Author Archives: James Pyles

Reading about “Palestine + 100” (2019). Was This Really A Good Idea?

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Cover image for the science fiction anthology “Palestine + 100”

I found a link to the book review Palestine + 100′ Explores Contested Territory, Past And Future at Mike Glyer’s File 770 and was intrigued. Apparently, Palestine + 100:

…poses a question to twelve Palestinian writers: what might your country look like in the year 2048 – a century after the tragedies and trauma of what has come to be called the Nakba?

The reviewer, Amal El-Mohtar is the Hugo-award winning author of “The Honey Month” and writes the Otherworldly column for the New York Times Book Review according to the blurb on NPR. Among other things, she states:

The choice of subtitle — “stories from a century after the Nakba” — exemplifies this, drawing attention to the fact that for Palestinians (and many Israelis), May 15, 1948 is not a date to celebrate, but to grieve.

In case you didn’t know, May 15, 1948 was the date when Israel declared it’s independence from British rule and was established as a Jewish state.

The book hasn’t yet been reviewed at Amazon.co.uk, but received two favorable reviews on the U.S. site for Amazon.

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Film Review of “Solo, A Star Wars Story” (2018)

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Promotional image for the 2018 movie “Solo, A Star Wars Story”

So I finally got around to watching last year’s Star Wars story Solo starring Alden Ehrenreich in the title role, with Woody Harrelson, Emilia Clarke, and Donald Glover. To be honest, I’ve been avoiding it.

Actually, last February, when I wrote my commentary Jason Reitman and the new Ghostbusters: Respecting the Fans isn’t Misogynistic, I made the mistake of calling out critics of Reitman by tagging them on twitter. I also mentioned that I’d not only avoided the 2016 Ghostbusters remake, but had also never seen Solo for similar reasons.

I was immediately attacked, but fortunately being “small fry” on social media, the twitteratti just as quickly lost interest in me.

However, some of what they said stuck with me including how I probably shouldn’t judge a movie I’ve never seen. I’m still avoiding the Ghostbusters remake, but when I saw that Solo was available as a DVD at my local public library, I figured it wouldn’t cost me anything (except 135 minutes of my life) to watch it.

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One More Commentary on the Dragon Awards

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Image found at DragonCon.org

I’m new to the whole hype over awards for science fiction and fantasy, well, ever since last year when I learned about the controversy involving the Hugos and the so-called Sad Puppies and Rabid Puppies.

However, I’ve been paying attention to the Dragon Awards. Unlike most other awards of this type, anyone who has internet access can register for no cost and be able to vote for their favorite authors, books, television shows, and so forth (in other words we mere mortals). I even voted myself, but unlike others, the purpose of this blog post isn’t to share who I favored.

I discovered at least three other commentaries on the Dragons: File 770‘s Mike Glyer, Camestros Felapton‘s, an apparently associated blog which I’ve just started following, and Richard Paolinelli’s SciFiScribe.

They all had slightly different takes.

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Film Review of “Beneath the Planet of the Apes” (1970)

Promotional image for the 1970 movie “Beneath the Planet of the Apes” featuring James Franciscus and Linda Harrison

I’m a huge fan of the 1968 movie Planet of the Apes starring Charlton Heston, Kim Hunter, and Roddy McDowell. Unfortunately, my local branch of the public library doesn’t have the film available in DVD, so I’d have to request it from a different branch. It does have three copies of the 1970 sequel Beneath the Planet of the Apes starring James Franciscus and Kim Hunter. It’s a horrible movie.

Okay, good things first. James Franciscus is heroic as hell. He’s a great looking guy, especially with his shirt off. Interesting side note. In the film’s beginning, his character Brent is seen nursing his skipper (no name given but played by Tod Andrews) outside their crashed spaceship. The skipper dies subsequently after having been blinded in the accident. The following year, Franciscus starred in a television show called Longstreet. The title character is a blind insurance investigator in New Orleans. No, I’m not kidding.

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Tiptree Award Name May Change (Here We Go Again)

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Cover image from “Ten Thousand Light-Years from Home”

I read Alice Sheldon’s (pen name James Tiptree Jr) anthology of short stories Ten Thousand Light-Years from Home decades ago when I was a kid (all right, a young man) and recall thoroughly enjoying it. I’ve probably heard of the award named after her, but didn’t pay much attention until reading Mike Glyer’s pixel scroll this morning.

In this case, the award name may be changed due to a personal tragedy in Sheldon’s life. From Wikipedia:

Sheldon continued writing under the Tiptree pen name for another decade. The last years of her life were not happy ones, as her husband was a nearly blind invalid incapable of caring for himself, and she herself was suffering health issues caused by a lifetime of smoking. In 1976, then 60-year-old Sheldon wrote to a friend expressing her desire to end her own life while she was still able-bodied and active, but she was reluctant to act upon this intention, as Huntington would have no one to care for him, and she could not bring herself to kill him.

Eleven years later, on May 19, 1987, Sheldon finally carried through her plan—by shooting her husband in his sleep, followed by herself; she had telephoned her attorney after the first shooting to announce her actions. They were found dead, hand-in-hand in bed, in their Virginia home. According to biographer Julie Phillips, the suicide note Sheldon left was written years earlier and saved until needed. In an interview with Charles Platt in 1980, Sheldon spoke of her emotional problems and of her previous suicide attempts over the preceding 20 years.

The James Tiptree Jr. Award is given in her honor each year for a work of science fiction or fantasy that expands or explores our understanding of gender. The award-winning science fiction authors Karen Joy Fowler and Pat Murphy created the award in February 1991. Novels such as Half Life by Shelley Jackson and Light by M. John Harrison have received the award.

At least one person commenting on File 770 had compassion, but who knows how many other people judge without understanding what Sheldon may have been going through (I still read 770 but choose not to comment there because of how I was recently treated by some of its other readers).

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A Revelation on the Recent Passing of Brad Linaweaver

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Photo of the late author Brad Linaweaver. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License. Attribution: Caran Wilbanks

I’ll say this upfront, I had no idea who Mr. Linaweaver was before today, and I apologize if what I’ve written here is offensive to anyone. It’s not my intent. Here’s what happened.

I was catching up with posting’s on Mike Glyer’s File 770 SF fanzine when I came across an article called Brad Linaweaver (1952-2019). First of all, I’m chagrined to say that up until this writing, I had no idea who Linaweaver was and now it’s my mission to read his works. After all, I’m barely two years younger than he is, or rather was.

As I said above, I absolutely mean no disrespect upon him or his loved ones in writing this wee essay, but something Glyer wrote not only caught my attention, it seized it in an iron grip:

I met Brad long ago through other Libertarian fans and knew about his good sense of humor – he attended the satirical Hogu Ranquets organized at Worldcons by Elst Weinstein and John Novak. –emph. mine

I’m sorry, did Glyer just call himself a libertarian? Trust me, I’m amazed.

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The Hugo Award Will Not Be Renamed and Why Are All Conservatives (seemingly) Called Alt-Right?

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Author Anthony Gramuglia – found at Goodreads

I recently wrote three related blog posts: Jeannette Ng’s Campbell Award Acceptance Speech and Here We Go Again, Science Fiction, Opinions, and Why It’s Okay to Disagree, and especially The Sins of John W. Campbell Revisited. That last one started something of a minor storm in the comments section at File 770, Mike Glyer’s popular SciFi fanzine.

Although I’m still following that site, I haven’t commented there again since, what’s the use? Most people there ignored me (which is fine), one disagreed with me but was pretty civil about it, and two called me “dishonest” and “racist.” I ignored one and actually had to block the other on twitter since he looked me up just so he could continue to troll me.

File 770 does what they call Pixel Scrolls which I gather are collections of all the latest SF/F news, including noteworthy birthdays and such.

I slowed down when I saw a link to Steve Davidson’s article On Renaming Awards. I had previously mentioned that if John W. Campbell’s name was to be removed (and it has been), that perhaps all other awards named after people should be examined, just in case the person in question had a “difficult” past. I pulled Hugo Gernsback’s name out of a hat since the famed Hugo Award is named after him. Lo and behold, Davidson seems to have been thinking the same thing, but in his case, explained why Gernsback’s rather checkered past (in terms of his allegedly shady business dealings) won’t result in the Hugos being renamed.

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The Sins of John W. Campbell Revisited

Author Jeannette Ng – image found at the Angry Robot website

Just for giggles, I revisited the comments at File 770‘s article Storm Over Campbell Award. As you may recall from my own wee missive Jeannette Ng’s Campbell Award Acceptance Speech and Here We Go Again, Ms Ng, a fantasy writer based in the UK, was recently given the John W. Campbell award for best new writer, which she accepted, and then went on to point out Campbell’s terrific flaws, which included being a fascist.

There are now over 200 comments on Mike Glyer’s commentary on Ng and Campbell, and of course, they all damn Campbell, some even comparing him (more or less) to Mussolini. Further, one person said that anyone with even the tiniest hint of actually liking anything Campbell ever did is considered a fascist sympathizer. Really. I had heard of Campbell, but before this, I never had any idea about his political beliefs.

However, even according to Wikipedia, while he may or may not have been a fascist, he certainly was a racist.

His opinions go far beyond the occasional “joke in bad taste,” and many well known authors, including Michael Moorcock and Isaac Asimov, lambasted Campbell for his even then unpopular and heinous ideas.

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Review: “Shadows in Zamboula” by Robert E. Howard

 

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Cover of Weird Tales magazine 1935

Shadows in Zamboula is a classic Robert E. Howard tale of Conan the Barbarian. I read it to get my head in the right space for crafting a “Sword and Sorcery” short story, and I wasn’t disappointed. Howard’s Conan is the best version of the character ever, even after eighty or so years.

The tale was first published in 1935, and I accessed it as a free eBook through The Gutenberg Project (yes, the original cover of “Weird Tales” in which the story appeared is provocative by today’s standards).

Howard’s popular barbarian is lured into trouble once again by a beautiful woman, that is after being nearly captured and consumed by cannibals. His adversaries are black Africans (as we’d understand them today), and relative to the mid-1930s, the description of them might be considered racist (in the 21st century). That aside, the story is high adventure all the way. The swordplay is at its finest, and at the end, Conan outsmarts as well as outfights both his enemies and his supposed allies.

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Review: “The Dunwich Horror” by H.P. Lovecraft

I read The Dunwich Horror by H.P Lovecraft as inspiration for a story I have been crafting. I’ve read Lovecraft before, but that was decades ago, so I expected the unexpected from this expedition into his classic horror.

Since the story is old (1928) and beyond its copyright, I looked for it at The Gutenberg Project and found a file I could download onto my Kindle Fire. Books with expired U.S. copyrights can be optioned for absolutely free, so you don’t want to pass up this magnificent opportunity.

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