- Ugh. Next year, the Best Picture category for the Oscars will have 10 nominees. This sounds like a bad idea all around, but we’ll see in 2010.
- Product placement happens all the time, but what happens if the product you’re placing disappears before your movie rolls out?
Also back, if not for long, are the Autobots Ratchet (a Hummer H2) and Ironhide (a GMC TopKick pickup), which have suffered a fate more terminal, at least to the brand, than any meted out by the Decepticons: General Motors has sold Hummer and discontinued the TopKick. [NY Times: Invasion of the Robot Toys, Redux]
- Remember when MySpace was cool? Yeah, me neither. But it once was the hot property. Nowadays, not so much. [via]
- Well this is just terrifying: Great white sharks hunt just like Hannibal Lecter. [via]
- And finally, two quotes from an interview with Ursula K. Le Guin [via]:
This distinction makes most sense to me: Science fiction—and the correct shortcut is “sfâ€â€”uses actual scientific facts or theories for the source ideas or framework of the story. It has some scientific content, however speculative. If it breaks a law of physics, it knows it’s doing so and follows up the consequences. If it invents a society of aliens, it does so with some respect for and knowledge of the social sciences and what you might call social probabilities. And some of it is literarily self-aware enough to treat its metaphors as metaphors. “Space opera†is nice, but I’d call Star Wars sci-fi, because it’s what most people mean when they use the term. Sci-fi uses the images that sf—starting with H.G. Wells—made familiar: space travel, aliens, galactic wars and federations, time machines, et cetera, taking them literally, not caring if they are possible or even plausible. It has no interest in or relation to real science or technology. It’s fantasy in space suits. Spectacle. Wizards with lasers. Kids with ray guns. I’ve written both, but I have to say I respect science fiction enough that I wince when people call it sci-fi.
The rule is, you only invent what you have to. And that’s pretty much what’s right in front of the reader. Let’s say it’s an ansible. I do not, in fact, invent the ansible. I do not explain how it works. I cannot, but shhh. I simply present the device as working, and as coming from a society which is far in advance of ours in science and technology, having spaceships that can travel nearly as fast as light, et cetera. And this background or context creates expectation and softens up the readers’ credulity so that they’re willing to “believe in†the ansible—inside the covers of the book. After the ansible had been around for a while, I invented the man who invented it, Shevek, in The Dispossessed. And he and I played around with some pretty neat speculations about time and interval and stuff, which lent more plausibility to the gimmick itself. But all I really invented was a) the idea of an instantaneous transmitter and b) a name for it. The reader does the rest. If you give them enough background/context, they can fill in the gaps. It isn’t just smoke and mirrors. There has to be a coherent vision of how things hang together in that society/culture/world. All the details have to fit together and be thought through as to their implications. But, well… it’s mostly smoke and mirrors. What else is any fiction?
You know, I’ve been saying that Star Wars isn’t Science Fiction for years. I mean, come on. The young man is trained in swordplay by an old knight so he can rescue the princess from the dungeon? He fights the Black Knight, and has to kill the Evil Emperor? Star Wars is High Fantasy.