FlashNews

Found: Black Angel

2010-03-11T10:59:00.004-05:00

If you're at least 38 years old, you may remember a short film that was shown jointly with the theatrical release of The Empire Strikes Back in 1980. (I'm way past old enough, but have no recollection of that year at all.) The short film was Black Angel, produced with gift money of £25,000 from George Lucas for his appreciation of the art direction provided by Roger Christian in Star Wars.

Mr. Christian used the money to produce a moody, mystical fantasy art film set in the middle ages. The film was lost for many years following an illness suffered by Mr. Christian, but nevertheless was quite influential to filmmakers. Fortunately, a half-inch print of the film has been found. ShadowLocked has an excellent and exclusive interview with Black Shadow director Roger Christian. In the article containing the interview, you'll find stills from the film and conversation about its making and history.

An interesting quote from the interview:

"Cinema has changed so much, and I bless Peter Jackson [director of the Lord of the Rings trilogy], because he gave the world what it didn't know it wanted, and brought this kind of fantasy world into huge mainstream cinema, finally. And did it so beautifully."

Oscar Awards and Speculative Fiction

2010-03-09T16:54:00.003-05:00

The Oscar winners have been announced. Here is the official list of the nominees and winners of the 82nd Academy Awards.

Speculative fiction films made a showing. Avatar scored well, winning art direction, cinematography and visual effects. But James Cameron and company, with so many other nominations, was vexed nearly every step of the way by The Hurt Locker: directing, film editing, best picture, sound editing and sound mixing. Maybe the billions in ticket sales will take the sting out of this for Cameron. Avatar eclipsed the previous ticket sales leader, Titanic, but that's his film, too. (I won't even mention Aliens and The Terminator.)

The other major speculative film win was Up with animated feature film.

Physicist: Watch Your Quantum Step, Writers

2010-03-08T16:06:00.003-05:00

By way of The End of the Universe: a physicist, Sidney Perkowitz, a professor of physics at Emory University, prayerfully suggests that writers, especially screenwriters, violate physics no more than once per script. Dude, are we supposed to FTL ourselves to a distant galaxy and then use picks, shovels and Winchesters to kick out the space aliens there? Oh...we are. Okay, noted.

Especially egregious and offensive was Angels and Demons, according to this related Guardian (UK) article:

"The amount of antimatter they had [to blow the Vatican to Kingdom Come] was more than we will make in a million years of running a high-energy particle collider," said Perkowitz. "You can't contain it using an iPod battery."

That offends even me. They could've used flashlight batteries or a car battery. Sheesh. (And I like Tom Hanks, but isn't there someone else to play professorial adventurers (who is not Sean Connery)?)

Seriously, folks, I like mundane SF (another term badly needed), which doesn't violate any present laws of physics. Those stories are closer to home and have more realistic protags and bad guys, rather than the Gothic figures we're grown accustomed to. But I liked Angels and Demons and Avatar, too, even though my BS meter pegged the red zone several times in each.

A humble suggestion to Professor Perkowitz: watch a few adventure movies. It is not uncommon to see someone leap from a roof down a couple of stories and manage to grab onto a ledge, or leap from speeding car roof to speeding car roof...etc. Don't get me started on video games....

Trekkie-Zombie Mashup

2010-03-05T12:43:00.004-05:00

We interrupt this post for an important announcement: The March 2010 issue of Flash Fiction Online is, well, online. It has three new, excellent stories by Daniel José Older, Caroline M. Yoachim and Andrew Gudgel, plus a classic story, and Bruce Holland Rogers' Short-Short Sighted monthly column.

Now back to our regular posting:

Yikes. Kevin David Anderson has contracted to write a Trekkie/Zombie apocalypse mashup, called Night of the Living Trekkies. Will Mr. Anderson be able to safely attend a Trekkie convention after this? He has published widely in magazines, anthologies and podcasts. My apologies for my earlier misreporting of the actual author of this work. Good luck with this project.

Die hard and prosper, dead Trekkies!

Author Barry Hannah RIP

2010-03-04T15:25:00.004-05:00

I had the good fortune of meeting Barry Hannah a few times when he was teaching at Clemson University. I then managed to get a signed copy of his first novel Geronimo Rex, which he had just published. He was a Faulkner-styled Southern Gothic writer with quite a gift for short fiction. Geronimo Rex was a National Book Award nominee and William Faulkner Prize winner; his short fiction collections netted him the PEN/Malamud Award.

Here is an oft-quoted bit from the 1972 New York Times review of Geronimo Rex, the review written by writer Jim Harrison of Legends of the Fall fame. Harrison said that Hannah was a writer

“brilliantly drunk with words [who] could at gunpoint write a life story of a telephone pole.”

This quote was in each of several articles I read about Barry Hannah's death, including the excellent one in Vanity Fair. Hannah struggled with cancer and drinking, the former one finally winning.

Review of Flash Fiction Online

2010-03-02T15:26:00.003-05:00

Sam Tomaino at SFRevu has a review of the Feb. 2010 edition of Flash Fiction Online. This month, he seemed to favor "Six Reasons Why My Sister Hates Me":

The narrator of Aimee C. Amodio's story details "Six Reasons Why My Sister Hates Me" and helps draw a picture of their relationship and the world they live in. It was quite good.

You can see this edition of FFO here.

Sam also reviews Abyss & Apex, Apex Magazine, Black Static, Jim Baen's Universe (penultimate issue), Outer Reaches, and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.

Flash Fiction in the Market

2010-02-23T11:46:00.005-05:00

Duotrope.com is a great place to research fiction publications of interest to you. You may find many publications of which you were unaware. Duotrope's fiction home/search page has a database of about 2825 publications at present. You can search with various filters, such as genre, theme, length, media, pay scale and others.

I decided to search the database for various genres, with the length set to flash. The result is shown in the table below. Adding up the various genres may not be useful since many publications publish multiple genres. This doesn't guarantee that all publications found have ever or ever will publish flash fiction, but at least they are not officially opposed to it.

Flash Fiction Publications by Genre

All genres	1158
Mainstream	382
Experimental	267
Fantasy	176
Science Fiction	169
Horror	162
Magical Realism/Surrealism	123
Cross Genre/Slipstream	119
Mystery	57
Crime/Suspense	40
Action/Adventure	30
Erotica	23
Romance	16
Western	9

Nebula, Stoker and Saturn Ballots/Awards

2010-02-20T11:38:00.006-05:00

The writing awards season has begun with three prestigious ballots or awards:

The Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) has named their short list for the 2009 Nebula Awards. Their categories include short story, novel, novelette, novella, the Ray Bradbury Award for Outstanding Dramatic Presentation, and the Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy. John Scalzi has two nominations, for the novella and young adult science fiction and fantasy categories.

The Horror Writers Association (HWA) has announced their ballot for the 2009 Stoker Award nominees. They include categories for superior achievement in a novel, first novel, long fiction, short fiction, anthology, collection, nonfiction and poetry.

The Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films (Academy) has announced their finalists for the 35th annual Saturn Awards. Here are the Saturn Award nominations and the Saturn Award winners (link will eventually change). The Dark Knight won five awards. Iron Man won the best science fiction film. This award has numerous categories, including films, directors, writers, actors, music and others.

Jay Lake's Novel-Publishing Time Line

2010-02-18T13:58:00.003-05:00

By way of PW's Genreville blog is writing machine Jay Lake's novel publishing time line, from his perspective and the publisher's perspective.

I have a problem with this Jay:

Months 1-2 — I draft a book.
Months 3-4 — I redraft the book.

We're talking a full-length novel, right? Not a flash novel? Here's my time line:

Months 1-2: It were a dork and starmy night.
Months 3-4: It was a dark and stormy night.
Months 5-6: Try to come up with an idea....

I also have a problem with this:

Month 11 — Agent issues acceptance check to me, less commission.

What agent? Sigh.

Jay illustrates well why it takes so long for a novel to go from the first peck on the Royal to a bookseller putting the book on the wrong shelf. He also explains why he doesn't self-publish, even though some argue that he could make more money going that path. It's a good read.

Go here to see Jay Lake's Flash Fiction Online story.

Bonus via Kathy: British UFOs! (CNN covered it but The Guardian didn't. Hmmm.)

Another Death Knell To FTL Space Travel?

2010-02-17T12:53:00.004-05:00

According to this The Register article, faster-than-light travel has another obstacle besides relativity: the lowly hydrogen atom. Since that article is quite brief, this post will be all the more brief. As a craft approaches light speed, it compresses what would ordinarily be the sparse hydrogen in space, resulting in incredibly high voltages...more than 1000 times the lethal dose of ionizing radiation. (That's bad.) As the author points out, they'll think of something. SF authors will, for sure.

Cultural Shift? Plagiarism vs. Remixing

2010-02-15T15:26:00.003-05:00

Here is an interesting story about a 17-year-old uber-author in Germany who is successful while withstanding a charge of plagiarism...but she calls it mixing.

Some background: (re)mixing has many contexts. In music, it is the mixing of sound tracts into an alternative form of the work. In literature, the most obvious meaning is that used in the Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike license, in which others may "remix, tweak, and build upon your work even for commercial reasons, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms." A publisher of one of Yours Truly's stories used the non-commercial form of this license for their anthology.

According to this NYT story, 17-year-old German author Helene Hegemann has a staged play and a script for a theatrically distributed movie to her credit, and now a well-selling novel (5th in Spiegel's best-seller list). However, someone pointed out that pieces of her novel, sometimes page-length) were lifted with little change from other works. Naturally a controversy arose. But even an important literary prize staff has overlooked this problem with her work and are still considering it. They apparently felt that the story was new and important enough, even with the copied passages, to justify continued consideration. The author says she did not plagiarize. She mixed. This is what people do now in the world of the always-connected Internet.

Is she right? Has the standard of plagiarism irrevocably changed or shifted?

For more on this story, see the NYT article, entitled, "Author, 17, Says It's 'Mixing,' Not Plagiarism."

Take a Black Hole Tour

2010-02-14T13:33:00.004-05:00

Science fiction writers for various media like black holes. They solve many story issues (while creating some thorny theoretical ones). If you enjoy reading or writing such inventions, you might appreciate this post.

By way of SlashDot, New Scientist is reporting a simulation published in the American Journal of Physics of what the sky would look like if you entered a black hole. (Warning: do not try this at home; serious bodily injury may result from approaching or falling into a black hole.) The simulation uses actual star data (100,000+ stars). The authors of the American Journal of Physics article (and apparently of the simulation) are Thomas Müller and Daniel Weiskopf at the University of Stuttgart (Universität Stuttgart).

The short New Scientist article includes a video of a simulation run (and then gives options for other related videos). If you are more adventurous or interested, you can download the simulation and simulation data files and run/tweak it yourself. They have a Windows executable and Linux source files.

Here is the New Scientist article and video about a black hole simulator that uses star data. Here is the University of Stuttgart black hole simulator for Windows and Linux.

Ad: Injured falling into a black hole? Call 555-555-5555 to learn about your legal rights. Blackheart & Blackheart, Personal Injury Lawyers.

Writing Novels vs. Working at McDonalds

2010-02-12T15:12:00.004-05:00

Here's a short humor piece from The Rumpus about the so-called business of writing novels. Because the piece is so short, I won't say much. Suffice it to say that writing novels for a non-living is only slightly better than working for McDonalds.

Annie Animation Awards

2010-02-11T13:32:00.003-05:00

ASIFA-Hollywood is the Los Angeles chapter of The International Animated Film Society, which is

dedicated to the advancement of the art of animation. We sponsor screenings and seminars; host the Annie Awards- animation's highest honor; preserve films in danger of being lost to time, support animation education and journalism; and maintain an archive, library and museum of animation in Burbank, CA.

The Annie Awards has announced their finalists in the 37th Annual Annie Awards. That link also includes the nominees for that award. Speculative fiction has done fairly well in the motion picture arts awards, such as the Oscars Awards, and now in animated features and other productions. Of course, there is some overlap in these awards. Here is a selection of the recipients:

Best animated feature: Up - Pixar Animation Studios
Best home entertainment production: Futurama: Into the Wild Green Yonder — The Curiosity Company in association with 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment
Best animated short subject: Robot Chicken: Star Wars 2.5 - ShadowMachine
Best animate television production: Prep and Landing - ABC Family/Walt Disney Animation Studios
Best animated television production for children: The Penguins of Madagascar - Nickelodeon and Dreamworks Animation
Writing in a Television Production: Daniel Chun - "The Simpsons: Treehous of Horro XX" - Gracie Films
Writing in a Feature Production: Wes Anderson and Noah Baumbach - "Fantiastic Mr. Fox" - 20th Century Fox

Go here for a complete list of the 37th annual Annie nominations and awards recipients.

You Can Die of a Broken Heart or Boredom

2010-02-10T14:54:00.003-05:00

In two unrelated stories, you can die of a broken heart and die from boredom. The boredom connection to death was discovered statistically by University College London. Subjects (civil servants) claiming to be bored were 37 percent more likely to die by the end of the study period.

The boredom mode of death seems less tragic than the broken heart syndrome, described below. Boredom can be cured at work by letting civil servants visit Flash Fiction Online at least twice daily. Flash Fiction can save your life! (The less literary civil servants could watch snippets of English football (flash soccer for Americans.)

The broken heart syndrome is most likely associated with the loss of a loved one or physical trauma. It's not connected with coronary artery disease. Heavily grieving people sometimes suffer a burst of adrenaline that "overwhelms" the heart. The symptoms somewhat mimic a heart attack, but the syndrome differs in an interesting way. As a Japanese researcher discovered, the adrenaline shock deforms the left ventricle, disrupting its ability to function. It takes the shape of a vase-like device, the researcher noted, used by Japanese to trap octopi.

I'm sure some enterprising mystery writer can use these modes of death in a sinister way. Could a fatally boring lecturer be charged with...never mind.

Dan Brown's Next Inspiration?

2010-02-08T12:20:00.003-05:00

Perhaps the next Angels and Demons-type movie, based on a Dan Brown novel, or the next National Treasure-type Disney movie, written by too many to mention, will be inspired by this interesting little article in National Geographic: Lost Roman Codex Fragments Found in Book Binding.

According to the article, it was the practice in the sixteenth century to strengthen the binding of new books from scraps of old paper. One collector bought some interesting two-inch square scraps and loaned them to scholars at University College London.

"But a few of the phrases matched passages in the Justinian Code, compiled in the sixth century, leading the team to conclude that the unfamiliar sections were from a source text: the Codex Gregorianus."

Codex Gregorianus (Gregorian Code) is a set of compilations of antique Roman law, including those of Hadrian and earlier law.

I wouldn't be surprised to see this motif show up in a Dan Brown type of book. Perhaps one of Flash Fiction Online's past or future writers (or an inspired reader) will beat the big boys to the punch with a much more economical flash fiction story.

For more interesting details about this find, go to the full National Geographic article on lost Roman law codices.

2010-02-06T13:06:00.001-05:00

Tikatok is a print-on-demand web site for kids, now owned by Barnes & Noble. The site has easy templates for creating a book with text and pictures. For those looking for help finding an idea, Tikatok has some "worlds" (StorySparks), to help generate ideas, such as animals and bugs, holidays and vacations, princesses and fairy tales, and school and family. They're also associated with Build-a-Bear, so children can write stories for that setting (although Build-A-Bear owns the copyright to those stories).

Children will need parents to set up the accounts for parent and child, and decide if the site is safe. From other sources, I believe (but am not certain), that parents will be notified by email of their children's actions. Once a book is created, it can be published in hardbound (starts at $18), softbound (starts at $15) and PDF formats ($3).

The web site could be more open with information. "Starts at $18" for hardcover books refers to additional costs, depending on the page count. The additional cost is not explained, except, presumably, once you start the publishing phase. There's little information about the control that the parent has on the process. One would hope that Barnes & Noble has or will vet this service closely.

#FridayFlash: To Catch A Terrorist

2010-02-05T09:33:00.003-05:00

Welcome Friday Flashers! I hope you like this little 368-word ditty.

Damn. Blake had landed in the right building, but not far enough back in time. It was only minutes before Ahmed the Ghost’s suitcase bomb had blown, spreading radioactive contaminants and neurotoxins throughout the Ondrusek Weapons Facility.

And someone had just slammed the door at the end of the hallway.

Blake sprinted pell-mell into the door. Pain exploded through his right shoulder and head, but the door jamb gave way. Blake stumbled – and saw himself standing at a console.

“Hold this switch,” the other Blake said.

Blake’s vision blurred and refocused. “I have to catch the Ghost,” he said.

“You’re hurt, and you’re not thinking,” the other Blake said. “Which is why our first attempt to catch him failed. He was disguised as Brennan, and we missed it. Now come here.”

Blake tried to absorb the information. “Brennan, now?” That brought the Ghost’s known disguises to six. Blake started to shake his head, but stopped when pain pierced his neck. “How could we come back? The temporal spread was getting wide when I first jumped. A second jump–”

“Come here,” the other Blake said. “I jumped less than ten minutes after they pulled me out. Worth the risk.” He jerked his head. “Hold this switch. It’s the detonator. Don’t let it flip. I’ll get him.”

Blake’s mouth tasted of blood and tin as he moved to the console. Maybe they could have done it in ten minutes. The spread would be wider, but with a little more power he might have had a fifty-fifty shot at surviving the jump. He pressed his left hand into the switch. “Okay. I have it.”

The other Blake released it and raced to a ladder that was anchored to a wall in the corner, leading to a circular opening in the ceiling. “Don’t move until I get back.”

The pain in Blake’s arm was blinding. He tried not to shudder and asked, “Do we make it?”

“I’m here, aren’t I?” the other Blake called. He pulled himself through the opening. Blake heard a slam, followed by a click-spin and the sound of footsteps.

Damn, Blake thought. His shoulder throbbed. In ten minutes, my arm won’t be well enough to climb a ladder.

SFWA Weighs In On Amazon-Macmillan Battle

2010-02-04T14:08:00.003-05:00

FFO covered the Amazon-Macmillan distribution battle. At issue is the price that Amazon wants to charge for eBook versions of new publications. Amazon wanted to charge $9.99. Macmillan thought that was too low. This precipitated a battle in which a new sales model was invoked by Macmillan and "Buy" buttons for Macmillan volumes on Amazon were yanked.

Here are the issues:

Macmillan thought the eBook price was predatory and would hurt their print book business.
Amazon sees eBooks as a loss leader to drive traffic.
Authors want to sell their books and make a living.
Buyers want cheap books.

That's not a simple set of issues to solve to everyone's satisfaction. Now, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA.org) has considered the issues (with their members' best interests in mind, presumably) and weighed in on the Amazon-Macmillan battle, supporting Macmillan's case through appeal and through the replacement of Amazon.com links on SFWA's website for their members' books with links to other vendors.

The issues listed above are represented in the many public comments attending SWFA's article.

Review of Flash Fiction Online

2010-02-03T13:49:00.003-05:00

Sam Tamiano at SFRevu has reviewed Flash Fiction Online's January 2010 edition. He liked "Caltrops" by Tim Pratt and "Hungry" by Tree Reisner. He seemed to especially like Ken Pisani's "Last Bites":

"Last Bites" by Ken Pisani takes place at a funeral parlor and begins with a boy biting off his dead uncle's nose and saying it tastes like chocolate. Soon, it becomes apparent that all the deceased are edible and tasty. This was an absolutely delicious story with a very amusing ending.

The staff at Flash Fiction Online had quite a lively discussion about that story. All three stories plus Bruce Holland Rogers' writing column can be seen here.

Sam has more reviews of speculative fiction magazines, including:

Analog Science Fiction and Fact
Apex Magazine
Asimov's Science Fiction
Black Static
Electric Velocipede
Encounters Magazine (first issue)
Interzone
Jupiter
Realms (first issue)

Oscar Nominations--Speculative Fiction

2010-02-02T14:28:00.003-05:00

Go to the Oscars site for the full list of Oscar nominations for 2010 (82nd Academy Awards). Perusing the list, you'll find these speculative fiction films (including mysteries) considered for an Academy Award (some categories omitted):

Animated feature film

“Coraline” Henry Selick
“Fantastic Mr. Fox” Wes Anderson
“The Princess and the Frog” John Musker and Ron Clements
“The Secret of Kells” Tomm Moore
“Up” Pete Docter

Art direction

“Avatar” Art Direction: Rick Carter and Robert Stromberg; Set Decoration: Kim Sinclair
“The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus” Art Direction: Dave Warren and Anastasia Masaro; Set Decoration: Caroline Smith
“Sherlock Holmes” Art Direction: Sarah Greenwood; Set Decoration: Katie Spencer

Cinematography

“Avatar” Mauro Fiore
“Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” Bruno Delbonnel

Directing

"Avatar" James Cameron

Film editing

“Avatar” Stephen Rivkin, John Refoua and James Cameron
“District 9” Julian Clarke

Music (Original Score)

“Avatar” James Horner
“Fantastic Mr. Fox” Alexandre Desplat
“Sherlock Holmes” Hans Zimmer
“Up” Michael Giacchino

Best Film

“Avatar” James Cameron and Jon Landau, Producers
“District 9” Peter Jackson and Carolynne Cunningham, Producers
“Up” Jonas Rivera, Producer

Writing (adapted screenplay)

“District 9” Written by Neill Blomkamp and Terri Tatchell

Writing (original screenplay)

“Up” Screenplay by Bob Peterson, Pete Docter, Story by Pete Docter, Bob Peterson, Tom McCarthy

Muscular Macmillan Wrestles Amazon on eBook Pricing

2010-02-02T13:30:00.005-05:00

I've let this story percolate for a while until it took a direction: the publishers' fight with Amazon over eBook pricing. Amazon has been selling eBooks of newly released books for $9.99, which some publishers consider predatory and which undermines their print book sales.

This story has been covered extensively, which is not surprising. SFWA now has a nice article summarizing this issue following Macmillan's muscular move to control its products' pricing on Amazon. Macmillan changed its terms of sale from the wholesale model, in which resellers buy at a discount and sale at any price they wish, to an agency model, in which the reseller takes a commission from the sales. Under the latter arrangement, Amazon would have to sell new Macmillan titles in eBook form at prices starting at just under $13 USD. Amazon responded by yanking the "Buy" button from Macmillan books, but later recanted. It did not go unnoticed that this decision was made in the shadow of Apple's acceptance of the agency model for its new Apple iPad.

Here is SFWA's article on Macmillan vs. Amazon by Victoria Strauss.

Literary Magazines on Life Support

2010-02-01T12:57:00.003-05:00

Mother Jones has an impassioned article by the editor of Virginia Quarterly Review, Mr. Ted Genoways, about the herding of America's stable of (usually) university-hosted literary magazines into postmodernism's most distant pasture...or off to the glue factory.

The author gives a 1930s heyday example of then Connecticut governor-elect and editor of Yale Review, Wilbur Cross, who continued editing the magazine while in office, publishing Aldous Huxley, Sherwood Anderson, Maxim Gorky, John Maynard Keynes, and Thomas Mann. All he had to do was "get up early" to handle the 500 submission the magazine received each year.

That bit of trivia is the springboard to the problem. Mr. Genoways' magazine now receives 15,000 submissions per year. The fault belongs to the economy, the evaporation of short fiction from mainstream periodicals, and most interestingly, writers. Most of those time-soaking 15,000 stories were submitted by authors insufficiently skilled to write at the level needed to sustain interest in literary magazines. Says Mr. Genoways:

You may be a precious snowflake, but if you can't express your individuality in sterling prose, I don't want to read about it.

(Snork.) In other words, it's better (and more economical) to receive 100 gems in the mail than 10,000 stones. Authors have become gutless, afraid to write about big issues. Says Mr. Genoways:

Stop being so damned dainty and polite. Treat writing like your lifeblood instead of your livelihood. And for Christ's sake, write something we might want to read.

Go here to read, "The Death of Fiction?" Take note also of the many comments following the story, including some responses by Mr. Galoways.

British Science Fiction and Fantasy Awards Short List

2010-01-31T13:14:00.004-05:00

The British Science Fiction and Fantasy Association has announced their short list for the BSFA Award.

Novel

China Mieville - The City and the City, Macmillan 
Stephen Baxter - Ark, Gollancz
 Adam Roberts - Yellow Blue Tibia, Gollancz 
Ursula Le Guin - Lavinia, Gollancz

Short Fiction

Ian Watson & Roberto Quaglia - "The Beloved Time of Their Lives" - The Beloved of My Beloved, Newcon Press 
Eugie Foster - "Sinner, Baker, Fabulist, Priest; Red Mask, Black Mask, Gentleman, Beast" - Interzone
 Ian Whates - "The Assistant" - The Solaris Book of Science Fiction Volume 3 
Ian McDonald - "Vishnu at the Cat Circus" 
Kim Lakin-Smith - "Johnnie and Emmie-Lou Get Married" - Interzone 
Dave Hutchinson - "The Push," Newcon Press

Go to the BSFA Award site for more, including the art and non-fiction awards and links to the authors' sites.

Radium Age Fiction

2010-01-29T13:18:00.005-05:00

I stumbled upon this flash fiction contest for stories of 250 words or less, with the theme, troubled or troubling supermen, conducted by Hilobrow.com. Their contest is interesting, but I found their explanation of the theme, pre-golden-age supermen, or "Radium Age" fiction, as author Joshua Glenn called it, quite entertaining. Here is the contest theme:

Long before Alan Moore asked “Who will watch the Watchmen?” Radium-Age (1904-33) science fiction writers worried whether supermen would rescue us ordinary mortals — or try to dominate us.

The link in the quote above is to an earlier io9 article, which was the source of some of the Hilobrow article on pre-golden-age science fiction. The author provides ten SF novels published in the 1904-1933 period as examples, including some nicely retro book covers, including Poul Anderson's Brain Wave.

The Radium Age superman was superior in body and intellect, along several evolution-inspired lines of reasoning, including "greater capacity for action and freedom."

Aye, there’s the rub: for, as Nietzsche has Zarathustra predict, “Just as the ape to man is a laughingstock or a painful embarrassment, man shall be just that to [superman].”

Included in the article is a summary of the ten most influential novels of the Radium Age, with a synopsis of each, and the cover art. There is also a bibliography of related fiction from the period 1804 to 1937, under several sub-genre categories.