Day: May 29, 2009

Friday various

  • I’m all for celebrating the positive in science fiction and fantasy, and on paper the Science Fiction and Fantasy Ethics Group (or SFFE, or whatever they’ve changed their name to) sounds like an interesting idea. But it’s that word “ethics” that I keep coming back to, that keeps bugging me. As many commenters have pointed out, it suggests that anything dystopian or pessimistic is unethical, or that there’s something inherently more ethical in stories with a sunny disposition, and I think that’s a dangerous line of thinking.
  • Meanwhile, Harlan Ellison turns down hometown prize. I don’t think it’s quite the fraud and sham he calls it — Ellison isn’t known for his restraint or tact — but it does sound pretty rinky-dink. I’m not sure I blame him. [via]
  • You had me at “rogue NASA interns.” The untold story of how they stole millions of dollars in moon rocks. [via]
  • Maybe they ought to send them to the moon for clean-up patrol. Apparently that place is filthy. [via]
  • And David Tennant is quitting Doctor Who, right?

That’s one way of putting it

Guillermo del Toro:

Hollywood thinks art is like Latin in the Middle Ages—only a few should know it, only a few should speak it. I don’t think so.

The rest of the interview is also pretty interesting — I like how he concedes, “the fact that I have a simulacrum of a career is a wonder,” as well as this bit:

It comes from my first trip to New York as a child. I was walking around Central Park, and I saw one of these expensive apartment buildings. At the top was a Gothic tower, and I said to my mother, “A vampire lives there.” I wasn’t being metaphorical. Then we went into the subway and—wow! For a guy from Guadalajara, the subway is mythical. The underground of the city is like what’s underground in people. Beneath the surface, it’s boiling with monsters.

Via SF Signal.

Random 10 5/29

Last week. This week:

  1. “My Beautiful Enemy” by Dar Williams
    Hail to your vast hegemony
  2. “Coldest Winter” by Kanye West
    On lonely nights I start to fade
  3. “Wiggley Fingers” by Patty Griffin
    And who in the hell is gonna be your savior now
  4. “Sever” by Fever Ray
    We talk about love, we talk about dishwasher tablets
  5. “Ring Them Bells” by Sufijan Stevens (orig. Bob Dylan)
    And time is running backwards, and so is the bride
  6. “Valentine Moon” by Jools Holland & His Rhythm & Blues Orchestra (feat. Sam Brown)
    Cette fois que tu m’embrasse, au bout de notre rue
  7. “Derelict” by Beck
    I’m spinning round like a gambling wheel
  8. “The Democratic Circus” by Talking Heads
    They drive in Cadillacs, using walkie-talkies and the Secret Service
  9. “Undun” by the Guess Who, guessed by Thud
    She didn’t know what she was headed for
  10. “To the Teeth” by Ani DiFranco
    Yeah, Malcolm forecasted this flood

Good luck!