Perspective matters. You may be annoyed with your dog for drinking out of your toilet, but think how your dog feels about you pooping in her water bowl.

So, Eos sent me a couple of these cards, which are for electronic ARCs of upcoming books; what you do is scratch off the silver lottery-card like thing to get a code, sign in to the Harper Collins site, and then type in the code to download the ARC.

This pretty much assures I won’t be reading this particular book. Why?

1. On my desk right now I have 11 other ARCs, all of which are readable by me opening the cover, rather than having to scratch off silver gunk to get a code, sign on to a Web site, etc.

2. This assumes that I have a dedicated e-reader (which I don’t) or that I want to read a full length novel on my computer or iPod Touch (which I don’t).

3. The three-step process outlined on the card (1. go to Web site, 2. enter code, 3. get book) sort of mysteriously omits the part where you have to set up an account on the Harper Collins site, which I have no desire to do and which is where my sense of obligation to try to get this ARC goes right out the window.

This is actually the second time a publicity department has tried to interest me in an electronic ARC; the first time was a few months ago when a different publisher’s publicist queried me if I would be interested in a digital galley slathered in DRM, which would require me to validate my computer with a third party, and which would expire 30 days after I first virtually cracked it open. To which I responded thusly:

I have to confess to not really seeing the upside for me of having to validate all sorts of various machines in order to look at a book you wish to publicize, and to be entirely blunt about it, offering up a DRM’d book that explodes in 30 days has the subtext of “we really don’t trust you not to put this into a torrent,” which annoys me, even though I am sure you don’t mean it that way.

I will of course be delighted to look at the novel (and any others you may wish to send to me) in that other wireless format, known as print.

Since I didn’t bother to go through the entire process for the Eos book, I can’t say whether there’s DRM on it as well or if it has an expiration date, but if it did that would be another reason not to bother.

Dear publicity folk: You know I love you, am philosophically inclined to and aligned with your goals, and I know you’re trying to do your job in innovative and interesting ways. I can’t blame you for that — indeed I applaud you. But this is a simple fact: The moment you make me jump through all sorts of hoops to access a book you want to publicize, you lose me. Because I am lazy, because I don’t take kindly to having to leave even more information about myself in someone else’s hands, because I don’t like feeling I’m not trusted and because I have lots of other books competing for my interest which don’t require me to do anything else but read.

If you are really gung-ho about doing ARCs in an electronic fashion, fine, but you have to make them as easy for me to use as the physical ARCs. Otherwise I’m not going to bother — or as in the case here, I’m only going to bother until the point at which I get fed up, and stop. If your innovation is getting in the way of me actually reading the work you’re trying to promote, you’re doing it wrong. Please stop and re-think.

And while you’re rethinking, just go ahead and send me physical ARCs, okay? They utilize a robust technology well-known for its ease of use and lack of dependence on external apparatuses or power sources. I can’t get enough of it! And that’s going to make it more likely to help me help you do your job: Tell other people about your books and authors. Thank you for your consideration.

Ghlaghghee, photographed by Athena, who remarked, “the camera just loves her.” Well, yes. Yes it does.

A picture of Lopsided Cat, taken by Athena, who is quite handy with the Nikon.

It has been the droll observation of several that in writing Fuzzy Nation, what I’ve really done is write H. Beam Piper fan fiction.

My thought on that: Well, it is fiction, I am a fan, and I did write for my own amusement in a universe for which I didn’t have clearance in at the time — so, overall, yep, looks like fanfic to me, too, or at least some species of it, as I understand fanfic to be. Whether my subsequently getting clearance for the work makes it something other/different than fanfic is something I leave to others with a better knowledge base on the subject, but I suspect it just makes it fanfic authorized after the fact.

So, to the extent that people are saying “Hey! You wrote fanfic!” my response is “I suppose I did. And I had fun doing it.”

Awesome Cover Art by Jeff Zugale (http://www.jeffzugale.com/)

So, that Super Secret Thing That I Cannot Tell You About? I can tell you about it now. It’s a novel, and it’s called Fuzzy Nation, and it’s a reboot of the Hugo-nominated 1962 science fiction novel Little Fuzzy, by H. Beam Piper.

And now, your questions:

Uh, “reboot”? Don’t you mean a sequel?

Nope, I mean a reboot, as in, I took the original plot and characters of Little Fuzzy and wrote an entirely new story from and with them. The novel doesn’t follow on from the events of Little Fuzzy; it’s a new interpretation of that first story and a break from the continuity that H. Beam Piper established in Little Fuzzy and its sequels.

Why did you do this?

Because as far as I know it’s never been done before. Science fiction TV and movie series are rebooted all the time — see Battlestar Galactica and Star Trek for recent examples of this — but I can’t think of a significant, original universe in science fiction literature in which this has been done, at least, not by someone who is not the original author. So I thought, hey, this seems like it could be a fun thing to do. So I did it.

Why Little Fuzzy?

Because I am a huge fan of the original novel and of H. Beam Piper’s work. It’s a good story and he’s a very good story teller; Little Fuzzy wasn’t nominated for a Hugo on accident, you know. And while the original novel is still, as they say, a “cracking good tale,” I thought there was an opportunity to revisit the story and put a new spin on it to make it approachable to people who had not read the original or did not know about Piper, and also to give fans of the original the fun of seeing some old friends in new settings.

While Fuzzy Nation is a “reboot” of Little Fuzzy, the idea behind it is not to replace the original, but to celebrate it and hopefully draw new readers to it and to other work by Piper. I hope that when people get done with Fuzzy Nation they’ll pick up Little Fuzzy, and compare and contrast the two approaches to the same story.

How can you do this? Aren’t there copyright issues involved?

Little Fuzzy itself is in the public domain, but its sequels are still under copyright. While it might have been technically possible to write Fuzzy Nation without the permission of the Piper estate, because of the status of the sequels there were enough (forgive the pun) fuzzy legal areas that I didn’t want to have to deal with them. Beyond this, because Fuzzy Nation is in many ways meant to be a tribute to Little Fuzzy and to Piper himself, I wanted the blessing, so to speak, of the Piper estate.

So, after I wrote Fuzzy Nation, my super-invaluable and incredibly awesome agent Ethan Ellenberg approached the rights holders to the Piper estate and started talking to them about it. The discussions took, well, a long time. But we reached agreement on it, and I’m happy to say Fuzzy Nation is an authorized work.

Wait. You said you asked for permission only after you wrote Fuzzy Nation?

Yup.

Why?

Well, because I originally wrote it for fun. I was doing it mostly to see what a version of Little Fuzzy by me would be like. And when I was done, I thought, well, that’s not too bad, I wonder if I can do something with it? And that’s when Ethan started talking to folks.

What if you had asked for permission and the answer was “no”?

Well, then I guess Fuzzy Nation would be The Super Secret Project That You Will Never Ever Find Out About. But, you know, look. Sometimes you do things not for any particular profit motive, but because it interests you, and you enjoy it, and you have a good time with it, and it’s good for your outlook on life. I decided to write Fuzzy Nation right after I had a particularly contentious and annoying negotiation for a completely different Super Secret Project That You Will Never Ever Find Out About, and I needed to do something to sort of cleanse my palate, as it were. Fuzzy Nation was it. And you know what? I had a ball with it, and it reset my attitude and made writing fun once more. If it never saw the light of day, it still would have been worth writing for that alone.

So you had another Super Secret Project That You Couldn’t Tell Us About?

Sure.

How many of those do you have going, anyway?

Quite obviously, I can’t tell you.

Fair enough. So when can we read Fuzzy Nation?

After it’s published!

And when will that be?

No idea. Because I was writing it on my own time, it’s not on any particular publisher’s schedule. It’s not even been sold yet. Ethan will start shopping it around now.

You mean to say you’re telling us you’ve written a novel but we can’t read it yet, and you don’t know when we can?

Yup, pretty much.

You are an evil little man, Scalzi.

Sorry.

Fuzzy Nation had better be good, man.

Oh, it is.

Update. 4/13: sold the book!

Randy Cohen, who writes the “Ethicist” column at the New York Times, caused a minor fracas this week when he told someone who had purchased a hardcover copy of Stephen King’s Under the Dome and then also downloaded a pirated electronic copy for travel purposes, that they were ethically in the clear for the illegal download. Cohen’s reasoning is, hey, the guy paid for the thing, and because he paid for it once, he should have the right to enjoy it in whatever format he likes. Therefore the download, while illegal, was not unethical.

Personally I think Cohen is pretty much correct. Speaking for myself (and only for myself), when I put out a book and you buy it for yourself in whatever format you choose to buy it in, the transactional aspect of our relationship is, to my mind, fulfilled. You bought the book once and I got paid once; after that if you get the book in some other format for your own personal use, and I don’t get paid a second time, eh, that’s life.

So, as examples: If you bought the paperback copy of one of my books and then liked it so much that you pick up a cheap remaindered hardcover edition for archival purposes, great. If you buy a hardcover copy, lose track of it, and then pick up a used paperback copy for re-reading, groovy. If you buy a trade paperback edition of one of my books and then happen to find a free electronic version of the same book, which you then download onto your cell phone for travel purposes, that seems reasonable to me.

Now, in each case, if you decided to pay me or any author a second time, I wouldn’t complain — indeed, please do! Athena’s college fund thanks you. And it’s what I do; for example I recently paid for and downloaded an authorized electronic copy of China Mieville’s Perdido Street Station because I wanted to read it again and my trade paper copy is currently in a box in my basement. I didn’t want to bother to dig it out, I didn’t want to have to troll the underside of Teh Internets for a pirate copy, I can afford the $6.39 authorized copy cost, and I like paying authors. Likewise I usually buy new editions of books I’ve lost or displaced, again because I can afford it and because philosophically I am inclined to do so.

I pay the authors more than once, because I can and I think I should. However, I also put such actions in the ethical category of “morally praiseworthy but not morally obligatory” — that is, I believe my transactional responsibility to the author was fulfilled the first time I paid her. Additional payments to the author are optional, and indeed are sometimes transactionally difficult. If a book is out of print I may have no choice but to buy a used physical copy, for which an author gets nothing, or acquire an unauthorized electronic edition, which again gives nothing to the author.

The moral issue with unauthorized/pirated electronic copies of works has to do with the fact that a) they were put out online by people who didn’t have permission to do so, and b) that it makes it easy for people who haven’t paid for the work and have no intention of paying for it to acquire it and share it with other people who also have no intention of paying for it. These are separate moral issues than the issue of whether someone who has paid full freight for an author’s work should feel bad about acquiring a second copy of the work for personal use without additional financial benefit to the author.

To be very clear, I think the person who puts an unauthorized edition of a work of mine online is ethically and legally wrong to do so; that guy is ripping me off. I don’t take kindly to it and neither do my publishers, who have lots of lawyers. Please don’t post my work online without permission, and please don’t share unauthorized copies with others. I thank you in advance for your sterling morals in this area.

But if that work is out there online, and the guy who just bought an authorized version — thus paying me and the people who worked on the book — downloads it for his personal use, am I going to be pissed at him? No, I don’t really have the time or inclination. Maybe it would have been marginally more ethical for the fellow to have, say, scanned in each individual page and OCR’d it himself, thus making the personal copy he’s allowed to make under law, rather than looking for it online. And maybe I’d ask him how it was he got so knowledgeable in the ways of the dirty, dirty undernet, where pure and innocent books are exposed to bad people, and suggest to him that he get his computer checked for viruses. But at the end of the day, he did pay me, and paid my publisher.

(That said, I do think there are limits to this. For example, I think an audio book and a text book are two separate things, because a significant part of the audio book is the performance of the reader, an aspect that is not there in the original book. Likewise buying a book doesn’t give you a free pass to torrent the movie version of the book; alternately, having bought a Halo video game doesn’t give you a moral green light to snarf down a Halo novel. Etc.)

If I had my way about these things, I’d be doing with books what movie companies are now doing with DVDs and blu-rays, which is to bundle a legal electronic copy of the work in with the hardcover release. There are distribution issues with doing something like this (unlike physical movie media, books are typically sold unsealed) but these aren’t unsolvable; I think in a later post I’ll talk about this in more detail.

But the point to make here is that these days, people are deciding that when they buy a book or a movie or a piece of music, they’re buying the content, not the format. As a writer I don’t have a philosophical problem with this, since I write content, not format, even if publishers want that content to fit a particular format. And as a consumer, I think there’s a certain point at which you get to say “you know what, I’ve paid for this already, and I’m done paying any more for it.” Both of these are why I say that if you’ve paid me once for a book I’ve written and what you’ve enjoyed, we’re good. Pay me again if you like; I won’t complain. But once is enough.

Over at Filmcritic.com today I’m asked who film’s most successful science fiction writer might be. The answer comes in two flavors: The most successful recent writer (as in, the last 50 years) and all time. The answer to at least one of these may annoy purists! Go on over and feel free to kvetch in the comments there.

E-mail from a reader on a couple of topics, one of them which was the iPad, his comment about which I will now excerpt (with permission):

I’m a little surprised you don’t have the iPad already. It seems like something you would want to have.

It’s not that surprising, actually. As I noted in January, I like the general idea of the thing but I’m not entirely sure I’m on board with the implementation, so I’m not in a fevered rush to be the first kid on the block to have one. Beyond that, I just dropped a publicly undisclosed but emphatically non-trivial amount of money on home and office upgrades and renovations, and this month we shell out an additional undisclosed but emphatically non-trivial amount on taxes, including this quarter’s estimated taxes for this year. I’ll be happy not to spend any money I don’t have to for a while, thank you very much. The iPad is shiny and pretty and all, and I’m as susceptible as any geek to Apple’s Reality Distortion Field when it comes to the mechanics of desiring the thing, but the only way I’ll be getting one any time soon is if someone else buys it for me. Not that I’m hinting (the 32GB wireless version should work just fine for me. With the keyboard dock. Thanks).

More seriously, I’m also interested in seeing how some of the upcoming tablets stack up, particularly this one, which looks like it’s doing that thing everyone else does when it comes to Apple, which is offer better specs and capability for a generally lower price. Of course, what Apple generally offers — and where everyone else kind of faceplants — is an easy-to-use interface in a pretty, pretty package. And you know humans. They pick pretty over brains pretty much every time. Especially low maintenance pretty.

I mean, hey, I’m guilty too — I have an iPod Touch, which I really do love, and I don’t really give a crap that it doesn’t multitask. I doubt that lack of concern will scale up to iPad size, but I’m also willing to believe I’m in the minority for most people. I’m also willing to believe that if someone else doesn’t do a tablet as well as Apple does with the iPad, when I finally decide to get a tablet, I may be willing to overlook it, too. I think that’s fair enough warning to everyone else coming into the segment.

But for now: Yeah, still not in the market just yet.

Conservative senator tells constituents to read widely and not just rely on media with their own biases:

[Oklahoma Republican Senator Tom] Coburn urged audience members to widen their points of view by reading and watching different media outlets, not just the ones they agree with.

“Don’t just watch Fox News or CNN, watch them both,” Coburn said. He said he read both The Washington Post and The New York Times — plus The Wall Street Journal — and urged his audience to do likewise. “Listen to the other side, because what it does, it makes you a better person.”

Good for you, Tom Coburn.

First: A nice spring picture, featuring Kodi:

Second: A status report on the events in my house:

I’m delighted to say that with one major exception, the house renovations are done: All of the house has new carpets and flooring. This was necessary because prior to this all the carpet in the house was the same carpet as was here when the house was built fifteen years ago. It was time, basically. The new carpets and floorings are just lovely and I’m sure I’ll post photographs at some point, but for the moment, hey, take my word for it, it’s lovely.

The one exception to everything being done is of course my office. It’s been repainted and refloored, but I hired a local cabinetmaker to do a custom desk and shelves, and they’re not installed yet. For me the critical thing there is the desk, since once that’s in I can bring my desktop back in and get back to work in there; I have the temporary set-up but I notice what I actually end up doing is wandering about the house with the laptop. Yes, very much like the Israelites in the desert. Although hopefully it won’t take 40 years to get a desk. I’m pretty sure it’s supposed to be here later in the week.

Beyond that, spring is here and it is lovely, which means I need to stock up on Claritin sometime soon. If that’s the price one pays for not having three feet of snow on the ground, I’m only too happy to pay.

And how are you?

Do I have thoughts on this year’s Hugo nomination slate? Boy, do I!

* First, of course, hugely thrilled that The God Engines made the ballot in the novella category. This is the first fiction nomination for me outside of the novel category, and it is really very gratifying. The fact of the matter is that writing shorter work is in many ways harder for me than writing a novel, and TGE is so different than most of my other work that it was bound to provoke some “wtf?” reactions. To be blunt, I was expecting lots of people to flat-out hate it. So for it to get a nod really really really makes my day. Any Hugo nomination is special, but this one is, shall we say, especially special. If you nominated me, thank you.

Also, inasmuch as I believe that one is known by the company one keeps, I’m delighted to see that the novella category is packed with extraordinary talent this year: Charlie Stross, who continues his impressive streak of sequential Hugo slate appearances (he’s nominated in the Novelette category as well); James Morrow, who is as delightful a person as he is impressive a writer; Ian McDonald and Nancy Kress, both short fiction Hugo winners (Nancy most recently last year, in fact); and the late and lamented Kage Baker. This is as strong a category as I’ve been in; I suspect voters are going to have trouble trying to make up their minds which novella to vote for. This is as it should be.

* The short fiction nominations this year are interesting as much as where they come from as for their content. Consider that last year, nine of the nominees in the short fiction came from the “Big Three” SF magazines (with Asimov’s alone responsible for seven of those), while only one nomination came from an electronic publication (Jim Baen’s Universe). The year before that, there were 11 short fiction nominees from the “Big Three” and none electronic; the year before that, 11 “Big Three” short fiction nominations, and two electronic media nominations.

This year, Asimov’s is the only member of the “Big Three” represented in short fiction, with three nominations, while Tor.com and Clarkesworld, two online publications, are responsible for two each, and the rest of  the nominees are spread out among anthologies, collections, stand-alone book editions and smaller print markets; it’s the most diverse group of nominees, in terms of publisher, that the short fiction categories have seen, in their recent history at least.

What does it mean? Maybe nothing; it could be a blip, since one year does not constitute a trend. However, I would like to think it means something positive for short fiction; namely, that SF/F readers are getting used to looking in a variety of places for short fiction and finding quality work when they go looking. In other words, it’s not that there’s something wrong with the “Big Three,” it’s that there’s something right about the rest of the short fiction field. That’s pretty encouraging, both in terms of the future of short fiction in the genre, and the overall quality of short SF/F at this point in time.

* In the headlining novel category, I think it’s an excellent year, and I think the six nominees are not only fine nominees in themselves but act as a genuine sample of the range of science fiction and fantasy at the moment. From WWW:Wake to Palimpsest to Boneshaker, The City & The City, The Windup Girl and Julian Comstock, it’s difficult to say you don’t get variety, or that there’s not something for everybody there. To be sure, someone will find something to complain about — it wouldn’t be a Hugo slate if someone wasn’t kvetching somewhere about it — but those people are high, and not on the fun kind of drugs. Out here in the real world, this is a fine slate.

* Indeed, overall, it’s hard not to consider this an excellent year in nearly all categories. The weakest category for me is the Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form because while, yes, I get that lots of fans really like their Doctor Who, I think having it constitute 60% of the slate might suggest nominators aren’t looking at the whole range of sf/f entertainment options available to them. LIKE STARGATE: UNIVERSE, PEOPLE. Sorry, that just slipped out. But aside from that, this year’s nods are pretty damn good: Good work, good range of work, and good diversity of publishers and writers, however you wish to slice the term “diversity.” Again, someone is sure to complain about something, but remember: They’re high, in a distinctly un-fun way. And I’m stoked that so many of my friends are on the ballot. Hey, I know interesting, creative people. It was bound to happen, you know.

* Incidentally, the nomination I think is the best? Frederik Pohl, for Best Fan Writer (for his genuinely excellent blog). What I also think is excellent? That none of the last three winners of the Fan Writer Hugo are nominated this year, which means we’ll have four different Best Fan Writers in four years, which is something that hasn’t happened in 35 years. I think that’s a very positive thing. Don’t feel bad for those three previous winners, incidentally, as each of them is elsewhere on the ballot. See. Being a fan writer pays off.

* Getting back to me, there are two things I know people are going to ask me about, so let me address them quickly:

Am I Doing a Hugo Reader’s Packet This Year? No, I am not — but that’s not to say one isn’t being planned. I don’t know how much more I can say about it at this point, so I won’t. However, I can say that I do intend to make The God Engines available to Hugo voters for their consideration, one way or another, in the reasonably near future. Update: Aussiecon 4 just put up the following note: “Aussiecon 4 is producing the 2010 Hugo Voter Packet: an online collection of nominee works for the members of Aussiecon 4.  More information about the 2010 Packet will be available here soon.” I’ll be putting The God Engines in that packet for voters to consider.

Am I Attending AussieCon4? I don’t know yet; as many of you may remember I just put down new floors and carpet in my house, and hey, that’s not cheap. That said, if I can manage it, I would very much like to go; I think this will be a fun Worldcon, and I’m keen on finally getting my butt down to Australia.

So: Want to go, have to see if I can. When I know, I’ll tell all y’all.

Here’s the list. I’m happy to say The God Engines made the cut for novella. I’ll have more thoughts later, but for now congratulations to all the nominees!

BEST NOVEL (699 nominating ballots)

Boneshaker by Cherie Priest (Tor)
The City & The City by China Miéville (Del Rey; Macmillan UK)
Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America by Robert Charles Wilson (Tor)
Palimpsest by Catherynne M. Valente (Bantam Spectra)
Wake by Robert J. Sawyer (Ace; Penguin; Gollancz; Analog)
The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi (Night Shade)

BEST NOVELLA (375 nominating ballots)

“Act One” by Nancy Kress (Asimov’s 3/09)
The God Engines by John Scalzi (Subterranean)
“Palimpsest” by Charles Stross (Wireless)
Shambling Towards Hiroshima by James Morrow (Tachyon)
“Vishnu at the Cat Circus” by Ian McDonald (Cyberabad Days)
The Women of Nell Gwynne’s by Kage Baker (Subterranean)

BEST NOVELETTE (402 nominating ballots)

“Eros, Philia, Agape” by Rachel Swirsky (Tor.com 3/09)
“The Island” by Peter Watts (The New Space Opera 2)
“It Takes Two” by Nicola Griffith (Eclipse Three)
“One of Our Bastards is Missing” by Paul Cornell (The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction: Volume Three)
“Overtime” by Charles Stross (Tor.com 12/09)
“Sinner, Baker, Fabulist, Priest; Red Mask, Black Mask, Gentleman, Beast” by Eugie Foster (Interzone 2/09)

BEST SHORT STORY (432 nominating ballots)

“The Bride of Frankenstein” by Mike Resnick (Asimov’s 12/09)
“Bridesicle” by Will McIntosh (Asimov’s 1/09)
“The Moment” by Lawrence M. Schoen (Footprints)
“Non-Zero Probabilities” by N.K. Jemisin (Clarkesworld 9/09)
“Spar” by Kij Johnson (Clarkesworld 10/09)

BEST RELATED WORK (259 nominating ballots)

Canary Fever: Reviews by John Clute (Beccon)
Hope-In-The-Mist: The Extraordinary Career and Mysterious Life of Hope Mirrlees by Michael Swanwick (Temporary Culture)
The Inter-Galactic Playground: A Critical Study of Children’s and Teens’ Science Fiction by Farah Mendlesohn (McFarland)
On Joanna Russ edited by Farah Mendlesohn (Wesleyan)
The Secret Feminist Cabal: A Cultural History of SF Feminisms by Helen Merrick (Aqueduct)
This is Me, Jack Vance! (Or, More Properly, This is “I”) by Jack Vance (Subterranean)

BEST GRAPHIC STORY (221 nominating ballots)

Batman: Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader? Written by Neil Gaiman; Pencilled by Andy Kubert; Inked by Scott Williams (DC Comics)
Captain Britain And MI13. Volume 3: Vampire State Written by Paul Cornell; Pencilled by Leonard Kirk with Mike Collins, Adrian Alphona and Ardian Syaf (Marvel Comics)
Fables Vol 12: The Dark Ages Written by Bill Willingham; Pencilled by Mark Buckingham; Art by Peter Gross & Andrew Pepoy, Michael Allred, David Hahn; Colour by Lee Loughridge & Laura Allred; Letters by Todd Klein (Vertigo Comics)
Girl Genius, Volume 9: Agatha Heterodyne and the Heirs of the Storm Written by Kaja and Phil Foglio; Art by Phil Foglio; Colours by Cheyenne Wright (Airship Entertainment)
Schlock Mercenary: The Longshoreman of the Apocalypse Written and Illustrated by Howard Tayler

BEST DRAMATIC PRESENTATION – LONG FORM (541 nominating ballots)

Avatar Screenplay and Directed by James Cameron (Twentieth Century Fox)
District 9 Screenplay by Neill Blomkamp & Terri Tatchell; Directed by Neill Blomkamp (TriStar Pictures)
Moon Screenplay by Nathan Parker; Story by Duncan Jones; Directed by Duncan Jones (Liberty Films)
Star Trek Screenplay by Robert Orci & Alex Kurtzman; Directed by J.J. Abrams (Paramount)
Up Screenplay by Bob Peterson & Pete Docter; Story by Bob Peterson, Pete Docter, & Thomas McCarthy; Directed by Bob Peterson & Pete Docter (Disney/Pixar)

BEST DRAMATIC PRESENTATION – SHORT FORM (282 nominating ballots)

Doctor Who: “The Next Doctor” Written by Russell T Davies; Directed by Andy Goddard (BBC Wales)
Doctor Who: “Planet of the Dead” Written by Russell T Davies & Gareth Roberts; Directed by James Strong (BBC Wales)
Doctor Who: “The Waters of Mars” Written by Russell T Davies & Phil Ford; Directed by Graeme Harper (BBC Wales)
Dollhouse: “Epitaph 1″ Story by Joss Whedon; Written by Maurissa Tancharoen & Jed Whedon; Directed by David Solomon (Mutant Enemy)
FlashForward: “No More Good Days” Written by Brannon Braga & David S. Goyer; Directed by David S. Goyer; based on the novel by Robert J. Sawyer (ABC)

BEST EDITOR, LONG FORM (289 nominating ballots)

Lou Anders
Ginjer Buchanan
Liz Gorinsky
Patrick Nielsen Hayden
Juliet Ulman

BEST EDITOR, SHORT FORM (419 nominating ballots)

Ellen Datlow
Stanley Schmidt
Jonathan Strahan
Gordon Van Gelder
Sheila Williams

BEST PROFESSIONAL ARTIST (327 nominating ballots)

Bob Eggleton
Stephan Martiniere
John Picacio
Daniel Dos Santos
Shaun Tan

BEST SEMIPROZINE (377 nominating ballots)

Ansible edited by David Langford
Clarkesworld edited by Neil Clarke, Sean Wallace, & Cheryl Morgan
Interzone edited by Andy Cox
Locus edited by Charles N. Brown, Kirsten Gong-Wong, & Liza Groen Trombi
Weird Tales edited by Ann VanderMeer & Stephen H. Segal

BEST FAN WRITER (319 nominating ballots)

Claire Brialey
Christopher J Garcia
James Nicoll
Lloyd Penney
Frederik Pohl

BEST FANZINE (298 nominating ballots)

Argentus edited by Steven H Silver
Banana Wings edited by Claire Brialey and Mark Plummer
CHALLENGER edited by Guy H. Lillian III
Drink Tank edited by Christopher J Garcia, with guest editor James Bacon
File 770 edited by Mike Glyer
StarShipSofa edited by Tony C. Smith

BEST FAN ARTIST (199 nominating ballots)

Brad W. Foster
Dave Howell
Sue Mason
Steve Stiles
Taral Wayne

THE JOHN W. CAMPBELL AWARD FOR BEST NEW WRITER (NOT A HUGO AWARD) (356 nominating ballots)

Saladin Ahmed
Gail Carriger
Felix Gilman *
Seanan McGuire
Lezli Robyn *
* Second year of eligibility

Off today with family. Will be back briefly this afternoon to list the Hugo nods when they are announced, because I know you will want to know, you crazy geeks, you. But otherwise, don’t expect to see me until tonight at the earliest. Enjoy your day.

(P.S. live webcast of the Hugo nomination announcements will be here.)

Why, that’s positively unAmerican:

Convinced that many unpaid internships violate minimum wage laws, officials in Oregon, California and other states have begun investigations and fined employers. Last year, M. Patricia Smith, then New York’s labor commissioner, ordered investigations into several firms’ internships. Now, as the federal Labor Department’s top law enforcement official, she and the wage and hour division are stepping up enforcement nationwide.

Good. As I’ve kvetched before, the fact that “internship” in the business world appears to have gone from meaning “a paid apprenticeship to learn professional skills” to “Unpaid schmuck kid doing scut work we’d otherwise have to pay someone to do” appalls me. That’s not what internships are for, on either side of the equation.

This would be the point where someone wrings their hands and says that in this economy if there weren’t internships like this, there wouldn’t be internships at all. And this would be the point where I say this is a feature, not a bug, since an internship designed to exploit some kid is worse than no internship, since it doesn’t benefit the kid a damn and companies lose focus of the mission of internships, and instead see them merely as spigots of free labor. Yeah, kill that asap.

This isn’t say every unpaid internship is exploitation; it is to say you’re going to get most of this sort of exploitation in unpaid internships. If we’re about to see this sort of nonsense hacked back, I’m all for that.

Or, if you want to be Canadian about it: SG:U is back! Tonight! At Nine! On Space!

Either way, don’t want to miss out on all the science fictional goodness. And aliens! Because there will be aliens. Oh, yes. And they will be alien – none of that “oh look, we have a head ridge, now we’re totally not human” nonsense. And that’s all I’m gonna say about that.

In any event: Hey, nine o’clock (eight central and mountain). Be there or… well, watch it on your DVR, I suppose. But it would be nice for you to be there.

Also, for those of you who use the official SG:U comment thread here, I put up a clean comment thread so you’ll have a fresh start for the second half of the season. Don’t worry, there are links to the previous comments. Have fun!

Is there reason to believe the future will be a better place than the present? It’s certainly possible, but often science fiction writers skip over that part because, let’s face it, writing dystopias and world threatening problems is fun. But editor Jetse de Vries wasn’t satisfied with that, and brought a challenge to writers: Write some science fiction that sees light at the end of the tunnel. The result is Shine, an anthology of “optimistic science fiction.” But does “optimistic” here simply mean “unrealistic sweetness and light”? De Vries is here to shed light on the subject.

JETSE de VRIES:

Often it seems that the world is going to hell in a handbasket: credit crisis and climate change, poverty and pollution, greed and genocide, and more. Problems becoming so huge and complex they seem intractable.

Also, the winds of change seemed to have turned into the hurricane of future shock: technological and social developments seemingly accelerating into one big blur. Your phone becoming your camera becoming your music machine becoming your TV becoming your internet portal and vice-versa. Internet fora overtaken by blogs and LJs which are overtaken by MySpace, FaceBook and Twitter until it  all becomes one big, well, Buzz.

Both these developments give us the impression that the future is a mad moloch on the run: unstoppable, unfathomable and uncontrollable. Worse, most people seem to think we’re heading for an apocalypse (or even a series of them). I call bullshit on that.

The future is in our hands: we still have the inventivity, chutzpah and chops to change it for the better. Shine is the mental road map towards it.

Science Fiction has many forms and guises, and can fullfil many functions. While it cannot accurately predict the future (no-one can), it can try to influence its direction. SF as a series of roadsigns. Increasingly, there’s a twofold problem: for one, the utmost majority of the roadsigns only say ‘DO NOT ENTER’ while almost none point towards a promising direction; for another the rare few that do show hopeful signs tend to be set in the far future.

In other words, almost all near-future SF is downbeat, often relentlessly so. My ‘Big Idea’ is that optimistic, near-future SF is not a contradiction in terms, nor—as Jason Stoddard (only half-jokingly) said: ‘taking on two kinds of impossible’, but a necessity.

Thus, a pitch to publishers. After Solaris Books took up the anthology, a call to action for writers. Now, an SF anthology that leads by example. The stories in Shine all face today’s huge problems head-on, and try to do something about them, with varying degrees of success.

Apart from displaying stories where SF actively thinks about solving problems (something it’s been extremely reluctant about in the past decades, or, worded differently: ‘if we can’t help point the ways to the answers, then what use are we, really?’), we also need to envision the future as a hopeful, workable ascent in a brighter place, not an inevitable descent into darkness.

For example, the ‘Big Idea’ that we need new approaches is seeping into Marvel Comics, as well, with the ‘Future Foundation’ (rings a bell, right…) for the Fantastic Four coming up. To quote Jonathan Hickman:

“The Future Foundation is an outreach of the Fantastic Four. It’s kind of a side project of his that has to do with his kids, and his responsibility to them, ensuring that there’s a better world for them to grow up in…

[...]We don’t need people who are afraid of tomorrow running things. It’s dangerous, and it’s not good.

It’s got kind of a sense of better days. And that’s not to say we’re nostalgic, but there’s this feeling of better days ahead instead of just better days gone by.

But we’re going to be part of the “Heroic Age” banner because it’s very timely, and it’s good for the Fantastic Four because it’s the type of environment where a family superhero book can be prominent and can seem a lot more relevant.”

Nothing wrong with great dystopian fiction (and nothing wrong with highly entertaining escapism, either), but right now the balance is gone and there is precious little SF trying to face today’s problems with a constructive attitude. With Shine I’m trying to redress that balance somewhat. And I find it highly ironic that the first ‘dangerous visions’ of the 21^st Century—that is, fiction going against the current grain—are upbeat stories.

Hence, in a bid to make SF more relevant to the current young generation, an anthology that takes a cross-section of problems and possible solutions from around the globe and a bit beyond: from soil regeneration in China to rebuilding the ultimate surveillance tool in Afghanistan; from tentative first steps in West Africa to big steps—all the way to Mars—in East Africa; from premature wikindustries in Brazil to overdue AI recognition in Europe; from the rarity of ice in Summer to the abundance of plastic in the Pacific; from the Moon colony of last resort to the asteroid belt trip in tweets; all laced with western inventivity, eastern ingenuity, southern joie de vivre and northern persistence.

Neither is it all work and no play: Shine features a few humourous pieces—involving the roaring future of metal, the rollicking progress on a lone Pacific Island and the shenanigans of environmentalists turned Casanovas—showing that idealists can have both a sense of perspective and irony, as well.

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Shine: Amazon| Barnes & Noble|Indiebound|Powell’s;

Visit the Shine website. Read story excerpts; Listen to a podcast of “The Earth of Yunhe” (the opening story); More upbeat stories at DayBreak Magazine.