"Journey to the Center of the Earth"

Turner Classic Movies showed the 1959 version of "Journey to the Center of the Earth" on Sunday afternoon. The wife and I watched it. She had never seen it, I haven't seen it in many years. We both enjoyed it. I remember when I was a little kid, how impressed I was by the ruins of Atlantis, the "slurpasaurs", and the evil Count Saknusson. And that evil oboe theme when the lizard monster appears at the end!

"One degree is not a large distance..."

Charlie Jade has about as much of a cyberpunk feel about it as possible, especially the first episode - lots of halogen back-lighting and short circuits arcing in the background (when you're in his world, the Alphaverse).

Now, if you like Steampunk, there is a neat little series that came out of Australia in 2005, "The Mysterious Geographic Explorations of Jasper Morello". Here's a video:



Very stylish, the voicework is excellent, and the animation, in that Indonesian shadow puppet style, really seems to work.

Fiction Liberation Front

Austin-based author Lew Shiner's web site, the Fiction Liberation Front, has expended it range into book-length works, and he's offering for free his novel, "Black & White". I think the Fiction Liberation Front deserves a little plug, and I want to quote a little bit of what Mr. Lew says on its home page.

"Short fiction endures because it provides a way of introducing writers to new readers, and because there are stories that need to be told at that length.

"For all these reasons I've decided to open myself to this uncertain future. Starting now, I plan to make all my short fiction and articles available on the web, both in HTML for easy browsing and in typeset PDFs for those who might want to print them. The process of conversion will take a while, but I hope to get to everything eventually, including a number of previously unpublished pieces and even some unsold screenplays.

"I'll also be adding new short fiction, music reviews, and articles from time to time, though I won't guarantee that I won't also publish short pieces elsewhere. I'm launching the site with three previously unpublished stories ("Straws," "Fear Itself," and "Golfing Vietnam") plus a major story from 2004 ("Perfidia") that's had only limited circulation."

The web address is:

http://www.lewisshiner.com/liberation/index.htm

Canadian author Margaret Atwood awarded prestigious Spanish literary prize

Margaret Atwood seems to be one of those authors, like the lake Kurt Vonnegut, who fall between the two stools of genre fiction and so-called “mainstream” literature (whatever the heck that is). In her case, of course, the genre stool she is slipping off of all the time is s-f. She’s written some outstanding s-f works, “The Handmaid’s Tale” and “Oryx and Crake” coming quickly to mind, but over the years she been quoted making some very ambivalent statements about the genre. Something about “talking space squids” comes to mind.
Interestingly enough, I found this news first in Spanish via the Associated Press. I am the editor of a daily newspaper that uses the AP, and we publish a weekly Spanish-language edition. While working on the edition today, I found the story on the Spanish-language version of the AP news wire (and used it, too). But of course I went to the web site for the Prince of Asturias awards to get their news release, which I have published below.

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The Canadian writer Margaret Atwood has been bestowed with the prestigious 2008 Prince of Asturias Award for Letters. The decision was announced by the Jury in Oviedo Wednesday, June 25.
The leading figure in Canadian literature and one of the most outstanding voices of contemporary fiction, Margaret Atwood offers in her novels a politically committed, critical view of the world and contemporary society, while revealing extraordinary sensitivity in her copious poetical oeuvre, a genre which she cultivates with great skill.
This candidature was proposed by Rogelio Blanco, Director General for Books, Archives and Libraries at the Spanish Ministry of Culture.
Considered one of the most outstanding novelists and poets on the contemporary scene, Margaret Atwood was born in 1939 in Ottawa (Ontario, Canada). A book lover since very young, she graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree from Victoria College, University of Toronto, and then went on to pursue postgraduate studies at Radcliff College, Cambridge (Massachusetts) and at the University of Harvard. She has lectured in English Literature at a number of Canadian universities, including the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Sir George Williams University in Montreal and York University in Toronto. A full-time writer since 1972, she has chaired the Writers? Union of Canada (1981-1982) and the Canadian chapter of the International PEN Club for Writers (1984-1986).
A truly prolific author, she obtained international recognition with the publication of her novel The Edible Woman (1969), which was followed by Surfacing (1972), Lady Oracle (1976), Life Before Man (1980), Cat?s Eye (1988) and The Robber Bride (1993). The plot of her novels frequently focuses on the figure of women, their maturity and changes in sexual roles.
She is also a consummate poet. Her poetry (a genre in which she started writing at the age of nineteen) incorporates mythological, cultural, literary and pictorial references, as in Double Persephone (1961), The Circle Game (1964) and Procedures for Underground (1970). In You are Happy (1974) and Two-Headed Poems (1978), she revealed her interest in social literature: in the former she explores women?s oppression and in the latter, the latent conflict existing in Canada between two cultures and two languages. These concerns were to newly emerge in True Stories (1981), Interlunar (1984) and Morning in the Burned House (1995).
Some of her novels have also been adapted for the cinema and the theatre, such as The Edible Woman (1969), The Handmaid?s Tale (1985) (also staged as an opera), Alias Grace (1996) and The Blind Assassin (2000). Her latest works include the novel Oryx and Crake (2003), the collection of short stories The Tent (2006), and the book of poetry The Door (2007). Ms. Atwood´s work has been published in more than thirty languages, including Farsi, Japanese, Turkish, Finnish, Korean, Icelandic and Estonian.
Winner of the 2000 Booker Prize, the highest award for literature in the English language, she has also received the Canadian Governor General?s Literary Award (1966 and 1986), the Canadian Booksellers Association Award (1977, 1989 and 1996), the Toronto Book Award (1977 and 1989), the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction (1986), the Welsh Arts Council International Writer?s Prize (UK, 1982), the Arthur C. Clarke Award (UK, 1987), the Canadian Authors? Association Novel of the Year (1993), the Sunday Times Award for Literary Excellence (UK, 1994), the Giller Prize (Canada, 1996), the Premio Mondello (Italy, 1997), the London Literature Award (1999) and the Crime Writers? Association Dashiell Hammett Award (USA, 2001). She has received honorary doctorates from several universities, such as Cambridge, Oxford, Leeds, Toronto and Montreal, is Chevalier of the French Order of Arts and Literature, as well as a Companion of the Order of Canada. She has likewise been awarded the Order of Ontario and the Norwegian Order of Literary Merit and is a member of the Royal Society of Canada.
For her part, Atwood issued the following statement in Toronto today:
"I am thrilled and honoured to have been awarded this highly important prize. The Prince of Asturias Awards are not only a great tribute to literature, the humanities, and the sciences, but also to the universal project of building a sane, human society".

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One last thought: As an author who writes “mainstream” literature who doesn’t shy away from dipping her toe into s-f when it suits her, does that make Atwood one of the Children of a (Doris) Lessing God?

And the winners are...

The winners of the 2008 Locus Awards have been announced.

SF NOVEL: The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon (HarperCollins)
FANTASY NOVEL: Making Money by Terry Pratchett (Doubleday UK; HarperCollins)
YOUNG ADULT BOOK: Un Lun Dun by China Miéville (Ballantine Del Rey; Macmillan UK)
FIRST NOVEL: Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill (Morrow; Gollancz)
NOVELLA: "After the Siege" by Cory Doctorow (The Infinite Matrix Jan 2007)
NOVELETTE: "The Witch's Headstone" by Neil Gaiman (Wizards)
SHORT STORY: "A Small Room in Koboldtown" by Michael Swanwick (Asimov's Apr/May 2007)
COLLECTION: The Winds of Marble Arch and Other Stories by Connie Willis (Subterranean)
ANTHOLOGY: The New Space Opera by Gardner Dozois & Jonathan Strahan (Editors) (Eos)
NON-FICTION: Breakfast in the Ruins by Barry N. Malzberg (Baen)
ART BOOK: The Arrival by Shaun Tan (Lothian 2006; Scholastic)
EDITOR: Ellen Datlow
MAGAZINE: F&SF
PUBLISHER: Tor
ARTIST: Charles Vess

In case you missed it...

There was an AFI (American Film Institute) TV special last week (Tuesday, June 17) on the Top Ten movies in the ten most common film genres. This was one of those cases where the public logged in and voted their choices off a list of nominations. The winners in science fiction were:

1 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (1968)
2 STAR WARS: EPISODE IV- A NEW HOPE (1977)
3 E.T. - THE EXTRA TERRESTRIAL (1982)
4 CLOCKWORK ORANGE, A (1971)
5 DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL, THE (1951)
6 BLADE RUNNER (1982)
7 ALIEN (1979)
8 TERMINATOR 2: JUDGEMENT DAY (1991)
9 INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS (1956)
10 BACK TO THE FUTURE (1985)

A number of these winners were foregone conclusions; with the possible exception of the Gangster category (where the Godfather topped the list) the top choice of "2001" was one of the easiest to predict.

The film that should have been on the list? "Forbidden Planet".

Wow, this is great!

Buddy Holly is an off-stage character in "The Witch of Waxahachie" and in a sequel which is being shopped around he comes front and center, as President of the Republic of Texas.

I was doing some research on YouTube and found this. Holly wrote many nearly-perfect rock and roll tunes, but I've always thought "Think it Over" is one of the best, perhaps only surpassed by "Rave On".

This is NOT the version of "Think it Over" that charted, this was the fourth take. The one that was actually mastered was the next take, the fifth, and featured the piano as the bridge.

Enjoy!