SF Signal: Reading Science Fiction

In its ongoing service to humanity at large and sci-fi-loving  humanity in particular, SF Signal (Twitter: @sfsignal) presents an excellent “getting started guide” for those who have an interest in all or some part of the meta-genre but may have been put off by the seemingly inexhaustible ways that science fiction can be offputting.

Start here at Part 1 of the series.

The latest and last in the series, Part six 6 here, has links to all the parts.

The short story is included in the anthology, Black Water: The Book of Fantastic Literature. Highly recommended.

The Book Connection (interview)

The Bec-ster
“This storyline is so new it just compelled me to want to keep reading. I had to see how it all ended.”

Syncopated Musings
“KiTE is not one of those books where you can check your brain at the door when you open its cover and begin to read.”

Elizabeth Mueller
“If computer programs wanted to take over the world, this would be the right book for them.”

I am a Pistacio
“Mr. Shears writes with a flavor reminiscent of Douglas Adams, but the resulting dish is entirely his own. Quite tasty.”

J. Lloyd Morgan
“When the “twist” of the book is revealed at the end, I found myself smiling. It was certainly clever.…I will give the following praise to the book: it’s like nothing I’ve read before. The author stays true to the tone and pacing of the book, which is always a plus.”

KiTE: Hard Sci-Fi with Heart

3/30 The Musings of a Hopeful Writer
3/31 Karen Adair
4/1 Why Not? Because I Said So.
4/2 My Life in a Laptop
4/4 mormonhermitmom’s book habit
4/11 T.J. Types TMI
4/15 A Bookworm’s Tale

Unscheduled stops:

Azurescape
Critical Mass
Rememorandom
The Atomic Spud

KiTE: Hard Sci-Fi with Heart

3/19 The Book Connection (Interview)
3/21 Designs by DeDe (Scrapbooking site? Hey, why not?)
3/23 The Bec-ster
3/24 Elizabeth Mueller
3/26 Husband and wife tandem reviews. Should be interesting: I Am  A Pistacio and Syncopated Musings
3/26 A Writer’s Eyes
3/26 J. Lloyd Morgan
3/30 The Musings of a Hopeful Writer
3/31 Karen Adair
4/1  Why Not? Because I Said So.
4/2 My Life in a Laptop
4/4  mormonhermitmom’s book habit
4/11 T.J. Types TMI
4/15 A Bookworm’s Tale

Reviews with no schedule, which like Billy Pilgrim, will be unstuck in time:

Azurescape
Critical Mass
Rememorandom
The Atomic Spud

Available in all major ebook formats at Smashwords at a retro paperback price.

The Doppelganger Song by Caitlin Sumer & Bill Shears

The Doppelganger Song

Holly Ambrose, a beautiful and accomplished psychiatrist with a string of degrees as long as her arm, and Frank Zhelikhovsky, a Desert Storm vet and rock solid security consultant have been together for 11 years but lately their relationship has thinned. Professionally their individual consulting practices are flat, and personally they spend more time apart than together. Both possessed of a degree of skepticism they now find themselves cast in the roles of paranormal detectives.

Teacher Emma Ward went out the fourth floor window of the Gracewynne School, a private girls’ academy in the Bronx. Did she attempt suicide or was she pushed? Holly and Frank have been called in to investigate the incident and the situation. In the course of their investigation they encounter what seems to be a shape-shifter or doppelganger.

They find Emma in a hospital bed seriously injured, where she tells them her sad story, about how her desperation for even the shallowest love led to Scott, a city assistant prosecutor. She’s now sure he only dated her to get information on the school, either for a criminal investigation, for an extortion plan, or for both.

Frank and Holly take the case and soon discover that all is not right at the Gracewynne School, but their relationship may not survive long enough for them to root out the truth.

THE DOPPELäNGER SONG. Frank and Holly’s first case. With their long relationship on the verge of collapse, security consultant Frank and psychologist Holly team up as paranormal investigators. A teacher at an old private girls’ school in The Bronx, NY, has been severely injured. Was it a suicide attempt or is the teacher’s double causing trouble? Frank and Holly sort the eerie from the merely strange.

The Doppelgänger Song Cover

Cover art by Raven Wanglund

Edmond O'Brien and Donald Pleasence speak in 1984, from 1956

Two of the great literary dystopian novels rework the language itself to accomplish a keen disconnect with the contemporary reader’s known world. This high neologisticism (Itself a neologism. Neologed by me, just now.) has an effect that also serves to make the works timeless. It’s something that takes a deft touch and could easily be schlocked up if overdone. Many a sci-fi story has failed for misuse of this technique and become unpleasantly impenetrable or worse,  cutesy.

One that does well with it, of course,  is George Orwell in 1984. Here’s a link to The Newspeak Dictionary.

Most know of the 1984 film version famously released in the titular year of 1984. There is a lesser known, and now more rarely viewed, film version of 1984 released in the year 1956, with Edmond O’Brien as Winston Smith.

Where the early version failed with a love story that ” makes the unforgivable mistake of providing an ending that cuts clean across Orwell’s savage purpose”, the 1984 version may have failed partly for the opposite reason, for bludgeoning the romance up-frontally, so to speak, with distracting nudity, as well as its overextended torture scene. In many ways  the 1984 1984 appeared to have been an intentional refutation of the 1956 1984. Where O’Brien may have been a little bit on the fleshy side, John Hurt as Smith may be a little too gaunt, even for a dystopia. Both are talents worthy of the role, however.

Anthony Burgess put his own lexicon right in the back pages of the acutely prescient A Clockwork Orange, seeing the devolution of the language as a parallel to the devolution of Western civilization. Here’s the Nadsat Dictionary. You can draw you own conclusions as to why Burgess predicted a heavily Russian influence on the language of his ultra-violent UK teens of the near future.

On the slightly lighter side, a literary entity in itself, Ambrose Bierce’s Devil’s Dictionary illustrates that the maddening ironies and nearly intolerable absurdities of a dystopia may be just what we’ve been  moving through since his own time. An example:

SYMBOL, n. Something that is supposed to typify or stand for something else. Many symbols are mere “survivals” — things which having no longer any utility continue to exist because we have inherited the tendency to make them; as funereal urns carved on memorial monuments. They were once real urns holding the ashes of the dead. We cannot stop making them, but we can give them a name that conceals our helplessness.

Poster from the Roger Corman film starring Vincent Price

On the 202nd anniversary of Edgar Allen Poe’s birth, below is a well done short film of his “The Masque of the Red Death”, first published, according to my The Portable Poe, in Graham’s Magazine, May 1842.

Here’s the full short story in various formats at Project Gutenberg.

And here’s a link to an interesting analysis of the imagery and symbolism.

Luckily the famous episode “The After Hours”, with Anne Francis as the confused department store customer, was one of them. We’ve seen that many times and never tire of it. How can it be that a 50-year-old, half hour Twilight Zone can have more of a grip on you than would about four hour-long episodes of current paranormal fair, like say, Fringe? A writer would like to credit the writing but it’s more than that. The actors, physically, were more appealing, yes, and less like they were stamped out of just two or three molds.  Vera Miles or Anne Francis have an edge, looks-wise, over Anna Torv, but acting styles are a factor too. Somewhere the naturalistic trend in acting passed a line. The actors used to actually pronounce the words so that they were comprehensible. They were able to convey the sense that what they were saying was important, encouraging you to pay attention. Today’s graduates of the Twitch-and-Mumble School seem like they couldn’t care less. They are handed far fewer good lines, yes, but would they be able to handle them?

Fringe is a pretty good show  but only a few of the episodes hold you in their grip from start to finish. And the show wouldn’t have lasted much past its pilot without Walter Bishop as played by John Noble. A funny, quirky character, yes, but also… say, is it a coincidence that  Noble plays it somewhat old-school, tending to pronouncments and at times holding forth like he might be in a 60s teleplay? The rest of the cast deliver their characters with the acting equivalent of the annoying ubiquitous shakey cam, a no-style visual mode of today’s directors. You get tired of the frames jiggling more than the ones you record with your own cheap camcorder that comes equipped with image stabilization, and you grow weary of the actors speaking the same language you do but to understand the show requires you turn on the closed captioning.

These are works of fiction, teleplays. Audiences know that. It’s not eavesdropping into real life, so don’t try to trick us into thinking it is. We’re not pushing for formalized mannered kabuki theater here, but over the long haul film and TV makers have sold their audiences short.

***

One of the episodes I may have seen but forgot was “Mirror Image”, with Vera Miles and Martin Milner.  It’s an eerie one about a woman in transition, in a bus station — a place of transition –  who suspects she may be between worlds. Well worth a look for the doppelganger fan. Dopplegangers may be the next big thing.

TWILIGHT ZONE: Vera Miles in "Mirror Image"

***

And coincidentally, sadly, while we had this post in draft status, Anne Francis died. Here’s a great promo picture picture from Forbidden Planet. Keep your eye out for her fine body of work over a long career.

Robbie the Robot and Anne Francis