SF Diplomat

BG2 : A Virus with Space-shoes - SF, YA and all that

My Second Blasphemous Geometries column has just gone live over at Futurismic.  It was interesting to write as it allowed me to distill a lot of the ideas that I took on board at the Gresham College 'SF as a Literary Genre' symposium I attended a few weeks ago.

When I submitted the piece I was concerned with the last paragraph as I felt that the parting shots sounded an overly negative note in what is otherwise a quite optimistic piece.  However, upon reflection I think it works as a note of caution.  Hamilton and Schatzing do demonstrate how SF, Fantasy and Horror can subsume other literary forms, but they also demonstrate how the stuff that sucks in romance and popular thrillers can also undermine what is good about SF and a blurring of the lines between YA and SF might have unexpected results for the genre as a whole.

REVIEW - The Orphanage (2007)

My review of Juan Antonia Bayona's The Orphanage (El Orfanato) has gone live over at Strange Horizons.  Well... I say "my" review but you'll note that I share a by-line with Niall Harrison.

The reason for this is that I wrote up my review and, moments before dispatching it,
I was struck by the urge to write it up as a psychiatric case study.  Case studies turn out to be one of our Niall's professional areas of expertise and after a couple of back-and-forths, Niall had transformed my crude attempt at pastiche into something altogether more impressive.  So it was clear that Niall should share the creative credits.

Were this a book review, doubtless Jeff Vandermeer would now be coming up with a manner of hunting Niall for sport over the internet :-) (pardon the cache-link but David Moles' site is currently down).

REVIEW - Iron Man (2008)

My review of Jon Favreau's Iron Man has gone live over at THE ZONE.

Elephant-memoried readers may well remember that I had a few things to say about the film and the character of Iron Man when the first trailers appeared (a few things that I felt needed *ahem* repeating).  Intriguingly, the film didn't answer the question I thought was going to prove tricky, preferring instead to leave it to the sequel.

Not the best of films, I think it will mostly be remembered as the first Hollywood adaptation of Geek media that did not feel the need to be "dark and gritty", a trend that is set to continue with the adaptation of Speed Racer, which looks like a cross between Wipe Out and Soundgarden's video for Black Hole Sun (a song I hated at the time and which, I am pleased to say, has not grown on me with age).

REVIEW - Rescue Dawn (2006)

My final Videovista review this month is Werner Herzog's Rescue Dawn.

This was a bit of a disappointment I must admit.  Someone recently pointed out to me that my film reviews tend to naturally gravitate towards films that are about "loneliness, despair and death", which is probably true.  This also explains why I'm such a fan of Herzog's film making, in fact, his documentary Grizzly Man is probably one of my favourite documentaries (along with the works of Adam Curtis).

REVIEW - The Backwoods (2006)

This month I have also reviewed Koldo Serra's The Backwoods for Videovista.

Going by the IMDb page and a few of the other reviews I've had a look at online, I get the impression that this film has done the film festival circuit and got a real kicking for its troubles, though I can't quite understand why.  Though perhaps the reason for that kicking disappeared along with the 60 minutes or so that differentiates the DVD version from the version that got released in Argentina.

REVIEW - The DL Chronicles (2005)

My review of The DL Chronicles has gone live over at Videovista.

I was hoping for a slightly different take on many of the 'genre conventions' of gay cinema or at least an interesting look at a lifestyle that you don't hear that much about in the UK, but instead I got a rather disappointing series of rather unfocused TV episodes.

I've reviewed some other works of gay cinema :

• Eating Out (2004)
• Garcon Stupide (2004)

Looking back over those reviews, I bemoan the 'marks out of ten' rating system as aside from the stupid haircuts and the silly phone sex scene I can't remember anything about Eating Out but I can remember the substantially more ambitious and intelligent Garcon Stupide in some detail.

Though one thing that does weird me out is the fact that many gay films feel the need to feature quite steamy sex scenes.  I'm not sure if this is supposed to keep the straights out or try and get the gays in or just an opportunity to put something on film that might have had them chemically castrated by past generations but I noted such things were entirely absent from Celine Sciamma's fantastic Water Lillies (Naissance des Pieuvres) whose sex scenes are firmly grounded in awkward, fumbling reality.

An Appearance in SF Signal's Mind Meld

John from SF Signal was nice enough to invite me to comment in this week's Mind Meld :

Which SF/F Books Have The Best and Worst Endings?

My favourite ending is that of one of my favourite books, J.G. Ballard's Cocaine Nights, it's an ending that is thematically quite complex and even sitting down to write up why I liked it made me consider it in a new light.

My least favourite ending was that of Orson Scott Card's Xenocide as it's arguably one of the worst examples of a deus ex machina ending.  Speaking of which, I was hugely gratified by how many people chose the end of Peter F. Hamilton's Night's Dawn trilogy, a 3000 page trilogy that ends with a literal deus ex machina.

It was also nice to interact with SF Signal in a way that didn't involve me going "Oh my God!  How right wing is X?" in the comments box.  So thanks for having me guys.

The Arthur C. Clarke Award - A Thank You.

  Unsurprisingly, the news got onto the internet faster than I got home but Richard Morgan's Black Man did indeed win the 2008 Arthur C. Clarke award.

  Now, you may think that I am going back on my promise to stop blogging by posting this news, but I consider this an exception that makes the rule as I am not so much blogging the news as simply saying Thank You to Tom Hunter, the award's administrator for inviting me.  It was an unexpected invitation and a real honor to attend the presentation.

It was also great to hook up with the few SF folks that I've met before and add a few more faces to names and websites.

So thank you all :-)