I woke up in the middle of the night with a Cairo-scratch on one arm and my mind roiling with a weird kind of negative writing energy — cool ideas gestating, but also a nagging dread about my ability to realize them. When my mind starts churning like that, there’s no sense trying to go back to bed, so here I am composing a Saturday morning linkdump:
- I like this article by Christopher Cokinos about Mundane SF, although — like the very concept of Mundane SF — it’s likely to polarize and piss people off. After all these years, it’s curious that this “movement” still has no members; it’s like a clandestine service of the subgenre, burbling along under the surface, surreptitiously wielding its indirect influence. Stealth genre; no wonder it connected with me. The genre everybody is too cool to join. Or maybe it’s just a concept with a severe branding problem. (I mean, Futurismic is pretty much 90% a Mundane market, but I’d be surprised if half our submitters knew that.) Anyway, it’s an entertaining article and it points out some good near-future SF that’s been published lately.
- I haven’t had a chance to read much of Lightspeed Magazine yet, but boy do I envy the look and feel of the site. (And their submission interface is pretty slick, too.)
- China Mieville puts his finger on something here in his comments about J.J. Abrams, particularly when drawing the comparison with Joss Whedon. I have enjoyed some of Abrams’ shows, but he only seems to have one foot in the genre camp, and I get a sense of him being a cagey, hitmaking opportunist. I don’t know if I’d go so far as to say he’s contemptuous of genre, but…I get the sense there’s something to the insight.
- I don’t expect everyone to share my love of the new spy series Rubicon, but this is the post where I beg you to give it a try, if only to keep it on the air for my benefit! I don’t generally get hooked on shows this quickly, which of course makes me think its demise is imminent.
I was certain I had more to post about when I started this…maybe I shouldn’t write blogs before 7AM on a Saturday. Oh, well — have a great weekend, folks!
