Views from Medina Road

The balance of competing sections’ priorities isn’t right .. what with the new Roundtable and News Blog boxes. And the site doesn’t look enough like, say, the CNN or Slate of SF sites. More visual punch? Have been experimenting with a new layout this past week. You’ll see something soon.

I seem to have correctly anticipated three of the five Best Novel nominees for this year’s Hugo Awards — by Stephenson, Doctorow, and Stross. I should have guessed Scalzi, just based on his general and internet presence and popularity… I did read his book, found it perfectly pleasant, though not in my mind especially exceptional. I’m rather happier with the Arthur C. Clarke Award finalists, which includes MacLeod and Reynolds and McAuley, though I haven’t read the Tepper and Wernham titles there.

Other categories? As I wrote previously, I haven’t kept up with short fiction in the past year, though I intend to sit myself down and read all of these finalists pronto, so I can vote on them. As for most of the graphic story and dramatic presentation finalists — I’m clueless. I very rarely read graphic novels (though I will be very interested to hear whether the Hugo smofs determine if this category is viable, considering their decisions about past try-out categories), and I’ve only seen one of the short form nominees (the Lost episode), and three of the films.

And of course, congrats to semiprozine and short form editor nominees Brown, Gong-Wong, Trombi, and Strahan.

As an Awards Index compiler, I’m a bit consternated about the Hugo ballot’s generosity with nominee credits; if, say, METAtropolis wins, will the Hugo admins really hand out six trophies? In compiling past years’ dramatic presentation winners, I’ve followed apparent Hugo admin policies in awarding only a single trophy for each winner, meaning all the associated credits (for director, writers, producers, studio) are comments, not nominees. I’ve alluded to that in the second para of my Hugo nomination analysis post on the Locus News Blog earlier this evening. I’m willing to change my policy in the Awards Index if there is any evidence to do so.

Meanwhile, I am not at ICFA, where all the cool people are gathering this weekend, mostly due to the current economic climate — my employer has first deferred routine merit raises, usually given in April, by six months; and then announced a corporate-wide furlough of five days without pay through the end of 2009. I’m sure I should count myself lucky; at least I still have a job. But then there’ve been the $4000 in repairs to my car, a year and half out of warranty, over the past three months. Things happen. Maybe next year.

I’m attending my first Ring, beginning last weekend with Das Rheingold, and continuing next month with the second opera in the series and next season with the third and fourth. I’m a relatively casual opera fan, and I’ve never seen the four operas in Wagner’s cycle, or even listened to them more than casually. I did know that the elaborate, mythologically-based plot had similarities to another famous series about a ring, and that Anna Russell did a famous humorous send-up of its plot. It was fascinating last Sunday to read the synopsis and hear the pre-concert talk by conductor James Conlon and then see it all play out on stage — maidens, dwarves, giants, rings, magic helmets. I’ve been a bit disappointed with the Los Angeles Opera in that it’s chosen in recent years to stage revisionist and even experimental versions of standard repertoire works — with modernist or abstract stage and costumes designs. That was true to Madama Butterfly and The Magic Flute earlier this year, and again with the Ring — see here for a pic. It’s not that I’m opposed to the modern or the abstract, it’s just that I’d have preferred to see traditional stagings for my first experiences of these operas — but of course, I have only myself to blame for not having gotten around to seeing them until now.

I’ve always thought it odd how certain brilliant people are nevertheless indifferent, or tone-deaf, to music. Isaac Asimov; Roger Ebert. And apparently Greg Egan, judging from recent posts on the blogosphere.

Current work behind the scenes involves timelines.

I’ve been advised by the editors of Sci Fi Wire, per my February 15th post, that there is “MORE content related to books on the new Wire, not less” — though actually I’d been comparing the new Wire to the old SF Weekly, perhaps not a fair comparison. As I browse today’s Wire homepage, I do see five items tagged Books, even if four of them are about movies being made from books; the fifth is a review by Cynthia Ward. Still, I’m not sure that makes it a daily link for the top row of Links Portal.

So I submitted my Hugo nominations on Saturday, a few hours before the drop-dead deadline, and as usual left some categories entirely blank — including, I’m a bit ashamed to admit, all the short fiction categories; I simply haven’t read any current short fiction this past year. I did much better keeping up with current SF (and a few fantasy) novels, though even there a few key titles I still mean to get to — Stephenson’s Anathem, McAuley’s The Quiet War, Wolfe’s An Evil Guest — remain unread pending project work on the website… I did nominate, for Best novel, Egan’s Incandescence, Banks’ Matter, Reynolds’ House of Suns, and Baxter’s Flood (In contrast, I *predict* that both Anathem and Doctorow’s Little Brother will make the final ballot, just based on general buzz. And I wonder, will Charles Stross make it a sixth year in a row with a novel on the ballot, with Saturn’s Children? Wouldn’t be surprised. Those would be three spots. Banks might make it; I doubt Reynolds, Egan, or Baxter will; at least one slot, I expect, will go to something I would never guess.)

Anything anyone associated with Locus has to say about being nominated for Hugos, or the continued existence of the Semi-Prozine category, is bound to seem colored by self-interest, though in my case I can wish Jonathan and Charles and Liza and Kirsten best of luck, noting that at least they have categories to be nominated in! (For this year at least.) I do think Charles makes a valid point in his March issue editorial, when he points out that if the motive for eliminating the Semiprozine category is to keep Locus from winning it, then this amounts to not trusting the voters to vote for something else if they wish. It’s analogous to term limits — the electorate voting someone into office while simultaneously deciding that he’s not to be re-elected in 8 years, making the decision now rather than trusting themselves to make the decision later.

On the other hand, the Hugo categories have long struck me as an inconsistent mish-mash, some categories for works and others for roles, that have apparently evolved out the desires at various times by some portion of the electorate to adjust the system so that some target group of candidates either does, or does not, have the chance to win an award. It’s about who gets it, not for what. If it were up to me, which of course it isn’t (I’m not even so concerned as to dare get involved in Hugo politics) I would take two or three big steps back and re-align all the categories by works:

best novel
best novella
best novelette
best short story

best nonfiction book
best magazine (fiction/nonfiction)
best drama (short/long)
best publisher
best book or magazine cover art

and perhaps even
best anthology
best story collection

…Almost, in fact, like the Locus Awards categories (which I have never had any role in defining, I hasten to add). (I also don’t mean to suggest that the Locus Awards are not with their problems — but let’s not go there just now.)

Even now, I don’t feel I have sufficient insight into the book or magazine *editing* process to judge who does it best…other than by the products that editing produces…which is more than just result of one person’s editing (in most cases, I would think). We don’t have a Best Writer category, do we? Again, a mishmash.

I have no strong feelings about ‘fan’ categories, one way or another, other to note that unlike the other categories they are obviously specifically intended to reward members of voting audience, rather than the works that have brought those voters together. It’s almost like a separate set of awards, and I wonder if it’s unprecedented. (Imagine a People’s Choice Award for best movie fan.)

And best website? I’ve made the case before that websites are works quite unlike print magazines or books (link), in that they can do very different things well (even if some of them are merely electronic counterparts of periodical ‘issues’). So why not? Well, I suppose I understand the reasons why not, just as I understand why the other Hugo categories are the way they are. (As an aside, if Locus Online is ever nominated for any award ever again, I suppose it will have to be credited not only to me but also to Liza Trombi, who runs the news blog and who so far at least has supervised the Roundtable blog. Increasingly, I’m less the editor of Locus Online than the co-editor/webmaster.)

My office and library are the same room, at the front of my house looking out on the hillside street where as many people pass walking their dogs as cars drive by.

To the immediate right is a bookcase that fills with current-year books, which I’ve recently about half-emptied, moving books into the general stacks. A few books I haven’t yet read — you can see Anathem — are still there; the 2008 novels I have read line the top two shelves.

Turning further right are the stacks of SF titles through Z, with knick-knacks on the curved endpieces, and boxes of extraneous books (review copies, etc.) waiting to be carried out. The room opens through French doors from the hallway.

Turning left from the glasstop desk is a library cart full of the latest incoming — books and magazines, received or purchased, waiting to be listed on the site; ARCs on the next shelf; copies of Locus below that. The three closest bookcases, including the short one beneath window, are full of SF-related nonfiction and reference books. Behind those and at far left are the stacks of SF titles near the front of the alphabet.

And turning farther left is a leather sofa-bed where I read and nap, complete with requisite cat (Munchkin); French door at extreme left edge of photo; bookscases of art books, general fiction and nonfiction, and the SF stacks beginning with A in the right-facing bookcase behind the sofa.

Most of my SF library is in this room, though I do have another room downstairs, about the size of a large walk-in closet, full of anthologies and back-issue magazines. And in a couple guest bedrooms are additional bookcases, full of books about film and TV, YA and graphic novels, old encyclopedia, puzzles and old textbooks, and other miscellany.

I’ve been home the past two days with a head cold, sneezing and congested, but not unable to sit at the computer for several hours each day. Catching up on listings, Directory page updates, and so on.

Among numerous other updates to the site, I’ve tweaked the layout and archive settings of the Roundtable blog, taking some of the Torque Control comments into consideration, with the concurrence of blog-overseer Liza — full posts now appear on the main page, which is archived weekly rather than monthly and which displays a fixed number of posts, rather than all posts within a fixed number of days… But we hesitate about unmoderated comments. Ahem.

There is so much going on with the website it is getting a bit difficult to juggle it all. The news blog, the roundtable blog, my own posts, some of which are excerpts from the magazine (when they remember to send me the content) and others of which are special to the website, like Gary Westfahl’s essays and reviews… How to present it all so that none of it is diminished or overlooked? (And Blinks, and ads, and a tiny corner for a link to this blog.) Still working on it. (Avoid clutter!) Along those same lines, I’ve placed boxes about the Locus Index and Locus Awards Index in the right pane, below some of the past issue boxes, to keep those items in view to casual readers… whom I suspect rarely explore the drop-down menus.

Working on a new policy about handling the numerous (unsolicited) ARCs and galleys that I receive… more on that next time.

This week we have a long new essay by Gary Westfahl about SF’s predictions and how seriously to take them; I think it’s a fascinating, substantial piece in the venerable tradition of, say, Arthur C. Clarke’s Profiles of the Future, even as it undermines some of SF’s party line positions on the inevitability of certain trends. What with upcoming film reviews (Watchmen will be covered by Howard Waldrop and Lawrence Person) and a couple other features lined up, there should be a ‘Monday feature’ of some sort for at least the next month or so.

This week, the Awards Index having been posted last Friday and done with for the moment, I’ll be catching up on posting excerpts from Locus’ February issue (the bestsellers, new & notable books, the interview), and on Monitor Listings of recent books and magazines.

Interesting thread about workspaces in the Roundtable blog; I have a fairly nice workspace, and library, and perhaps I should post some photos…

I quite approve of most of the Oscar winners, including leader Slumdog Millionaire… not unaware of the irony that it was directed by Danny Boyle, whose previous film Sunshine I (and others) fairly eviscerated a couple years ago. It just shows to go you, as they say, that it all depends on the script, really, does it not.

Just a couple more days, or more properly I should say another four to six hours real time; it actually depends on when during the next few days I can find those hours, to finish the Awards Index update and post the overhauled site. Depending on how closely you’ve been paying attention, it will look pretty much the same, or quite different; the color scheme is revised, a bit subtler and more subdued; the homepage is rearranged and expands details that previously were posted on separate pages. Layouts and color schemes of index pages — the listings, indexes, tally pages, etc. — are more unified — underlain by a simplified scheme of cascading style sheets that necessarily implement standardized formatting — though I can’t quite claim to have eliminated every deprecated font tag on the site, not quite.

All this is quite fun, for me; it’s as close to programming as I get to do these days.

When it’s done and posted, I’ll get back to Monitor Listings…

Despite a hopeful email from John Clute a couple weeks ago, book coverage on the new “Sci Fi Wire” has been scant to nonexistent, and the whole tenor of the site is apparently now about movie news and gossip; and thus, I have removed the link to SciFi.com / Scifiwire.com from my row of essential daily links atop my Links Portal page… replace by SF Site, with Salon squeezed in there earlier in the row.

Despite a hesitant start, Locus Poll submissions are healthily underway, no doubt due in part to plugs from Neil Gaiman and John Scalzi and other Locus partisans. Not quite 300 ballots received thus far, not bad for two weeks into the voting period.

I saw Coraline Friday night — in a nearly packed house — and was quite delighted. I think, in fact, it’s the first movie I’ve ever seen in 3D, and I was impressed by how transparently easy the viewing was — no straining with crossed eyes to make the 3D image click into place. My only reservation about the film is that it lacks the emotional catharsis — that moment of emotional payoff in the conclusion — that is de rigueur for any Hollywood film. As I watched it, I thought this was a good thing, the film avoiding the standard Hollywood formula, for a more sedate, perhaps literary, conclusion. But in retrospect, I can see what those various film critics mean when they suggest the film lacks something, that however good it is all the way through, it doesn’t quite ‘work’… But this is a very minor quibble.

A shout-out for the film In Bruges, which I caught up with this past week, via Netflix, after seeing it nominated for a best screenplay Oscar. I was so annoyed by sitting through the trailer for it 15 times (it seemed) a year or so ago that I skipped it entirely — I find trailers intensely annoying, primarily because they make all films look the same, all a collection of action moments and cutesy jokes (as in the excerpts of In Bruges, which made it look like a freak show about absurdist assassins). But it’s a quite wonderful film, a black comedy with fine writing and performances — and a pleasantly melancholy score by Carter Burwell, which I promptly purchased on CD, and which reminds me of his score for Barton Fink, not a bad thing.

And finally — launching a new regular feature today, a series of interviews by Nick Gevers of short fiction writers and editors. My intent is to have one feature post — a review, or interview, or essay — each week, Sunday night or Monday morning, with Nick’s interviews a regular part.