Category: science fiction

OF BEES AND MEN – a new beginning

the hunger of none

It was said that bees were vanishing without a trace. That in a world without bees humans would die and go hungry. That was mostly true. As it turned out only half a billion people died, the majority due to individual panic and national outbreaks of egotism. What no one spoke of was the diminished variety of plant life as a result of lack of pollination. And before science could come up with global solutions, un-pollinated plant life outside of manual and mechanical pollination efforts could feed no insects craving sugars of flowers, and no insects could feed no birds, and no birds no bigger birds and no bird droppings and bird carcasses and eggs feeding no insects and worms and carnivores on the ground, feeding no larger carnivores and other herbivores living off of the ground, and slowly, but securely every bit of land outside of manageable crop areas became devoid of animal life, which either struggled unfairly with humans for a brief while, or just gave up and died out. Nobody thought so much could predictably become lost. But no one, possibly due to all predictions being borne out of statistics, absolutely no one predicted the loss of nature’s beauty. Within ten years children were being borne, who never sang a ladybird up to negotiate for sunny weather; there were no longer any ladybirds. And these children as well as everyone else knew only of birds in cages. And foxes in stories and cougars and beavers and badgers and deer stuffed and in zoos here and there, their population diminishing as there were no new ones in open nature to replace those injured or dying of old age, or those born dead or malformed.

People learned. Fast – but too late in the general sense of the word. In a scant few years Nature lost the majority of the spectrum of colors. And where before birds and insects would break the monotony of a walk, now all forests of the world were quiet. Not a sound besides the wind. And even that could not dispel the planet’s largest and most ominous ghost that true nature had become. Soon normal people dared not enter the woods, even during the day. Artificial housing, of which there were many at first, circling crops without need of pollination, became the sanctuary’s and the remains of humanity. And slowly the forests and the plains and the mountains were forgotten and became as they were thought of: Wastelands, where only imaginary beasts and fears hunted, and to catch those sensitive enough for such speculation.

This was the new time of creation. In the minds of men and transported into the empty lands by those craving sensations and fear and the rush of a challenge, and the rest of the satiated had no marks to leave. In the wilderness new life in new forms and shapes came into the world that were partly human, part… other things; mostly of darkness.

This story intends to deal mostly with those of light, against heavy odds it will seek them out and measure their value.

Wasn’t that, what beauty was for? Comparison?

PROSA, 1 side, 2 slutninger, “Da det stod klart,” (#sciencefiction_dk)

Hvilken slutning er mest science fiction? Hvilken er mest skræmmende?

 

Science Fiction i 2012

[klik på et af billederne og læs teksten med én af de to slutninger]

Hvilken slutning =

Mest skræmmende? [mail] Mest science fiction? [mail]

Den ene ender sådan: Fuck, hvad var dét?!  Den anden sådan: Fuck, hvad var dé…

venlig hilsen,

Kenneth Krabat, 21. marts 2012

støtte kr. 7,67
[alle kreditkort, undtagen danKort)

Philip K. Dick: What science fiction is, and is not.

The true protagonist of an sf story or novel is an idea.

Preface to The Short Happy Life of the Brown Oxford and Other Stories
By Philip K. Dick

I will define science fiction, first, by saying what sf is not. It cannot be defined as

“a story (or novel or play) set in the future,” since there exists such a thing as space adventure, which is set in the future but is not sf: it is just that: adventures, fights and wars in the future in space involving super-advanced technology. Why, then, is it not science fiction? It would seem to be, and Doris Lessing (e.g.) supposes that it is.

However, space adventure lacks the distinct new idea that is the essential ingredient.

Also, there can be science fiction set in the present: the alternate world story or novel. So if we separate sf from the future and also from ultra-advanced technology, what then do we have that can be called sf?

We have a fictitious world; that is the first step: it is a society that does not in fact exist, but is predicated on our known society; that is, our known society acts as a jumping-off point for it; the society advances out of our own in some way, perhaps orthogonally, as with the alternate world story or novel. It is our world dislocated by some kind of mental effort on the part of the author, our world transformed into that which it is not or not yet. This world must differ from the given in at least one way, and this one way must be sufficient to give rise to events that could not occur in our society — or in any known society present or past. There must be a coherent idea involved in this dislocation; that is, the dislocation must be a conceptual one, not merely a trivial or bizarre one — this is the essence of science fiction, the conceptual dislocation within the society so that as a result a new society is generated in the author’s mind, transferred to paper, and from paper it occurs as a convulsive shock in the reader’s mind, the shock of dysrecognition. He knows that it is not his actual world that he is reading about.

Now, to separate science fiction from fantasy. This is impossible to do, and a moment’s thought will show why. Take psionics; take mutants such as we find in Ted Sturgeon’s wonderful MORE THAN HUMAN. If the reader believes that such mutants could exist, then he will view Sturgeon’s novel as science fiction. If, however, he believes that such mutants are, like wizards and dragons, not possible, nor will ever be possible, then he is reading a fantasy novel. Fantasy involves that which general opinion regards as impossible; science fiction involves that which general opinion regards as possible under the right circumstances. This is in essence a judgment-call, since what is possible and what is not possible is not objectively known but is, rather, a subjective belief on the part of the author and of the reader.

Now to define good science fiction. The conceptual dislocation — the new idea, in other words — must be truly new (or a new variation on an old one) and it must be intellectually stimulating to the reader; it must invade his mind and wake it up to the possibility of something he had not up to then thought of. Thus “good science fiction” is a value term, not an objective thing, and yet, I think, there really is such a thing, objectively, as good science fiction.

I think Dr. Willis McNelly at the California State University at Fullerton put it best when he said that the true protagonist of an sf story or novel is an idea and not a person. If it is good sf the idea is new, it is stimulating, and, probably most important of all, it sets off a chain-reaction of ramification-ideas in the mind of the reader; it so-to-speak unlocks the reader’s mind so that that mind, like the author’s, begins to create. Thus sf is creative and it inspires creativity, which mainstream fiction by-and-large does not do. We who read sf (I am speaking as a reader now, not a writer) read it because we love to experience this chain-reaction of ideas being set off in our minds by something we read, something with a new idea in it; hence the very best science fiction ultimately winds up being a collaboration between author and reader, in which both create — and enjoy doing it: joy is the essential and final ingredient of science fiction, the joy of discovery of newness.

(in a letter) May 14,1981

Fahrenheit 451 udgivet som ebog…

Ved hvilken temperatur brænder en iPad eller en Kindle?

 

Ray Bradbury er kendt for at afsky ebøger. Ved genforhandling af sine bogkontrakter lykkedes det Simon & Schuster at få hans tilladelse til at udgive Fahrenheit 451 som ebog. Deres argumentet lød: “20% af alle udgivelser er ebøger”.

Fahrenheit 451 (1953) er fortællingen om overvågningssamfundet, som jagter og brænder alle bøger, fordi effekten af den indeholdte erfaring og viden ikke kan kontrolleres af myndighederne.

På dansk kom den til at hedde “233 grader Celcius”. Strengt taget korrekt, men ikke just Ikonisk!

Fra et interview med Jonathan R. Eller, med-skaber og leder af The Center for Ray Bradbury Studies:

Jonathan R. Eller: Are E-books the future of reading?

Ray Bradbury: Absolutely not. Three different groups have called me during the last three weeks. I had another offer last week from a big company back East. But my response was, “Prick up your ears, and go to hell.” That was my response.

JE: So they will not replace the book?

RB: They don’t smell good. Books have two smells—a new book smell is very good, but an old book smell is even better. It smells like ancient Egyptian dust. That’s why I think the book is important.
…
JE: Do you think E-books will affect censorship and the banning of controversial books? Do you think they’ll try to censor E-books, or do you think E-books will help do away with censorship?

RB: There is no censorship. There’s no censorship in this country. In China, yes.

[Læs hele interviewet på engelsk hér]

—

Ray Bradbury er 91 i dag. Og kendt for kontroversielle holdninger i forhold til mange ting. Ikke at ordet “kontroversiel” betyder at være på forkant. I Bradburys tilfælde betyder det, at han er blevet hængende i fortiden.

F.eks. romantiserer han børn og børns evner og videbegær i en grad, der kun kan ses som en egen længsel efter uskyldighedens opdagelse af verden. “Man behøver ikke undervise børn efter 6-års-alderen. Man kan bare slippe dem løs i et bibliotek”. Men denne romantiske forestilling er samtidig et drivende element i især hans tidlige bøger, som gør ham til en væsentlig fortæller. Læs f.eks. “Something wicked this way comes”.

Når han derimod siger, at Internettet er en stor distraktion, han han fat i noget. Hvor mange af os bruger ikke flere timer dagligt på at tale med mennesker, vi aldrig hverken ser eller hører? Dét er vilkårene, når vi har muligheden for at fravælge fysisk kontakt til naboen. Og gør det.

Ray Bradbury bor i Los Angeles, har skrevet mere end 500 noveller, romaner og skuespil – og faktisk en science fiction-digtsamling, jeg engang har holdt i hånden! – vundet en Emmy for et filmmanuskript over “The Halloween Tree”, og 2007 fået en Pulitzer for sin fremragende karriere.

Han er en af mine yndlingsforfattere.

(Papir brænder altså ved 450 grader Celcius, Ray. ikke Fahrenheit.)

 

http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/70bf2e4f05/fuck-me-ray-bradbury

Indkaldelse til SFC “Lige under overfladen, 6”

I dag har du fire måneder til det. Det burde kunne nås.

 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Hvis man ikke ved det, står SFC for “Science Fiction Cirklen”, og indkaldelsen dækker over en invitation til at kæmpe på lige fod med alle tilsendere om en plads i næste udgave af Science Fiction-antologien “Lige under overfladen”, som i 2012 er planlagt til udgivelse omkring oktober.

Såfremt der kommer nok lødige bidrag.

Dét må DU så sørge for. Og jeg skal nok også forsøge.

Klikker du på linket, får du instrukser i tilsendt dokumentformat, antal ord og deslige.

Science Fiction Cirklen – Lige under overfladen 6.

Omtale: Sky City (ed. by Carl-Eddy Skovgaard)

Endnu en omtale.
Desværre mere om Bogen end om Indholdet.

 

Sky City edited by Carl-Eddy Skovgaard.

This is another worthy volume of SF gathered away from the beaten track from Denmark’s Science Fiction Cirklen. Their previous collection I reviewed a few years ago (Creatures of Glass and Light) that sprang out of Denmark hosting that year’s Eurocon (European SF Convention) and was an anthology of European SF short stories. Now (2011) SF Cirklen have given us a window into Denmark’s own contemporary science fiction short story scene and as such will be sought by those who are die-hard serious SF reader with a passion for the genre.

The volume includes a short, non-fiction article by Niels Dalgaard that presents a summary of the history of Danish SF which itself will be of interest to those non-Danes with both a casual passing interest in SF beyond their own country as well as those whose study of the genre is more scholarly.

First though a word about the book’s publication details as these are not as clear as they might be. My understanding, and I checked with the publisher for this review, is that this volume first came out in 2010 printed in Danish with an ISBN 978-8-790-59248-6 and these are the details given on the inside front (copyright) masthead page of this English language volume. However this English volume came out in 2011 and (according to the accompanying press release) has a different ISBN 978-8-771-14158-0 (which is not the one on the masthead or back cover bar code). Now, I mention this not only because those who send us review copies like us to get the publication details right, but also because we are aware that the SF2 Concatenation site is occasionally used by those studying the genre for arts courses, as well as because you may want to buy a copy, and the last thing you will want (if you do not speak Danish) is the original edition as opposed to the 2011 edition in English. Translation volumes are a nightmare to produce and in this case we are told that another publisher (effectively acting as producer and distributor) took over the printing and much of the distribution with SF Cirklen doing the commissioning and copy editing. The good news is that this other publisher (BoD) provides print-on-demand copies in Great Britain, Germany, Canada and the US. Hopefully that explains everything, so let’s move on…

This book came about as part of a very laudable goal of the Danes wishing the rest of us to have a taster of what they were producing. SF Cirklen does, and has for each of the three years up to and including 2010, ran an annual short story competition with the best getting published in a paperback anthology. The first two of these anthologies were called Leige Under Overfladen [Beneath Surface] (2007) and I Overfladen [The Surface] (2008) and the stories in Sky City (2010/2011) are taken and translated from these two earlier anthologies.

Before getting on to the stories, potential readers will want to know about the quality of translation. Translation between languages is extremely difficult. Professional translators are expensive; so much so that even major fiction publishing houses in developed markets, such as Britain’s, do not always use the professionals. Furthermore, it is nearly always (but not absolutely always) best to use a translator whose first language is the language into which the translation is being made. Failing to follow these two general rules of thumb can result in trouble. Indeed a number of SF translations of non-Anglophone fiction into English that I have come across from various countries in my time have been truly horrible: one country is particularly bad and I have yet to come across an SF anthology (having tried to read four) from that nation that is not so awful that the stories are impenetrable. So it was a little worrying when before reading Sky City I noticed that the translations were undertaken by different Danes. Having said that, I was hugely relieved to find that all the stories were translated into quite a readable standard of English with only the occasional awkward use of phrase or opaque sentence: Science Fiction Cirklen is to be commended. In fact the only thing that leaps out at you is the non-standard (non-Anglophone) use of speech inverted commas but this the reader can easily ignore. Less prominent is that the anthology is written in a mix of English and non-English North American, and sometimes both English and American English are used in the same story: someone at SF Cirklen needed to set their PC Word.doc program language to one or the other (English as written in England as part of Europe would probably have been the more appropriate). However this last is a minor point. For the most part the quality of translation is sufficiently good for readers to follow, and indeed enjoy, the stories on offer.

As for the stories themselves, I was personally pleased that they were all science fiction and not fantasy that does seem to dominate a lot of Eastern European speculative fiction and even sneak into some major annual US anthologies that purport to be SF. (Logical genre nomenclature determines that fantasy and science fiction are sub-genres of speculative fiction: fantasy, though worthy, is not a logical sub-genre of science fiction even though some consider it to be so and, of course, not withstanding the fantasy-science fiction overlap of science fantasy where the fantasy (such as a super alien from planet Krypton) has its rationale explained in completely fake science (the alien gets his powers from our yellow sun).)   Sky City’s stories are firmly science fiction.)

As for the stories themselves, as would be expected, they use a range of the genre’s established tropes. Here is a brief teaser run-through without spoilers:-

Sky City by Manfred Christiansen. A woman wakes up in a tall skyscraper built by nanobots. Do they want something with her? This is the title story for the volume and sets the anthologies tone.

Departure by Niels Gerloff. A research team on Europa prepares to boldly go…

The White Bear by Richard Ipsen. A tale set in a future China.

Helium Loves Company by Glen Stihmoe. In a post apocalyptic world half destroyed by nanotechnology run rampant, an engineered team explores the desolation to encounter… Helium Loves Company is an interesting tale.

The Last Astronaut by Flemming Rasch. An astronaut lands on a distant planet after a journey of hundreds years. The next day another ship lands and a fourth generation descendent of the first astronaut steps out…

The Organism on Maneo by Morten Brunbjerg. On a spaceship a crew member discovers an unusual creature…

The Tourist by Patrick Leis. A military officer is questioned as to why he authorised an attack in a civilian area of his own country. The motive is obscure and further investigation leads to the unbelievable…

Know Your Target Audience by Dan Mygind. A new way of getting audience feedback help tailor programme makers’ efforts which in turn feedback to the audience. But the result is not quite as expected.

The Red Parakeets by Camilla Wandahal. Future genetic engineering is not just controversial, it splits society…

The Short Arm of History by Kenneth Krabat. They were queuing up to enter the portal to who-knows-where… This story is vaguely (only ‘vaguely’) reminiscent of Pohl’s novel Gateway (1977), and there is nothing wrong with that as you should not keep a good SFnal idea down and this variation of the theme is an interesting one.

A Contribution to the History of Denmark by Soren Hemmingsen. In 1961 an expedition to Lapland in search of minerals found the tail of a frozen dinosaur… This is the story of the days that followed.

When the Music’s Over by A. Silvestri. A spaceship lands in Central Park. What do they want..? Now without wishing to introduce a spoiler, I was surprised at the aliens distain for the character Captain James T. Kirk. After all this is a Danish anthology and Denmark is famous for its bacon, whereas William Shatner is known for his ham… (Groan now if you will.)

The E-Puzzle by Nikolaj Hojberg. In the far future questions of soul and death will be answered, but then how will we deal with mortality and, as important, how might we cope with the afterlife?

Leeding, Feeding by Miriam Pederson. An alien dissection, but ultimately who is studying whom?

You are my Best Friend by Camilla Friis. We all need friends. But what are friends?

Dreams of Stone by Brian Ornbol. The city was big. I mean really big. You may have thought it a long way down to the chemist but the city really was big… Now this tale is very reminiscent of one I first read back in the 1970s (when Brian Ornbol was just beginning to go to school) and I am sure I have read it a couple of times since in different anthologies (it was a good story), but for the life of me I cannot recall where but the followers of SF Signal tell me it could be ‘Concentration City’ by J.G. Ballard). Nonetheless, as with ‘The Short Arm of History’ above, a good idea can always be revisited, and maybe it was Brian Ornbol’s first encounter with this idea.

(Han fokuserer på teknologien, der kunne minde om Gateway, og ikke på, hvad historien egentlig handler om. Titlen, ikke? Historiens korte arm. KK)

The Green Jacket by Gudrun Ostergaard. Thirteen year old Ivara has more than everything she can want but has not seen the world beyond her tower city. So she decides to have a look.

In the Surface by Sara Tanderup. A tale set in a future where the sea covers the planet.

Interrogation of Victim No. 5 by Lars Ahn Pedersen. The patient is questioned as to what happened to her… and then the patient realises…   This story is one of the best in the anthology and was a good note on which to end.

To be honest, none of the stories would likely to be professionally published in the west as they are presented here. Nearly all of the writing could be tightened; in a short story every paragraph has to work propelling the story along and some of these stories were way to long. Story endings also need thought; a good central plot is not sufficient by itself as the reader needs to be given a sense of completion if not story fulfilment. Having said that, a few with minor tidying and a clean up of the English, would not be out of place in a professionally published anthology. Very encouraging is that some of the authors are young: in their 20s or 30s. This is good news for Danish SF and it will be interesting to see if any in the future make professional sales in Britain (or North America). Science Fiction Cirklen is to be congratulated for enabling those of us outside of Denmark to get a taster of what those Danes are up to these days.

Jonathan Cowie

—

We also have much else in our autumnal edition (volume 25, No 5)
http://www.concatenation.org/whatsnew.html

Including a big news page
http://www.concatenation.org/newsindex.html

which also has much Eurocon news 
http://www.concatenation.org/news/news9~11.html#eurocon11

There is also a separate, stand-alone review of Scandinavia’s Eurocon this summer
http://www.concatenation.org/conrev/eurocon11.html

“Anything you can do to spread the word  and links of this edition to appropriate Scandinavian blogs and SF news sites would be very welcome.” JC

Lige Under Overfladen 5 – Den nye koloni

Så kommer årets Science Fiction-antologi!

 

Titel: Den nye koloni – Lige under overfladen 5
Omslag: Manfred Christiansen
Udgivelsesdag: i morgen, 15. August
Sider: 325 sider,
Pris: 298,- kr. (238,40 for medlemmer af Science Fiction Cirklen).

LEKTØRUDTALELSE (link)

Den nye koloni er femte bog i Science Fiction Cirklens novelleserie, Lige under overfladen.

 

Herunder er de udvalgte noveller: Continue reading “Lige Under Overfladen 5 – Den nye koloni”