over-crowding like they had to do at Camber Sands!

I certainly agree that there is, and always has been, a massive overlap between SF and Fantasy (and Horror, for that matter) – but I still belive the genres are meaningful and necessary as separate labels with different primary characteristics; to be facetious there is no absolute division of the different hues in a rainbow, but that doesn’t mean we should dispense with the different words for colours!

Love the updates, btw.

I agree about Ian McDonald…and I also agree that extrapolating about cultural changes is THE coolest thing SF does now. My points are really about the power of myth.

Boundaries are blurred too; there’s clear blue water between McDonald and Meyer; but what about McDonald and the Gene World of The Book of the New Sun? SF or fantasy? Both?

1-) The Wachowskis could not, I think, reasonably be said to be ‘mocking’ the refusal of the call with Neo not picking up the phone – given how slavishly the Matrix films rip off the Star-Wars/Voglerised version of ’1000 Faces’ I think the most you could say was that the use of the trope literally was ‘slightly arch’!

2-) The article begins with discussing Stevens’ rather wordy argument on Science Fiction which, as far as I understand, basically says that the SF community is always predicting the death/rebirth of SF much like most religious cultures are constantly predicting some sort of apocalypse or another. So far, fair enough.

But then the article changes direction and states that SF *cannot* be dying, because really it has been subsumed by Fantasy, which is in rude health, and that that is because all the ‘true’ SF ideas (“predicting the future, extrapolating social trends; guessing amazing things that might happen”) have already been done.

IMHO this is totally untrue, and there is still a wide gulf between pure Fantasy and pure SF… and I know this cos the only SF I’ve read recently has been ‘true’ SF. And brilliant: I’m reading a book by Ian McDonald.

Now, the technocological advances in the book (and in his toher books from what I understand), is pretty standard SF stuff of virtual realities, robots and the likes; however, he is examining the effect of these technological perturbations on completely different socieities in different (darker, poorer) parts of the world to previous SF, which has historically been totally fixated with the West (and sometimes Japan).

And so, he is not only “predicting the future, extrapolating social trends; guessing amazing things that might happen”, but his doing so is wholly original as the social contexts he is extrapolating may as well be alien planets.

So, in short, based on my only SF reading recently, there is clear blue water between someone like Ian McDonald on the one hand (real SF), and someone like, say, Stephenie Meyer (a different kettle of poissons all together) on the other hand.

But I just wanted to say how much I loved Hell Ship. I inhaled it on my holiday at the beach. Interesting thing about moodboard’s and I love being introduced to the concept. I have a folder of pictures for my stories: AN ENTIRE BLOODY MOODBOARD FOLDER!!! But it does help get everything right in the head for the words to come out. Love these, too. Puts the book into some certain perspective or at least to see where you’re coming from. Cheers!

Can’t wait to get stuck in to the rest of your ouevre.

My review of Hell Ship went live earlier this week. Really liked your book which hopefully the review will reflect.

I Will Read Books – Hell Ship

Hope it’s okay to use your great photo on this blog – it’s fabulous. But let me know if it’s a problem, or you’d like a proper credit!

Philip

But on days like today, I’m not feeling so culturally optimistic…the future is upon us, and its name is anarchy. If you live in London that is.

Yes I found your piece hugely stimulating John…

I think there is more to the mythic angle in fantastika (my personal preferred term), but in a much broader sense that includes the cultural discourse within the literary field. Some writers mine the tropes of Campbell, while other strive for anti-mythology. At the moment there is much more cacophony (to borrow from Gary K. Wolfe) and ambivalence about categorization, even as market categories appear to be more important and luring from some types of stories. I am not sure if it is cultural ennui writ large, although there is plenty of dissatisfaction and ambiguity in fantastic literature today, which I think is why it’s easy to say that SF is not “SF” anymore. But if that’s so, why can’t we stop talking about and move on? There’s more going on there, I think.

I find that approach a bit arid, myself, and my theory is the Wachowksis mocked this approach in THE MATRIX when Neo hears the phone ring and doesn’t answer – ie REFUSAL OF THE CALL. But still, it’s potent stuff.

However you may be right; Lucas may have just scrabbled the movie together in the first instance then justified with Big Ideas after the fact.

I agree that most modern SF consist of ‘expansion of the tropes created during the golden age’; it’s so hard now to think of genuinely shockingly new extrapolations. But I don’t regard genre-mashing as a retrograde step; it depends how it’s done. It means that SF is not so much a literature of new ideas, but a literature of fantastic events based on familiar ideas, but done in such a way that it speaks to a whole new generation. THE SPACE MERCHANTS by Pohl and Kornbluth is for me a harbinger of the potential of SF to be about the present (satirically in that case) as well as about the future; I find that exhilarating.

That’s not saying SF should be satirical always; just that our stories about the future will always expose our thoughts or assumptions about the present.

But pure extrapolation can lead to character-thin writing, as we all know. And THAT for me is retrograde; EE Doc Smith just doesn’t work for me anymore, and even Asimov feels pretty flimsy. Because they’re all about Story (Smith) or Ideas (Asimov) not about people reacting to fantastic situations in ways that reveal aspects of our humanity.

To put it another way: Much Golden Age SF worked because it made us think; for me the future of SF is writing stories that make us think AND feel.

Good to meet you Steve.

In that respect, while Star Wars may contain mythic elements (what story doesn’t?), I don’t think you can reasonably base an argument for myth in SF on this particular example.

If one were to argue that Flash Gordon is mythic, you’d find a good degree of support in that work, but to imply that Lucas reinforced those elements deliberately and with ‘Hero’ in mind give him far too much credit and just isn’t supported by the facts. Unconscious homage to a serial play with mythic elements – yes. Grand example of myth as an underpinning for SF – no.

In my own personal estimation, SF as it was is virtually dead. The product being released now is not extrapolative or grand visionary, it is virtually all genre-mashing, or rather, expansion of the tropes created during the golden age. A contemporary say, generation ship story may have interesting characters, may introduce elements from other genres, but the ‘BIG IDEA’ of generation ships is borrowed and the contemporary story introduces nothing ‘new’.

I believe that this is ultimately the result of cultural ennui, a turning inwards rather than looking outwards, even perhaps cyclical in nature. If our society were still looking to the future, no amount of politicking would largely shut down space exploration or other forms of seemingly useless endeavours. I think that as a society, we’ve gone from being excited about “DA FUTURE” to being afraid of it, and this low-level fear has permeated everything, including science fiction.

“A trifle diffidently, Jim Eckert rapped with his claw on the blue-painted door.”

The idea that someone with such an obviously human name as Jime Eckert would knock on a door with a CLAW instantly hooked me.