December IROSF

The December edition of the Internet Review of Science Fiction has gone online today, rounding out its first full calendar year of monthly publication (as managing editor Stacey Janssen notes in her editorial.

This time around, the points of particular interest included:

* Kristine Kathryn Rusch takes on the "end of science fiction" debate in this month's Signals column. As you can guess, we don't see eye to eye-but she does a good job of bringing up recent flash points in the debate, including recent Hugo-winner John Scalzi's comments on the state of the magazines in his blog, Analog editor Stanley Schmidt's response and the ensuing flame war; and Paul Goat Allen's blog on the issue over at the web sites of Barnes & Noble, "Season of Wither," making it well worth checking out for those not buying into her particular brand of optimism.

* Daniel M. Kimmel offers a re-review of 2010, just as we are entering that year, Gary Westfahl discusses the forgotten television show Men Into Space (totally new to me), while Rachel Manija Brown discusses Hayao Miyazaki's latest, Ponyo.

* As always, Lois Tilton's short fiction round-up for the month.

The 10 Biggest Sci-Fi Disappointments Of The Last Decade

As the decade draws to a close, we're starting to see lists about the best, worst and everything else of the first decade of the third millennium of the B.C.E., io9 recently offering its list of the ten biggest science fiction disappointments of the last decade.

I don't think it's a great list. Does NASA's performance really rate the #4 slot? I'm not sure there was much grounds for expecting more from the agency during the last, economically disastrous and perpetually worried decade, a lousy time for anyone to try and accomplish great things in space, a point I find that I have to keep repeating. (Indeed, as I recall, the announcement of an ambitious new program of manned space exploration-the "Vision for Space Exploration"-by President Bush back in January 2004 drew a ho-hum response, no serious observer expecting much to come from it, a matter about which I wrote in the journal Astropolitics just a few months later.)

As to the comics, films and television shows discussed-yes, the conduct of FOX executives was absolutely contemptible. However, most of the items on the list are heavily hyped projects which came on the heels of often unreasonable explanations, and usually weren't quite the irredeemable failures so many of the complainers took them to be.

I fully understand the disappointment with Ang Lee's 2003 Hulk, which chucked far too much of the comic's concept (though I thought it had its good points), Heroes quickly fell into a pattern of diminishing returns (predictable, given that the story arc that worked so well in season one simply did not lend itself to repetition), and while I found a fair bit to enjoy in the Matrix sequels, I agree that they didn't live up to the promises made in the first film (though admittedly it is hard to picture a movie that might have).

However, while I personally came to it late, I really enjoyed The Dark Knight Strikes Again, which took a little getting used to stylistically, but which I regard as underappreciated.

Still, there were some things that didn't rate the anticipation that paved the way for the later feelings of disappointment. I regarded Battlestar Galactica as a superficially dazzling piece of crap from the beginning which only occasionally looked like it would be going somewhere better-but sure enough, didn't.

This Week on SyFy (Outer Space Astronauts, Annihilation: Earth)

SyFy goes the animated comedic route again with Outer Space Astronauts, premiering at 9:30 P.M. EST tomorrow (December 8).

I have a soft spot for science fiction-based (and especially space-set) comedy like Red Dwarf and of course, Lexx. And it's also nice to see something besides the tiresome parade of reality shows on in prime time. However, this is also the sort of thing that is very, very easy to botch, which is what happens more often than not, the audience getting stuck with not much more than lame parody and cheap gross-out humor (as was, for instance, too often the case with Tripping the Rift as the series continued).

On a related note: there was a more than usual amount of buzz surrounding a Sci-Fi movie-of-the-week titled Doomsday because it was associated in some minds with the theatrically released film from 2008 (no classic, but it certainly has its following), and had some speculating (incorrectly) about a TV series version of the concept. This Doomsday also attracted the notice of some Lexx fans because of the casting of series star Xenia Seeberg in it, in her most visible appearance on American television screens since the end of that series.

As predicted by the film's writer Rafael Jordan (who's made a career off of Sci-Fi/SyFy's Saturday night fare, a couple of better-than-average entries included), the title has been changed to Annihilation: Earth, which airs this Saturday (December 12) at nine P.M., EST.

New and Noteworthy (Peter Watts on the Climate Change Debate, the Digital Economy Bill, Bear on Lovecraft)

In today's edition:

* By way of Charlie's Diary, here's a great piece from Peter Watts on the pseudo-debate about climate change.

* Also of interest from Stross: his comment on the Digital Economy Bill.

* And finally, "Shoggoths in Bloom" author Elizabeth Bear over at Tor.com on "Why We Still Write Lovecraft Pastiche," which I found interesting as a latecomer to Lovecraft who has found his influence on the genre, whatever one makes of it, inescapable. (Bear's story, which garnered a Hugo win this year, is freely available at her web site, and is also available in the latest edition of Jonathan Strahan's Year's Best Science Fiction and Fantasy, which I reviewed for Strange Horizons just last month.)

New Review: Jonathan Strahan's Year's Best #3
11/18/09
November IROSF Out
11/8/09
New and Noteworthy (McCalmont on "Heroic Slavery," Steampunk Politics, Post-Medium Publishing)
10/16/09
New and Noteworthy (Red Dwarf, Charles Stross, Steampunk Reading Lists, Liberty Mutual's Responsibility Project)
10/14/09
New and Noteworthy (SGU Review, SF's Respectability, Tracking Genre TV Trends)
10/8/09
October 2009 IROSF
10/8/09
Stargate: Universe (A Reaction)
10/4/09
New and Noteworthy (Fringe's Ratings, Iain Banks)
10/2/09
500 Channels And Nothing On
10/2/09