Sean Williams

On Monday, the wonderful Amanda returns from Canada, where she's been on a rather inconveniently timed research trip. Our schedules are often like this: she's home while I'm away, then I'm home while she's away. Sometimes we overlap for a few days, home or abroad, and that's always nice--but do jetlagged days really count as days, or are they just wistful dreams of far-off normality?

Anyway, we worked out this morning that in total we've spent just two weeks out of the last eleven together. And that, on anyone's calculator, is a rather sad result. So extra excitement for Monday. Roll out the champagne and hold all calls! At last my heart will be where my home is.

I'm juggling two projects at once this weekend, which always hurts my brain.  Here are some recent happenings:

• Shawn at Suvudu asked if any of my books originally had different titles. There are a few.
• Paul Cornell wondered what I was doing for Christmas.
• The ABC's Life Matters program wanted to interview me about my essay on Doctor Who in 50 Voices of Disbelief.
• Au Contrair, the New Zealand natcon, very kindly asked me to be their 2010 GOH, and I'm excited to be going.
• The Dragon Book is out and looks awesome.  If you want to know what happens to Ros after The Changeling, here's part one.

If I hear one more Christmas carol, I swear I might have to kill someone.  Unless it's this one, of course:

I’m very excited to be holding a copy of 50 Voices of Disbelief: Why We Are Atheists, a collection of essays edited by Russell Blackford and Udo Schuklenk featuring such luminaries as Michael Shermer, James Randi, A. C. Grayling, Joe Haldeman, Jack Dann, Susan Blackmore, Gregs Benford & Egan, and many, many more. Including me. Woohoo!

I posted a while back about my piece “Doctor Who and the Legacy of Rationalism” (Rassilon/Rationalism--geddit?) in which I dissect several old stories to demonstrate how watching them led me away from the idea of god, rather than towards it as several recent evangelists suggested it ought to go. Researching it gave me a great excuse to go back and read some of the novelisations mouldering away on my top shelf. They remain as fun as ever.

The essay and the book are out now. Paperback is listed at US$29.95, which is a bargain compared to the hardback (US$89.95) and money well spent at any price. It’s published by the very respectable Wiley-Blackwell. The gorgeous cover is below. Tell your godless heathen friends!

Amazon has done a very bad thing by stripping GBLT titles from their sales ranks on the grounds of these titles being "too adult" to reflect the interests of their wider audience. WTF? When you start protecting society from books like Lady Chatterly's Lover and Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit and Dead Girls The Dictionary of Homophobia: A Global History of Gay & Lesbian Experience you're really barking up the wrong frigging tree.

Astropolis seems to be exempt, but I believe that's more a reflection of my fame (or lack thereof) than the series' content. How long until someone notices that my books aren't just about big things blowing up against a starry backdrop and in fact contain transgender characters and homosexual sex and "Amazon rank" it? I want that sales figure to remain right where it is, thanks. It's so close to 666,666!

Sorry to give you two rants in a row, not to mention another petition, but I do think this is very important. Again, cancelling your account with this company may make more difference than a petition and flag-waving. Please consider it, for the sake of a sane world.

Last week, Boing Boing featured a post offering public speaking advice for anyone forced to bite that particular bullet.

Now I know full well that, given a choice, most writers would never come out of the garret, but as that choice doesn't really exist any more, taking note of this kind of thing is important. If you haven't done it yet, you'll probably be forced to one day, so best to read and absorb as much as possible from the people who did it and survived. Which is everyone, of course. No one ever died from public speaking, did they? (Please, catsparx, don't tell me otherwise!)

I just want to add one other thing to the excellent (not exhaustive) list on the other end of those links. It's really a couple of things rolled into one, but they're connected.

The first half is: know your place. By that I mean, find out in advance what's expected of you so you can get the second part right: do your damnedest to deliver. In other words, do exactly what's required, no more and no less. If you're chairing, don't assume you're also a participant. If you're reading, don't go long. Prepare as required. That kind of thing. Obvious, really--so obvious that it boggles my mind how many people screw it up.

Going long, in particular, is a classic newbie mistake that pros will hate you for, because a true pro will never do it. They work hard not to, and so should you. Practice what you've prepared at least twice, and time it accurately both times. Have a watch or clock in line of sight during your performance. Stop your reading in mid-flow if it's obvious you're going to go too far over. Speaking twice as long as other program participants is never acceptable, no matter how good you think you're being. Break this one simple rule and everyone in the audience will curse you. Curse you, I say!

(Can you tell this happened to me recently?)

Anyway, this isn't aimed at anyone in particular, and I apologise for making so many sweeping generalisations. Some pros do make these mistakes, and some newbies are already good at it. This is just a rant thrown out into the collective unconscious (please, make it stop!) with apologies to anyone who had to sit through my overlong efforts way back in the day.

No spoilers, I promise. Just wanted to say that Steven Moffatt managed to fit more ideas, world-building, character development, plot, and genuine scares into half a story than the rest of this season of Doctor Who combined. He has such a skill for teasing iconic images--zombie kids with gas-mask faces, murderous statues, and now shadows--out of clever SFnal ideas, thereby pleasing both sides of my brain while blowing it at the same time. I'm sure those qualities will bleed into the show as a whole, once he's producer. The sooner he takes over, the better.

Imho, of course.

Dan Rubinstein of OUT magazine recently interviewed me for their transgender issue. Why? Because Saturn Returns features a male character "reborn" into a woman body, and the third book plays with his gender even more overtly. The piece didn't make the print version, alas, but has appeared on-line.

Here's the link to Dan's final version, and below the cut is the full interview, which runs over two thousand words.

( 7) Is there anything that a real transgendered person could learn from your character's struggle, as far as learning about identity goes? )

Icon courtesy of Nick Stathopoulos.

(This post was supposed to air before Sunday, but I was distracted by deadlines, cold viruses, etc.)

For those who don't already know, I've decided not to attend Adelaide Writers' Week this year. Some of the reasons behind this decision are professional (writers should be paid at or near ASA rates, for instance, especially by publicly funded organisations) and some are personal. These problems have been weighing heavily on me in recent years, and it's with a mixture of frustration and irritation that I've finally come to accept that there's probably nothing I can do about them, except be elsewhere.

Note that I'm not asking anyone to join me in my sad, one-person boycott. Note also that I'm not speaking with my SA Writers' Centre hat on (or any of the other hats I occasionally wear). I'm just a writer who's become so disillusioned and disheartened by my behind-the-scenes experiences with AWW that I no long enjoy the event itself. I'll be happier at home, getting some work done. Not even the chance of bumping into William McInnes can make me change my mind.

So if anyone's in town March 2-7 and would like to catch up, we'll have to find somewhere else to do it. Luckily, there are plenty of choices! I highly recommend Thea Tea Shop, which makes the best Taiwanese vegetarian food I've ever tasted. Yum.

It's been a tough year for the SFWA. On top of everything, it's now short of recommendations for the Nebula Awards--which may have gone a little bit wobbly on their wheels in recent years but are still among the field's most respected awards.

If you're a member, you would've received the call to vote via email this morning. If you're a member like me, you probably haven't read nearly enough to consider yourself able to vote, and that makes you feel vaguely guilty. Well, I'm considering shucking off that guilt and voting anyway. If enough of us do the same, all our misinformed opinions will mash together to form some kind of uber-gestalt, and the correct result will pop out of its black box like magic.

Below is a list of the works I've enjoyed this year (not counting the works already on the existing list (here)). I'm not 100% sure any more how the rules of the Nebulas work, but I'm going to vote anyway. You can vote for them as well (here), if you're short on inspiration, or you can suggest titles I might not have thought of. Note that I'm not trying to kick-start a bloc-vote. I'm just trying to get things moving. Only one member in five is recommending works for the ballot at the moment. The field has long been too big for any one person to keep in touch with, so we need put our faith in our collective unconscious and vote regardless. This is democracy in action.

Ragamuffin by Tobias S Buckell (novel)
Plague Year by Jeff Carlson (novel)
Darkspace by Marianne de Pierres (novel)
"WikiWorld" by Paul di Filippo (novelette)
Bright of the Sky by Kay Kenyon (novel)
Mainspring by Jay Lake (novel)
Magic's Child by Justine Larbalestier (Andre Norton)
The Darkness Within by Jason Nahrung (novel)
Lady Friday by Garth Nix (Andre Norton)
Set the Seas on Fire by Chris Roberson (novel)
The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss (novel)
"Kiosk" by Bruce Sterling (novella)
Extras by Scott Westerfeld (Andre Norton)
"Julian: A Christmas Story" by Robert Charles Wilson (novella)
Battlestar Galatica: "Razor" (script)
Doctor Who: "Blink" (script)

I really wish I'd had time to read or watch more. There are bound to have been excellent and worthy works out there that I just haven't seen. Still, better a list than none at all. (And while I'm in the mood to plug, I would be remiss not to mention that my own Saturn Returns and Cenotaxis are eligible too, for the novel and novella categories respectively. Just a reminder, which you should feel free to ignore at will. :-)

As of this moment, there are insufficient recommendations to make a full ballot. So get cracking! Spread the word if you're not a member yourself. The deadline is the end of this year. That doesn't give us long to keep this fine tradition alive. What, after all, are we going to argue and bitch about if the Nebulas die?

Two reviews of Danny Boyle's new movie "Sunshine" (by Grant Watson and Marcus Chown) and Lucius Shepard's recent rant have convinced me to commit to something I've been inching up on for a while now.

From this moment henceforth, I refuse to see a serious science fiction movie (i.e. one we're supposed to take seriously, rather than, say, Fantastic Four) in which scientific knowledge and the people employed in the pursuit thereof are needlessly treated badly.

In other words, I'm boycotting science fiction movies that contain overtly crap science unless there's some kind of pay-off for putting up with it.

I don't think I'm being unreasonable. Is it so wrong to want movie-physics (say) to bear at least a passing resemblance to the physics surrounding us in our everyday lives? Or to wish that scientists were rounded characters, with the same depth of being that other characters in the movie enjoy? Failing both of these, could we at least have something else in exchange? Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind explored powerful and thought-provoking themes through extraordinary direction and performances. Armageddon (like so many others in its league) did not.

I'm amazed that we settle for anything else. No one would watch a thriller that wasn't thrilling or a romantic comedy with unlikeable leads. A movie set in post-war Italy wouldn't include the Grand Canyon and icebergs just because the director felt like it. Why should the relationship between science and science fiction be any different? There's enough sense-of-wonder to be had out there without getting things so terribly, terribly wrong--and good special effects are the standard now, not the major drawcard they used to be.

Movies that let me down this way drive me mad. Since I don't want to be mad, I'm going to stop supporting the Big Dumb SF Blockbuster industry. No one in Hollywood will notice, I'm sure, but I'll feel better for it.