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 6) Siriworn Kaewkan, The Murder Case of Tok Imam Storpa Karde, 2006 There are very few novels that explore the separatist terrorism affecting the three small Thai provinces that border Malaysia, and this one, shortlisted for the 2006 SEA Write Award, quickly became required reading that year with an English translation following four years later. So who killed the much-loved imam in the small village of Tanyong Baru, right outside his own mosque? Terrorists or State officials? Soldiers or police? Is there a suspicious connection with a neighbouring Buddhist village? And why are the villagers closing their doors to an actual investigation? The reader's guess is as good as anyone elses, which indicates the clever structure of this tale of deflections and half-truths that inevitably views the subject from an outsider's perpective yet at the same time lets the story's participants speak (seemingly, often less than truthfully) for themselves. Kaewkan simply provides the necessary pieces to the jigsaw then lets the readers assemble it in a way that indicates there's an inevitable collective madness going on here. There are a number of possible courses of events discernable if this short novel is read closely, which is easily done in one sitting – just don't expect a straightforward whodunnit. My brother-in-law recently finished a tour of duty as a policeman in this volatile region, so I'd love to know his opinion of this book. Tags: 2012 books, thailand
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 One of the things I enjoyed most about my brief time at Eastercon a few weeks ago was being able to hand out copies of my latest fanzine. For my third gig as guest editor on the Hugo-nominated (!!!) Journey Planet, ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=91.7) jamesb, johnnyeponymous and I have gone for the big beast: Blade Runner. Our cover artwork is not a knock-off imitation of John Alvin's iconic poster – it's the real deal by the real guy. A year before John died in 2008 he revised his painting more to his personal liking, most noticeably by adding Roy Batty to the top right corner. I'm very grateful indeed to his widow Andrea Alvin for granting permission to reproduce it as our cover. Here's the full Contents, in full colour throughout: Editorials from Pete, James and Chris,
James Bacon, Acme Instant Fanzine: Ruth Long, Lynda E. Rucker, Mike Meara and Ken Marsden discuss Blade Runner
Graham Sleight, 'An Introduction to Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?'
C.A. Chicoine, 'A Timeline for Blade Runner
Christopher J. Garcia, 'Building to it: Training for Blade Runner'
James Shields, 'Are You a Replicant?'
Mark Hevingham, 'Bladder Run'
Robert Francis, 'Android Tears'
Tonya Adolfson, 'Stopping the Artificial Heart'
Christopher J. Garcia, '52 Weeks to Blade Runner Film Literacy'
Katura Reynolds, 'Electric Frogs'
James Mason, 'Late to the Blade Runner Party
Peter Young, 'Planet Los Angeles, 2019: The Accidental Afterlife of Philip K. Dick'
Ken Marsden, 'The Tannhauser Gate'
It's also downloadable for free from eFanzines.com as a PDF here. Enjoy!Tags: fanzines, philip k. dick, science fiction
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 Look, I know I've been crap on LJ lately and haven't done a Miles update for months, but I'm marking a special day: Miles started nursery school in Hua Hin today. (Okay, I've always preferred the US-adopted German 'kindergarten' which, whenever I think of it, always reminds me there's a Geoff Ryman novel I must get round to reading.) Anyway, he had a great time, and here he is in one of his two most recently-acquired blue t-shirts, sporting the name of his school, the BECC. His other new blue t-shirt mentions something or other about Internet Puppies, which arrived too late to impress Christopher Priest at Eastercon. Unfortunately, however, I had to fly back to England last night although I'll be back in Thailand in 48 hours, hopefully in time to pick him up from his third day at school. I hope it won't end up as being bloody typical that I'm not there on other big days, like his first day of Primary School a few years from now. And I also hope this doesn't end up be a recurrent family trait: my father was always abroad on business on my birthdays (something he's always felt bad about), and maybe if/when Miles has kids thirty years from now he'll be stuck in transit on a space station or off mining asteroids on their big days, too. So today of all days, I'm wondering how quickly he'll learn it sucks to be a working dad, sometimes. Tags: miles
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 Today's internet slapfight entertainment has largely revolved around Christopher Priest and autopope, two writers I admire enormously and equally. Earlier I posted a brief review of Priest's BSFA-shortlisted The Islanders, not long after the man himself had gone off the deep end about this year's entire Clarke Award shortlist and reserving probably his biggest broadside for Charlie, who has slapped right back in the best possible way. And, oh look, coverage of the spat has now migrated to the pages of The Guardian. Priest's impressively crafted rant has actually given fandom a good day: I've seen more fans critiqueing his merciless method of delivery, either for or against, than those who've chosen to fight fire with fire and take full-frontal issue with his specific points of view, which is also fine because that's the free-speech deal on the internet (and I do personally disagree with the majority of what he says). But I've not been taking sides while enjoying this spectacle: I'll be wearing one of Charlie's Internet Puppy t-shirts for Eastercon while at the same time giving The Islanders either my first or second place vote for the BSFA 'Best Novel' Award. Today's been one more day to be proud of British fandom and what we do. PS. Before Chris Priest is formally invited to chair the judges for next year's Clarke Award, can someone please invite him to chair the 'Not The Clarke Award' panel at Eastercon next weekend. On current form he'd deliver great value for money. Tags: charles stross, christopher priest, fandom, snark
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 5) Adam Roberts, By Light Alone, 2011 Since the advent of some near-future genetic tweaking by which people can now photosynthesise sunlight into energy using their hair, hunger has become a thing of the past, and so have other things including much in the way of international conflict. But further into the future, this seismic shift in human society has simply created a new underclass of those who simply don't need to eat anymore and therefore have no real need for wealth, leaving us with a totally 'poor' majority of those who actually choose to live that way. Roberts first explored this idea in his short story 'Hair' in Geoff Ryman's anthology When It Changed, and this novel expands on this future and goes further into the negative effects on society of what was a once-promising biological enhancement. The story of the kidnapping of a young rich girl at a Mount Ararat ski resort is the launch point for By Light Alone, but it's actually a situation that's not meant to generate much sympathy in the reader as the characters are, quite deliberately, universally obnoxious. Roberts then leads the reader on a gradual transition to the world of the peasant-like longhairs, where many of the characters are (quelle surprise) mostly similarly repellent. But it was actually at one of those transit points, where at a lecture the bereaved father George learns more about the social dynamics of the longhairs, that provided for me the most interesting point of the book and I wish Roberts had somehow gone further in that direction. However what ultimately followed was largely disappointing, being a ground-level travelogue of the snatched child's long journey back to New York, with the jaundiced perspective on this future that Roberts cleverly built up being largely thrown away. Ultimately, I wish Roberts hadn't concealed his satirical purpose so much – the satire is not obvious but it's most definitely there, at least in the first two hundred pages – and instead of feeling it necessary to switch narrative viewpoints from the 'rich' West to the 'poor' East, had kept that same slightly cynical tone of voice through to the end. Tags: 2012 books, science fiction
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 3) Joe Haldeman, The Forever War, 1975 I'm far more predisposed to reading about the Vietnam War these days than, say, when this first came out when I was a teenager. It's not the circumspect way Haldeman addresses it that has somehow kept me from reading The Forever War for so long – far from it, it's more the label 'military SF', a sub-genre I tend to avoid. Haldeman explored this novel's themes through the lens of personal experience, drawing several analogies between the lives of post-war combat veterans and the repeated alienation experienced by time-dilated soldiers returning from the frontline of an interstellar war; there are also neat elements of farce, such as with the highly-advanced military technologies of mobile-suited humans and aliens being so evenly matched that resorting back to spears, bows and arrows is just about the only way to win in combat. I like particularly the jaundiced and cynical tone that comes through because its origin in the American experience of Vietnam, ie. fighting a losing battle with an enemy you just don't understand, still comes across loud and clear; also the approach Haldeman took with the gender and sexual issues he chose to raise in the novel are still creditable. About the only thing that doesn't work reading it today is the original time setting: 1997 was way too early for humanity to be capable of fighting an interstellar war even with the whole world on a war footing, but in Haldeman's defence he needed to make his story as connected as possible to the memories of readers with a lost and wasteful war recently behind them. I'm now looking forward to the two sequels, which I know are each very different in tone. Tags: 2012 books, science fiction, sf masterworks
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 Without Warning, 1994, USA DIRECTED BY ROBERT ISCOVEThe famed 1994 mockumentary about three simultaneous asteroid strikes on Earth that reveal an intelligence behind their arrival. This was made to echo Orson Welles's 1938 radio broadcast of The War of the Worlds and was gamely anchored by the famed NBC White House correspondent Sander Vanocur. Like Welles's broadcast it took in quite a few people when it was broadcast on Halloween night, despite repeated self-defeating spoilers that it was fiction, during the commercial breaks. It was a further nine years before this was released on DVD and it's never been reissued; overall this hasn't aged too badly despite some of the actors hamming it up way too much, and a few scenes where the dialogue is clearly scripted and the camera motions seem too rehearsed. Aside from Vanocur playing himself, easily the most natural and relaxed actor here is Arthur C. Clarke, who provided a satellite interview from Sri Lanka while never letting on that he was in on the joke. But if you look closely there are many other things that give the game away: there's a fictional Wyoming town of Grover's Mill (as opposed to the real New Jersey location that Welles used), recognisable genre actors such as John deLancie and James Morrison, plus typically sinister characters from the Pentagon and the military that never really convince you they're genuine. It does become increasingly ridiculous towards the end especially when some of the journalists start cracking up emotionally on the air, but this is still rather good fun even though it's not nearly as convincing as that even harder-to-find American faux news masterpiece Special Bulletin. Tags: 1990s sf film, alien invasions, arthur c. clarke, meteor movies, science fiction, usa
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 Skyline, 2010, USA DIRECTED BY THE BROTHERS STRAUSECinematically speaking, the second decade of the 21st Century is already showing how 1996's Independence Day has a puzzlingly long reach. That movie was intended as a "let's top all predecessors" capstone on both the alien invasion and disaster genres, yet it has consistently inspired many imitators – some creators of CGI-driven SF movies somehow seem duty-bound to rise to the challenge of imitating that landmark film while in truth they rarely surpass it. Skyline is a case in point, showing off some superior creature and CGI effects while also, unfortunately, displaying some very easily identifiable shortcomings. Let's face it, the Brothers Strause won very few admirers with the mess that was Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem. A story with a bigger reach would have been a good start here – the stressed-but-pretty cast spend most of the time holed up in Greg Strause's LA apartment (yes, that actually is his apartment) trying to keep out of the aliens' way as they hypnotise the humans before hoovering them up into their baroque, gravity-defying motherships. Any dash for freedom is quickly cut short, having the unfortunate side-effect of simply putting the story back in its box until the next CGI sequence comes knocking. This further risks making the screenplay – for the little that it's actually worth – unintentionally funny. So, we have a puny human story underneath it all that can barely be detected beneath all the hypnotic CGI. This is obviously what the directors intended because, guess what, they also own the CGI company. There's no denying Skyline does have some visually arresting if often clichéd moments, and there are scenes that are blatant rips from other movies, including of course Independence Day plus that brilliantly tense raptor scene from Jurassic Park. But too often the only point of connection between the cast and the outside world is via the aliens, happily some of the freakiest I've seen in ages, who never fail to steal the show when they show up and include some impressive, city-stomping, Cloverfield-esque beasts plus some fascinating, mechanically-tentacled, brain-sucking monsters. And then there's the ending, so deliberately outré that it has the effect of undercutting, rather than reinforcing, all the drama that has just gone before. And why? What's it all for? The aliens' motives are never revealed, although there's a sequel promised that has yet to proceed beyond Development Hell but which might explore this problematic aspect further. Or at least it ought to, because the questions this rather brainless, only partially successful science fiction movie makes you ask are specifically not of the philosophical variety. Tags: 2010s sf film, alien invasions, monster movies, science fiction
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 The Killer Shrews, 1959, USA DIRECTED BY RAY KELLOGGA rather weak and often laughable effort that tells a story of bad science run amok, in the accidental creation of a mutant strain of giant shrews that terrorise the occupants of a remote scientific laboratory. This was Ray Kellogg's directorial debut after quite a bit of experience doing photographic effects on Marilyn Monroe and Elvis Presley movies, and he filmed it back-to-back with the slightly more culturally-aware The Giant Gila Monster. But it's clear that Kellogg's vision exceeded his grasp as director as the whole thing's a pretty functional affair showing very little style and flair, and those killer shrews were never going to convince anyone, being nothing more than a pack of poorly disguised dogs. At first I couldn't help but wonder if the notion of experiments in an island setting were meant to steal some of the scientific credibility and horror of The Island of Doctor Moreau, but I needn't have grafted on any such misleading associations because the movie turns its back on moral questions and instead goes in for action. On the plus side there are one or two dark and moody sets that work fairly well in atmospheric black and white, and the musical score isn't bad at all. But none of the cast really put across anything close to an engaging performance, and everything would have been better served by a screenplay that didn't just rely on people shouting at each other to add psychological tension, of which there's little in evidence. And the method of escape from the island just looks ridiculous. And and and. This is one of those movies that did little more than enable me to tick the 'seen it' box, and given the scarcity of positive reviews I can't say I wasn't warned. Tags: 1950s sf film, monster movies, science fiction
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 2) Larry Niven, Ringworld, 1970 ( RE-READ )Still very much into my exploration of early Niven, I do wonder how Niven feels today about most people still reckoning his crowning moment was something he wrote more than forty years ago. I think I first read this in 1976 and Ringworld has lost none of its energy, particularly the opening few chapters which positively sparkle with crackling dialogue and quickly-sketched scenes that still manage to come vividly alive. The argumentative quartet of humans and aliens setting out to explore the Ringworld artefact were memorable enough for me to want to revisit this universe when the first sequel appeared in 1979 yet that's something I never got around to, so Ringworld was a rather necessary re-read before picking up The Ringworld Engineers. Yes, it felt great to read this again. Tags: 2012 books, known space, larry niven, science fiction, sf masterworks
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 1) Ahmed Khaled Towfik, Utopia, 2009 Sometime in the mid-21st Century, Utopia exists as a large enclave of well-off Egyptians, living behind high walls on the north Egyptian coastline and protected by the US military. Meanwhile, the rest of the country has been left to descend into anarchy and barbarism. One of the sports favoured by the affluent and bored Utopian youth is to venture outside Utopia's walls and return with a trophy – usually a body part of some semi-feral non-Utopian – and when one such venture goes wrong the antagonists are on the receiving end of an unexpectedly beneficial turn of events. You could reasonably expect Utopia to be a rather brutal bildungsroman, but the life lessons taught to the selfish Utopians are not learned, in fact they're rejected in favour of a restatement of their born superiority. This is a well-written and rather chilling book, as might be expected of the Arab world's leading writer of horror and fantasy, and is one that I cautiously recommend. Towfik spares no polite sensibilities the reader may have – no characters are particularly likeable or even admirable, and they are all put through their own versions of hell. Utopia was first published in Arabic in 2009 more than a year before the so-called 'Arab Spring', yet in a brief note at the beginning Towfik states he believes a place like Utopia will certainly exist in Egypt in the near future. Such is the depth of cynicism on display here that I doubt any of that sentiment will have changed. Tags: 2012 books, african science fiction, dystopias, egypt, science fiction
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