The Clarion Workshop at UCSD

Then you have to check out the six podcasts of the students and faculty of the 2008 Clarion Workshop here at UC San Diego, now all online at Adventures in SciFi Publishing.  In reverse order of their ‘broadcast’ dates, and with apologies for the fact that I’ve already posted about the first two, check out:

• The students, dissing the food but talking up just about everything else;
• Geoff Ryman and Nalo Hopkinson, talking about the ways that San Diego has changed the Clarion culture;
• Neil Gaiman on teaching and why he had previously avoided the same;
• Mary Anne Mohanraj on how to write the Other;
• James Patrick Kelly on podcasting and his new science fiction story collection; and
• Kelly Link on workshops, MFA programs, and the writing of short fiction.

All in all, it’s an incredible collection of thoughts and wisdom.  Kudos to Shaun Farrell for pushing us to make this possible, and to Tania as always for working out the schedules.

Last week, the 2008 Hugo for best novel went to Michael Chabon’s The Yiddish Policeman’s Union, the tale of a post-Holocaust Jewish enclave in Alaska in a world where Israel was destroyed in 1948.  Chabon may be the clearest demonstration yet of the blurring lines between science fiction and mainstream fiction, as epitomized in this wonderful Business Standard (India) opinion piece by a woman whose careful divide between her books (SF, pulp, etc.) and her husband’s (literary fiction) has been split asunder by Chabon’s novel.

The odd thing is that the self-proclaimed literary reader will actively embrace good (and even indifferent) science fiction so long as it’s presented to him/her as inventive literature. This works very well in the case of a novel such as Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, where readers would have shied away from her intensely imagined parallel universe if it had been presented to them as “fantasy” rather than unusual literature.

It works less well in the case of Margaret Atwood, whose determined forays into science-fiction have brought a collective groan to the lips of SF fans the world over. And it works in strange ways with a writer like Cormac McCarthy. SF fans were quietly pleased that his dystopian, darkly SF novel, The Road, won critical acclaim last year — but annoyed that critic after critic praised his premise for its originality, when the idea of a post-apocalyptic world has been kicking around the halls of science-fiction for only around five or six decades.

Meanwhile, for those looking for more, NPR has a nice post-award interview with Chabon here.

Liz Ng’ang’a, a university researcher based in Scotland, has a very interesting piece in today’s Business Daily out of Nairobi on African writers getting engaged in science fiction.  Ng’ang’a has previously written on the importance of science and technology teaching for Africa’s future; here it’s a take on the need for science fiction imaginings to help envision that future.

Ng’ang’a contrasts the emergence of African SF writers with Africa’s role in SF from earlier eras:

During the early part of the 20th century, Africa was a popular setting for foreign science fiction writers.  The continent has since lost its edge, as the unexplored home of exotic, strange and previously undiscovered creatures, to the outer space.  A few Africans have since endeavoured to create African-inspired science fiction.

Ng’ang’a focuses on two writers, Kenyan writer John Rugoiyo Gichuki and Ghanian-born British film director John Akomfrah.  Of the latter, for example, she notes:

… [his] work is inspired by Africa’s encounter with modernity. Akomfrah argues that since science-fiction narratives are usually about alienation, abduction and transportation, they provide a powerful understanding of the displacing of African people.

Ng’ang’a’s closing remarks are particularly appropriate in the aftermath of UC Riverside’s 2008 Eaton Conference, Chronicling Mars, which highlighted the symbiotic relationship between science fiction’s race to Mars and that of the 1960s U.S. space program.  Now, she says, maybe it’s Africa’s turn for visions of hope to drive Africans toward hopeful futures:

This view is encouragingly contrary to foreign science fiction works, which used Africa as a setting to show the bleak future that the world might come to… [I]t is time for brave African writers to take on science fiction, and explore other alternative possibilities the future might hold.

The Last Theorem, Arthur C. Clarke’s final book and his only collaboration with Fred Pohl, was released yesterday.  As described on the Random House website,

[When] Ranjit Subramanian, a Sri Lankan with a special gift for mathematics and a passion for [Fermat’s] famous “Last Theorem[,]” … writes a three-page proof of the theorem that relies exclusively on knowledge available to Fermat, his achievement is hailed as a work of genius, bringing him fame and fortune. But it also brings him to the attention of the National Security Agency and a shadowy United Nations outfit called Pax per Fidem, or Peace Through Transparency, whose secretive workings belie its name. Suddenly Ranjit–together with his wife, Myra de Soyza, an expert in artificial intelligence, and their burgeoning family–finds himself swept up in world-shaking events, his genius for abstract mathematical thought put to uses that are both concrete and potentially deadly.

Meanwhile, unbeknownst to anyone on Earth, an alien fleet is approaching the planet at a significant percentage of the speed of light. Their mission: to exterminate the dangerous species of primates known as homo sapiens.

The New York Times carried an odd report today, odd not for the content but for its placement: an article on the imminent dissolution of Belgium carried on page 1 of the Arts section.  Isn’t that news?

Admittedly, the story sounds a lot like The Mouse That Roared or one of its sequels, where the Duchy of Grand Fenwick does things like go to war against the United States in the hopes of securing U.S. foreign aid — at least, that’s what I recall them doing in the Peter Sellers film version.  Here, though, a nation with a per capita GDP higher than Germany’s is arguing over the fact that its French citizens are oh-so-very French and its highly put-upon Flemish citizens are just so tediously Flemish.  Not like a Peter Sellers movie at all, you say?

Still, it’s the odd placement in the Times that intrigues me.  It seems that the story’s author, Michael Kimmelman, is a culture columnist — viewing his recent columns, he’s usually working with a focus on Culture as Culcha, the kind where you go listen to opera and stuff like that.  This time, though, it’s about cultures clashing:

It’s about culture in the end. In its escalating dysfunction Belgium demonstrates the inextricable link between culture and nationhood. As acting mayor Mr. Thiéry presides over tense meetings at which nationalists from out of town listen to hear if he utters a word in French instead of Flemish, as the various Dutch dialects of Flanders are known. If so, he said, all council decisions can be annulled, and he can be replaced as mayor by someone the Flemish choose.

I am reminded of Napoleon, in Woody Allen’s Love and Death, speaking about the critical importance of finishing the recipe for the pastry to be known as the ‘Napoleon’ before his arch-enemy, the Duke of Wellington, can create his own culinary masterpiece, Beef Wellington: “the future of Europe hangs in the balance.”  Yeah, kinda like today with those Flemings, doncha think?  Oy; I should have so much time, energy and money to waste being stupid.

Yet another start-up taking a shot at search, Cuil.com, launches today.  Taking the Irish word for ‘wisdom’ as its name, and pronounced ‘cool,’ Cuil’s management (former Googlers all) tells the Los Angeles Times that they’re taking the high road:

The Menlo Park start-up behind the website isn’t trying to be a Google killer — it’s trying to reinvent search, says Anna Patterson, president and co-founder of Cuil.

She’s an ex-Googler, the architect of the Web giant’s TeraGoogle search index that launched in 2006. She joined Google in 2004 after her work on Recall, then the largest search engine with 12 billion pages, which she began programming during a difficult pregnancy. That feat spurred a bidding war among search engines for her services. (Note to moms: Microsoft does not allow breast-feeding in its lobby.)

As exciting as her three years at Google were, Patterson said she soon discovered she was an entrepreneur at heart.

The computer science Ph.D. and mother of four says search engines cannot keep up with the explosive growth of the Internet nor with the needs of users who too often get frustrated sifting through too many random results. Cuil says it has come up with a search engine that indexes 120 billion Web pages, ranks results by relevance instead of popularity, organizes the results by ideas and protects the privacy of its users.

Okay, so I’ll leave aside the easy shot at Microsoft.  But rankings by relevance?  And by ideas?  And they protect my privacy?  Maybe they are Google-killers.

… in today’s Los Angeles Times under the headline, “Michael Chabon is serious about genre.”  Oddly enough, the article claims to be “about [Chabon’s] crusade to save comics, science fiction, fantasy, horror and detective fiction from condescension,” yet it’s included in a series of Calendar section articles gathered under the less than uplifting category, “Shameless Pleasures.”  Ah, well, what can one expect from the MSM these days?

Chabon’s defense of genre comes through strongly.  On Cormac McCarthy’s science fiction work, The Road:

I thought it was an excellent novel. The least interesting thing to me as a reader was that it was science fiction. It presented a very pure example of post-apocalyptic literature, pared down to the essentials of a post-apocalyptic vision. But it’s nothing that anybody reading science fiction over the last 60 or 70 years hasn’t seen done many, many times before — maybe not by writers of McCarthy’s caliber.

In terms of the vision it was presenting, it was notable only for the intense, McCarthy severity.

In fact, I responded to it much more as a work of horror fiction. But the response you saw out there generally was the sort of oh-my-God isn’t this incredible, Cormac McCarthy has written a science fiction novel! Sometimes a little bit of a panic sets in, where critics aren’t sure what to do about it or say about it.

We’ll have to bring him down to campus some time…

I’m thinking no two Comic-Cons are the same, because none of us walk the same routes or stumble into the same booths and play-things.  But I’m ready to seek the six, got my secret code to play Freaky Creatures, am totally psyched about Twilight, and just so ready for Trick ‘r Treat that I’m planning to ask director Mike Dougherty if they’ll do a benefit screening for Clarion when the movie comes out in October — but as I do a little Googling maybe rethinking that on the fly, omigod, reading about the movie I’m not so sure it’s the kind of thing you want to show donors…  And oh, did I mention My Name is Bruce, the Bruce Campbell movie headed for limited release in the fall and DVD in 2009?  Maybe that would be a good benefit screening; still a horror movie, but not psycho-violent, and I’d bet we could get Bruce to drive on down to San Diego (probably in a 20-year-old Lincoln or some such) to do a panel discussion.  At least, I like to think of him in a 20-year-old Lincoln…

Anyway, to keep track of the Hollywood side of Comic-Con, I’d watch the IMDB Comic-Con page.  Me, I’m in it for the books. 

Two fun sightings today: Nancy Holder, Clarion Board member, giving away free books, and Traci Castleberry, Clarion 2005 alumna, hanging out.  Traci and I walked the floor for a while; I pointed X-Men #10 to her, the first one I could remember reading when it was on the shelves.  It’s a $250 comic these days; 12 cents when I first bought it.  Ah, how time flies.  Back tomorrow, for a lunch with Eric Nylund, yet another Clarion alum of much repute!  It’s so cool walking the floor as the Ambassador of Clarion — wait! do they have a costume for that?

Oh — forgot to mention.  Saw Will Wright’s Spore presentation.  Indescribably spectacular game concept and game space.  Indescribably. 

As Comic-Con rolls into town with tonight’s pre-event, I thought I’d get a few items out of the way before they get lost in the Comic-Con craziness.  I’ll be down at the Convention Center tomorrow and Friday, and already have one meeting scheduled with a Clarion alum, so I’ll have a few comments on the show.  In the meantime, though:

• The 2009 Eaton Conference has been announced, focusing on “Extraordinary Voyages: Jules Verne and Beyond” in collaboration with the North American Jules Verne Society.  “Long before the invention of aircraft, automobiles and submarines, 19th century author Jules Verne described those modes of transportation in dozens of novels and short stories. The author of those tales of extraordinary voyages will be the focus of the 2009 Eaton Science Fiction Conference, scheduled May 1-3 at the University of California, Riverside.”  Abstracts for proposed presentations can be submitted as described at the conference press release, and there will once again be a short story competition open to any undergraduate or graduate student in the UC system.  Keep an eye out for more detail at the conference’s very cool website.
• Just so you can get a little ahead of the Comic-Con crowds, check out this post from Patrick Neilsen Hayden on the free e-books available at Tor.com, the new website that Tor is launching at the Con.  (See the official press release.)  Patrick and his colleague Liz Gorinsky stopped by the Workshop today to talk to the Clarion students, something I’m pretty sure they also did last year.  Nice timing, having the Workshop halfway done when Comic-Con rolls in.  I should also note here, that just as they did last year, the Comic-Con folks comped a one-day pass to the Con for all the students; the ones who aren’t still feverishly writing will be wandering the halls on Saturday.
• In case you missed it, check out this killer story in the New York Times on Sunday about the reissue of one of Michael Moorcock’s first Elric novels.  It includes a wonderful summary of Moorcock’s “one-man stand” against reactionary politics in the genre.  In addition to the fact that any science fiction or fantasy review that calls the author ‘Nietzschean’ is definitely worth reading, it includes hilarious sentences like this one: “Through Elric’s incipient adventures, as he contends with villains whose names suggest the sounds H. P. Lovecraft made when he cleared his throat — the sorcerer Theleb K’aarna, Queen Yishana of Jharkor, a monster called Quaolnargn — the morality of these stories is rarely more sophisticated than your average heavy-metal album cover.”
• And last but not least for now, for those of you wondering about the insides of the Workshop, a current student’s blog indicates that its most important feature is sleep deprivation — perhaps someone should tell the military?  No, just kidding!  His latest post in the Clarion 2008 series discusses the “splendid theatrical performance” by UCSD alum David Brin.  I’m not sure if Damien is riffing on David’s own presentation style, but his description of “two pieces of advice” that David provided turn out to be three, which I for one find highly reminiscent of every performance by Dr. Brin that I’ve ever seen. 

If you’ve gotten your copy of the New Yorker with the highly controversial Barack Obama cover, make sure to check out “Yurt,” the story by Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum, Associate Professor of Literature here at UC San Diego.  Sarah is director of our Creative Writing program, and best known for her novel, Madeleine is Sleeping, a finalist for the 2004 National Book Award.

The story is excerpted from Sarah’s next book, Ms. Hempel Chronicles, which will be out in the fall — it’s available for pre-publication ordering at all your favorite booksellers, including my personal favorite, Mysterious Galaxy.  In the meantime, check out Sarah’s UCSD homepage for background on her career.

 P.S.  This isn’t really a Clarion post, I suppose, but hey, every once in a while I like to pitch my peeps.