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Nebula Award Winners, Hugo Nominees Announced
CBNobi writes "The 2002 Nebula Award winners have been announced this weekend. The winner for best novel was American Gods by Neil Gaiman (reviewed here at Slashdot), and the winner for best script was LotR:The Fellowship of the Ring. The nominees for the 2003 Hugo Awards have also been announced; Episodes of Enterprise, Firefly, and Buffy are all nominated for best short form dramatic presentation, and LotR and Spirited Away are among the nominees for best long form presentation."
Hmmm,
Firefly - Cancelled (and it was just getting fun)
Enterprise - Might be cancelled soon
Buffy - Wrapping up the series? (don't watch it, but recall the wife mentioning it.)
Should it be seen as a sign of the times that the nominees are all either going or gone? Makes you wonder about the intelligence of the masses. Oh wait, we already know about the intelligence of the masses.
That's an amusing troll; it's a little too reactionary to be convincing, however.
For what it's worth, China Miéville, who was nominated, is considerably further to the "left" than Ian McLeod; in fact Mr Miéville has stood for Parliament on behalf of a political party you would no doubt dub "sophomoric Marxist".
Not everyone subscribes to the last-man-standing-wins model of American capitalism.
Ian McLeod is Scottish, for a start. I know it seems like a subtle difference, but at least try and get it right.
Ian Mcleod is a socialist and has written some pretty intersting stuff about how the future might work if you do not accept the inevitability of near-future societies that are nation-state economies driven by Capitalism. He nails the US, because of its arch-Capitalist nature, and ironically tags the UN as behoven to the US.
I guess he got pretty fed up with seeing the future solely portrayed as a Captialist utopia, something which he disagrees with. It's nothing personal, just another point of view.
Please remain calm, there is no reason to pani... wait, where are you all going?
OK, maybe it's me, but I didn't find "American Gods" particularly enjoyable. In fact, I found it to be pretty lame. If that was the best Science Fiction novel of the year, I guess I have a better understanding of why I tend not to read much SF.
And IMHO, its found it in Wil McCarthy. If you haven't read The Collapsium, do so now. Reasonably hard science fiction by someone who can actually write? Sign me up!
Seriously, there's a lot of good new science fiction and space opera authors popping up recently. Some good fantasy authors too. Most are still finding their way and struggling to stand out amidst the tide of mindless Tolkien clones and talentless hacks, but they are there. And then there's older space opera/sci-fi authors, like Bujold, that're still doing good work. I think the '90s was the slow decade, and what we're seeing now is a resurgance.
As for TV, give up on the American networks already. They haven't produced anything worthwhile since Next Generation and Babylon-5, and they're not going to anytime soon. Not while they treat the viewer as an inconvenient obstacle between them and their money and use legislation instead of innovation to protect their revenue. Turn to Japan for your sci-fi TV fix, and watch shows like Crest of the Stars (and Banner of the Stars, and the other soon-to-follow sequel series), Legend of the Galactic Heroes, Gundam, Macross, and the new Ghost in the Shell TV series.
(Anime sci-fi shows named off the top of my head. There's a couple dozen other great ones you can find if you look.)
But my dilemma is this, I've read all Sci-Fi/Fantasy from Asimov, Niven, Vance, but have not yet finished all the works of the old masters.
Can any younger (or at least more flexible) Slashdot reader suggest a few authors that they've read and liked? I don't want to get into serials right now, perhaps something that is sort of standalone would be better as an introduction to a new author, I think.
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They're also particularly down on shows that require a lot of special effects and sets every episode. Law & Order, for instance, is probably a lot cheaper, because it only needs an occasional stunt. The real problem is that they keep coming up with new shows to fill the timeslots and viewer segments vacated by shows they cancelled, meaning that sci-fi TV is full of shows you haven't gotten into yet and shows that are being cancelled. If the shows are trying not to be short or interchangable, it's not going to be good storytelling.
On the other hand, if they made a sci-fi reality show, I'd watch that. Perhaps a show like Firefly, except that they killed off a character each week, with the plot point that something really great was going to happen to any crew member who survived the season. Alternatively, "Survivor: B5" would be really amusing; you follow a set of random residents who have to avoid getting themselves killed by the disasters that are always happening on the station, and also have to avoid getting voted out an airlock, shipped back to their home planet, etc.; it would be based on interpersonal skills and dexterity, but with more exciting things they have to do.
Actually, Firefly was already quite good in its first season. The acting and writing was very good, and the crew really had excellent chemistry. It is true that the show did not really have a strong plot (it was just starting to get into the main story), but the characters were already well defined and joy to watch. There was a good amount of mystery that definitely added to the enjoyment. Unfortunately, we will never get to see where they were going.
I have over the years watched less and less television due to the poor quality of the nearly every show until Firefly came along. I did not watch it because of Whedon. I had very little experience with any of his shows, and being somewhat anit-vampires, his name was actually more of a detriment in my mind (misguided or not). I watched the show because I was hoping to find a good sci-fi show that I could really get into, and I did. In my mind, the quality of the show had little to do with names but rather the care put into the dialog, the attention to detail (no sound in space), and the incredible acting and chemistry (especially for a first season). Its really too bad that Firefly is gone for good.
I believe in de-evolution. God made the world perfect, man fell, and its been going downhill ever since!
ha! hey there -- so my husband and pals read slashdot regularly and one of his buddies messaged me in SILC to tell me about this post. all you people who hasn't read SF since the old greats should read my book (it's a finalist for best related book). it's called better to have loved: the life of judith merril. she was my grandmother, known as the little mother of science fiction. more info