Category: Critical Mass

Marvel’s new What If…? animated series takes us back to the beginning with a rewrite of Captain America: The First Avenger. In this version, it’s Peggy Carter who takes up the Mighty Shield—and the shield has a Union Flag on it.

I have to say I think this is the most pure fun I’ve had watching any of the Disney Marvel series so far?

— The Sheer Bloody Fun of What If…? “Captain Carter Were The First Avenger” by Leah Schnelbach at tor.com

The novel is usually regarded as a realist art form, and I’d go even further: By telling the stories we use to understand our lives, the novel helps create our reality. In novels, things go wrong—that’s plot. People then cope. That’s realism.

Utopia, on the other hand, is famously “no place,” an idealized society sometimes described right down to its sewage system. In utopia, everything works well—maybe even perfectly, but for sure better than things work now. So utopias are like blueprints, while novels are like soap operas. Crossing these two genres gets you the hybrid called the utopian novel: soap operas put in a blender with architectural blueprints. It doesn’t sound all that promising.

Then came Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed. Published in 1975, this was the first great utopian novel, and it demonstrated just how good the poor, misbegotten hybrid can be. Of course, there’d been earlier utopian novels, like William Morris’s News From Nowhere, or H.G. Wells’s A Modern Utopia, or Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Herland, or Aldous Huxley’s Island. These were all interesting efforts. But Le Guin’s book was a triumph. What she showed is that by describing a utopian society in a moment of historic danger, you create for it all kinds of problems that its characters must solve. It will get attacked from the outside, corrupted from the inside; things will go wrong, and so you have your plot. Le Guin combined an intriguing utopia with a compelling novel, and the result was superb. The people on her habitable moon, Annares, have formed an alternative society to the imperial capitalist world, Urras. They devised a system that is feminist for sure and either democratic socialist or anarcho-syndicalist, but in any case in a state of flux, its people doing everything they can to keep what’s best about their system while also fending off impositions from the home world. It’s political fiction at its best.

— “The Novel Solutions of Utopian Fiction,” Kim Stanley Robinson, The Nation, Aug 2nd

As was mentioned at the last Critical Mass, fanac.org have a channel at youtube.com.
One of the interesting items was a slideshow from the 1964 Worldcon, featuring Fritz Leiber
talking about Monsters and Monster Lovers.

The 2021 Cattitude Bundle, curated by Kristine Kathryn Rusch:

Cats. The internet loves them because we love them. We love cats in all their incarnations—playful, magical, irritating, and yes, occasionally evil. This StoryBundle explores the range of cats and cat behaviors as well. From the familiars to winged space cats, from cats who facilitate romance to cats who rescue others, every type of cat appears in this StoryBundle. Perfect for a day at the beach (without a cat) or at home in the AC (with cats nearby).

There are 10 books (four StoryBundle exclusives!) in the bundle :

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More details at StoryBundle — Note: available until 18th August

The shortlist for the 35th Arthur C. Clarke Award has been announced:

• The Infinite , Patience Agbabi (Canongate)
• The Vanished Birds, Simon Jimenez (Titan)
• Vagabonds, Hao Jingfang (Head of Zeus)
• Edge of Heaven, R.B. Kelly (NewCon)
• The Animals in that Country, Laura Jean McKay (Scribe)
• Chilling Effect,  Valerie Valdes (Orbit)

The 2021 judges are Phoenix Alexander, Nicole Devarenne, Stewart Hotston, Nick Hubble, and Alasdair Stuart, with Andrew M. Butler serving as the non-voting Chair of the Judges. The shortlist was selected from 105 titles submitted by 41 individual UK publishing imprints and independent authors. The winner will be announced in an award ceremony in September. For more information, see the Clarke Award website. (with thanks to Locus).

The August meeting will be by Zoom.

Nova Mob: 4th August 2021: Charles Taylor on Fritz Leiber

Nova Mob by Zoom only

Aug 4, 2021 8:00pm Canberra, Melbourne, Sydney; 7:30pm Adelaide

Zoom access available after 7pm Adelaide and will close at 9.15pm Adelaide to allow for chat

Join Zoom Meeting

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/4177583193?pwd=VjdPL1BhSTBNclN2YnRsejN3Y1hlUT09

Meeting ID: 417 758 3193

Passcode: nova

Murray notes:

💥 💥 💥

FRITZ LEIBER 

Well known for his Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser stories, and for inventing the term “sword and sorcery”. 

His awards and honours speak for themselves: 

·         Guest of honour at World Science Fiction Convention, 1951, 1979;

·         Hugo Award, World Science Fiction Convention, for best novel, 1958, for The Big Time, and 1965, for The Wanderer, for best novelette, 1968, for “Gonna Roll the Bones,” for best novella, 1970, for “Ship of Shadows,” and 1971, for “Ill Met in Lankhmar,” and for best short story, 1975, for “Catch That Zeppelin”;

·         Nebula Award, Science Fiction Writers of America, for best novelette, 1968, for “Gonna Roll the Bones,” for best novella, 1971, for “Ill Met in Lankhmar,” for best short story, 1975, for “Catch That Zeppelin,” and Grand Master, 1981, for lifetime contribution to the genre;

·         Ann Radcliffe Award, Count Dracula Society, 1970;

·         Gandalf Award, World Science Fiction Convention, 1975;

·         August Derleth Fantasy Award, 1976, for “Belsen Express”;

·         World Fantasy Award, World Fantasy Convention, for best short fiction, 1976, for “Belsen Express,” and for best novel, 1978, for Our Lady of Darkness;

·         World Fantasy Life Award, World Fantasy Convention, 1976, for life achievement;

·         Locus Award, best collection, 1986, for The Ghost Light;

·         Bram Stoker Lifetime Achievement Award, 1988.