Black Gate

It’s the end of another year which means everybody’s thinking up “best of lists.” Partially, that’s a marketing thing — and it apparently works because I’ve just finished ordering a couple of albums that were on various critics “best of list” that I hadn’t heard. As a DJ for a local radio station, I’m supposed to be up on these things. Also as a DJ, I was supposed to have submitted my own “best of list,” but haven’t. Maybe as the short fiction guy hereabouts, I’m also supposed to come up with a list of top short stories. But, I won’t. I just have a hard time with this exercise. There’s a lot of stuff that I’ve found interesting, but whether that qualifies as “best of” I’m not sure. And, then, whatever I come up with will invariably leave out stuff that I simply didn’t get to, or didn’t even know existed, which doesn’t seem fair.

Worse, as the end of a decade, there’s also these best of the decade lists. Again, this is largely to fill traditionally slow periods in the news cycle, but it is a conversation starter, which can be fun. I’m not going to provide a list (mainly because I just don’t want to spend the time thinking about it; I’d rather catch up on my to-be-read and to-listen pile), but here’s one by Jonathan Strahan that caught my eye. I like to think I’m fairly well-read and stay on top of these things, but of the ten “best of the decade” short fiction collections cited by Strahan, I’ve only actually read two, though I own two others that I never got around to (yet, I hope). At least, I’ve read all these authors, even if I haven’t made it through all the collections. If you haven’t already jumped, here’s Strahan’s list:

1. Beluthahatchie and Other Stories, Andy Duncan (2000)
2. Stories of Your Life and Others, Ted Chiang (2002)
3. Black Juice, Margo Lanagan (2005)
4. 20th Century Ghosts, Joe Hill (2005)
5. Magic for Beginners, Kelly Link (2005)
6. The Empire of Ice Cream, Jeffrey Ford (2006)
7. Map of Dreams, M. Rickert (2006)
8. Pump Six and Other Stories, Paolo Bacigalupi (2008)
9. Oceanic, Greg Egan (2009)
10. Cyberabad Days, Ian McDonald (2009)

Here in Central Virginia, we’re having one of those once in a decade or so storms in which you fill up your bathtubs with water and just hope the electricity stays on. So far it has (or otherwise I wouldn’t be able to post this).

The good news is there’s nothing like a snowstorm as an excuse to catch up on your reading. The bad news is I won’t be getting out any time soon to see this. I’ve never been a James Cameron fan, and I had the as-you-might-expect reservations that the technology (as is frequently the case with sf/fantasy films) would override the storytelling. Evidently, at least according to this review and a few others I’ve read, that isn’t the case.

I guess what’s really weird is this all sounds like a very giant first step into an immersive computer generated “reality” that once upon a time not so very long ago was only in the imagination of the cyberpunks.

Talebones, a so-called semi-prozine published twice a year, is calling it quits with issue #39 , some 14 years from its debut in 1995. Details as to why editor/owner Patrick Swenson is ending publication are scant, other than this terse annnouncement. Featured fiction is by Carrie Vaughn, Cat Rambo, Marie Brennan, John A. Pitts, Aliette de Bodard, Jason D. Wittman, Patricia Russo, Don D’Ammassa, and Keffy R.M. Kehrli, with poetry by Joshua Gage, Ed Gavin, Darrell Schweitzer and G.O. Clark.

Here’s a review of an issue from quite awhile back.

Though I had unrealistic high hopes for the remake of The Prisoner, if only because of the presence of Ian McKellan, early returns are not good,other than noting that Ian McKellan is the only redeeming value.

Sigh. I guess the success of Battlestar Galactica and perhaps also the Star Trek reboot resulted in unwarranted optimism about remakes, as the track record remains mostly abysmal, with the exceptions proving the rule. And the exceptions usually have the advantage of source material in sore need of improvement.

On a more positive note, I just finished Jonathan Lethem’s Chronic City I’ve only read a few reviews, and then only just skimmed them, which can be the only explanation why I haven’t seen anyone draw the obvious line between Philip Dick and this novel. Besides the overall Dickian theme of “just because I’m paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get me,” one example of Lethem’s riffs on Dick is the protagonist’s highly publicized relationship with his astronaut fiancée, trapped in orbit by Chinese mines, whose love letters try to make the best of both their situations. I’m assuming it is not coincidental that in Dick’s Dr. Bloodmoney, the character Walt Dangerfield is also stuck in permanent orbit around the earth, and whose daily broadcasts inspire his devoted listeners to carry on in the aftermath of catastrophe. Somewhere, there’s a master’s thesis in picking out all the Dickian parables in Lethem’s wonderful novel.

You might have to be a bit of a geek to appreciate this (and would you be reading this if your weren’t?). Highly recommended.