The Romance of Mars

The Curiosity rover has landed safely on Mars, evading the "Mars Curse" that so often seems to plague spacecraft sent to that planet. Great news (especially at a moment when so much other news has been dreadful) and I look forward to years of new findings and images.

There was a time when it seemed as if the exploration of Mars, however exciting, had snatched away the romantic desert world of Burroughs, Brackett, Bradbury and others and replaced it with something barren and lifeless. I suppose Mars as we see it today still qualifies as "barren and lifeless," but once we started getting imagery of the surface, the romance started creeping back in.

Image taken by Viking 2 lander in 1976. Source: Wikimedia Commons

And then came these brave-seeming robotic characters -- Sojourner, Opportunity, Curiosity. They're not exactly John Carter of Mars, but they do inspire a sense of adventure. Good luck, Curiosity (and all the dedicated human beings behind you.)

EDIT: Removed hypertext link to Viking 2 image and added the actual picture to the post.

Nebula Awards

Nebula Sharpless 140. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Life's been very busy this month, and hasn't slowed down much, but I wanted to resurface to congratulate the winners of the 2010 Nebula Awards. I've put up a short post about the Nebulas at the Santa Clara County Library blog.

Joanna Russ, 1937-2011

I saw it reported at Locus and Tor.com that Joanna Russ has died.

I was lucky enough to take a couple of classes from her when she taught creative writing at the University of Washington. She was dedicated, sharp, encouraging, kind. I feel like I saw just the tip of the iceberg (or merely felt the fringe of the bonfire) but I was grateful to have met her.

She said a lot of things -- here are a few that stuck. Unfortunately I don't remember her exact words, and using my words instead is like imitating Strauss on a kazoo...

Don't worry about getting enough life experience. Life will surely throw enough at you.

It can help to have a representation of your inner critic. (She took out a little statue of a grim and ridiculous looking bird.) This thing will always tell you you're no good. Keep him where you can keep an eye on him.

Don't make it science fiction if it doesn't need to be science fiction.

If it is science fiction, make details that hang together, not just disconnected ideas that sound neat.

Watch out for having something to prove. Watch out for Imposter Syndrome. (She didn't use that term, but I think that's the feeling she was describing.)

I also remember that she was having back trouble and needed a special chair, and that she approached this challenge without any sign of bitterness or discouragement. If she felt it, she didn't let on. That fits with the bravery that characterized her whole career.

I feel sad that I did not encounter her again after I last saw her in the early 1990s. And more so that health troubles prevented her from writing more. And glad for what we do have.

But what tools, what visions, did this old man or old woman give me? What did he give Madame Stowe and the Mesdames Bronte and Madame Austen and Madame Dickinson and Madame George Eliot and Madame Stein and Madame Woolf and Madame Cather and Madame Hurston and Madame Colette and all the others? I have told you (with some help from Madame Lowell) where we got the tools of our trade, but do you now want to find out what those tools really were?


Are you truly curious?


Then read our books!

-- Joanna Russ, "Sword Blades and Poppy Seed"

The Philip K. Dick Award

Last night I spotted a Tweet from James R. Knapp, author of State of Decay, graciously spreading the word that Mark Hodder had won the Philip K. Dick Award for The Strange Affair of Spring-Heeled Jack. There was similar word from Science Fiction Awards Watch, though they cautioned there was no official announcement yet. They added they'd heard a special citation had gone to Harmony, a dystopian novel by the late Project Itoh.

Hodder's novel, a steampunk thriller in which Sir Richard Francis Burton and Algernon Swinburne hunt the legendary villain of the title through an alternative London under threat from werewolves (and if you're like me that description makes you wonder why you haven't read it yet) is the first of a set that continues with The Curious Case of the Clockwork Man.

The Philip K. Dick award is presented annually for distinguished science fiction published in paperback form in the U.S. It is sponsored by the Philip K. Dick Trust and the Philadelphia Science Fiction Society, and the ceremony is hosted by the Northwest Science Fiction Society.

The award is named for Philip K. Dick, author of such classic science fiction novels as The Man in the High Castle. If you haven't heard of Dick, you likely have heard of one of the many films adapted from his works, such as Blade Runner, Minority Report, Total Recall, and The Adjustment Bureau.

Also nominated this year were James R. Knapp's State of Decay, Jon Armstrong's Yarn, Elizabeth Bear's Chill, Alden Bell's The Reapers Are the Angels, Sara Creasy's Song of Scarabaeus. I suspect they are all well worth tracking down.