Marginalia

[coalescent]

I like this New Yorker piece [via] about Battlestar Galactica, because it seems to have a sense of the show as an exemplary piece of sf, rather than as something that transcends sf's perceived limitations:

If you switch to the term "speculative fiction," which many sci-fi writers prefer, the genre seems more interesting. In fact, the genre is so capacious that it’s not even very useful to call it a genre—at least, not as a put-down or a comment on its limitations. Stories that are geared to ask "What if?" and "What then?" and "Who are we?" and also have some life to them beyond the nuts and bolts of imagining an alternative reality are a genuine achievement. On the other hand, don’t feel bad if you don’t like watching shows filled with characters who have disturbingly shaped heads and faces. I myself am of the school that believes that frontal lobes belong inside the skull. I’m delighted when a character on TV has a brain—I just don’t want to see it.

Commentary on the most recent episode of Galactica here, here, and here.

James Lovelock thinks we are doomed. [via, links will probably become paid-only soon]

'The Faery Handbag' may become a film (scroll down a little).

Musings on evolving definitions of feminism. [via]

Obligatory pimpage of Strange Horizons reviews, part one: in a review of Christopher Priest: The Interaction, John Clute takes issue with the protocols of academic writing:

In following these shit-stupid protocols Hubble (and/or Butler) sedulously make near nonsense of a speculative historical argument, and they waste our time. I am very conscious that I too have, in a sense, been wasting our time as well with such a long excursus; but the dumb secret strength of the kind of protocols I've been attacking is that it takes a long time to explain how damaging their application is in each specific case. Hubble was my victim here, almost at random. There are dozens of similar dispiriting examples throughout Interaction, each so embedded in industrial practice that each would take a paragraph to describe. The cumulative effect is disastrous, both for the scholars locked into malpractice and for the readers who are baulked from accessing anything much of use in a book so compromised.

Obligatory pimpage of Strange Horizons reviews, part two: Graham Sleight and Tim Phipps debate the merits of 'The Christmas Invasion'.

And finally: a request for recommendations. I need recent (last 18 months or so) examples of either sf translated into English or sf written in English that is set in or engages with other cultures. Thanks!