IROSF Forums

Japanese SF : lionelandme@aol.com : Sun, 10:06 PM

noreply@irosf.com ( lionelandme@aol.com ) — Sun, 13 Nov 2011 22:06:52 +0000

As a writer, is there anyone in Japan that accepts foreign submissions for their sci-fi magazines?

Why No People on the Moon? : andalucia : Fri, 08:02 PM

noreply@irosf.com ( andalucia ) — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 20:02:10 +0000

if you really want to know read william cooper! and then make a decision! listen to all, read all and don't believe anything till you can see proof do research! the government cannot delete everything form the web! good luck to you all!

Open your eyes! enough is enough!

Do Women and Men Really Write Differently? : aca01191991@yahoo.com : Sun, 09:50 PM

noreply@irosf.com ( aca01191991@yahoo.com ) — Sun, 03 Jul 2011 21:50:45 +0000

haha, i just did that too! it told me she's male as well.

Do Women and Men Really Write Differently? : aca01191991@yahoo.com : Sun, 09:49 PM

noreply@irosf.com ( aca01191991@yahoo.com ) — Sun, 03 Jul 2011 21:49:42 +0000

i went to Gender Genie and pasted THIS article in it, and this is what it said:

Female Score: 3147
Male Score: 5548
The Gender Genie thinks the author of this passage is: male!

funny, eh?

More about Bahai... : kaath9@sbcglobal.net : Wed, 06:23 PM

noreply@irosf.com ( kaath9@sbcglobal.net ) — Wed, 19 May 2010 18:23:53 +0000

Hi there, I know this is an ancient thread, but since my name came up in it, I thought I ought to check in.

As a Baha'i and a writer, I find the Faith offers a wide array of themes for exploration. My stories deal with such things as social problems, dealing with alien beings (that is, asking what is human, really?), the rise and fall of religion, itself (which THE MERI trilogy is a study in, while attempting to tell an interesting story), etc.

I have an entire collection of my Baha'i themed fiction (all published in mainstream genre magazines) entitled "I Loved Thy Creation" and had to pick and choose what to have in it.

I think the mention of the Faith in the same breath as Star Trek is appropriate, since Mr. Spock's Vulcan ideology of Unity in Diversity was drawn from a couple of Baha'i writers on Mr. Roddenberry's staff. I've read at least one SF story by a non-Baha'i author that simply posited that people in the future would be Baha'is. A Baha'i friend of mine who knew Shoghi Effendi Rabbani remarked that they'd discussed life on other planets one night at dinner in the pilgrim house in Haifa. Baha'u'llah did say, after all, that every planet hath its creatures. Someone expressed the idea that after the world was unified, then it seemed interplanetary unity would be next. "We may teach them the Faith!" the believer said. To which Shoghi Effendi replied, "Perhaps they will teach us the Faith."

A foundational teaching of the Baha'i Faith is that we are part of an ever-advancing civilization the ultimate goal of which is to bring our material and spiritual lives into alignment as individuals so that we may rise to great heights as a species.

Haunting Anniversary: A Half-Century of Hill House : Wolfgang Hartkopf : Mon, 05:13 PM

noreply@irosf.com ( Wolfgang Hartkopf ) — Mon, 10 May 2010 17:13:15 +0000

I'm sorry, I didn't read the article completely, so I didn't notice that the following was already there.
___________________________________________
This is one of the best articles I have ever read about this book. I only want to add my opinion of the blood scene in Theodora's room, from which I have never read an explanation.

After rereading the blood chapter I came upon a conclusion for Eleanor doing the writing on the wall and spreading the blood in Theodoras room. Theodora knows Eleanor has done it because she says: "I don't know how you managed it." Eleanor answers "It looks like paint", then she admits "except the smell is awful" (page 153 and following in the first edition). When the doctor and Luke arrive she tells them again "Someone - something - has gotten red paint in her room, ..." in spite of she had admitted before it was blood. The doctor says "I would swear that it was blood, and yet to get so much blood one would almost have to ... " and then was abruptly quiet." This means also the doctor realises that Eleanor must have done it. And Eleanor's thoughts are treacherous "It must be paint, she told herself; it's simply got to be paint; what else could it be?". If Eleanor asks herself such questions after admitting the blood this can only mean she knows deep inside she's done it, but she tries to repress this knowledge. And another awful fact is rising. Where does this much blood come from? The doctor has already recognized it, but was afraid to speak it out.

"... the smell is awful." and "The smell was atrocious, ...", this could not be normal blood, because this doesn't smell in such a way. I think there is only one conclusion: it was Eleanor's menstrual blood which was being spread by her all over Theo's room. Did she mean it as a symbol for defloration? I think it's possible. But now it is also for sure, Eleanor has also done the chalk writing on the wall.

I imagine not everyone agrees with me but I would be glad to hear other opinions on this scene.

The Undying Tradition : trigonier@earthlink.net : Fri, 12:17 AM

noreply@irosf.com ( trigonier@earthlink.net ) — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 00:17:14 +0000

Maybe you (or some reader) can answer a question for me. I recall that writers like Heinlein (in The Devil makes the Law, later called Magic Incorporated), Pratt & de Camp in the Harold Shea stories, and Leiber (in Conjure Wife)had a set of basic laws -- four, I think -- which included contagion and similarity as the means by which magic worked. These laws also showed up in that other wonderful fantasy magazine, Beyond, in (for example) James Gunn's Sine of the Magus. Can you tell me what those laws were?

I'd appreciate a direct reply.

Karen Anderson, trigonier@earthlink.net

The Final Issue : ake.kitten99@gmail.com : Sat, 06:01 AM

noreply@irosf.com ( ake.kitten99@gmail.com ) — Sat, 03 Apr 2010 06:01:00 +0000

This is the first message I have written - found you when I was a grad student, & trying to do some critical writing about science fiction of my own. As you can see, I only lurked & read - but then being a student, there was often precious little time for that! I will miss y'all, however, and all the excellent work you were home to. RIP, IRoSF!!

Satoshi Kon Explores the Insanity of Japan : Michael Andre-Driussi : Wed, 11:05 PM

noreply@irosf.com ( Michael Andre-Driussi ) — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 23:05:04 +0000

Oops, that link went down! "Robot House!"

Here, let's try this one . . .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_OHxBPHe6Y

Satoshi Kon Explores the Insanity of Japan : Michael Andre-Driussi : Mon, 04:07 PM

noreply@irosf.com ( Michael Andre-Driussi ) — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 16:07:42 +0000

Turning Japanese with Kirsten Dunst in "Akihabara Majokko Princess"!

Here is a short music video, anime related, made for a London art show. The company just released it on their web site a few days ago, and now it is on YouTube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrzS_yN9h3Y

I think this film has relevance to discussion of Satoshi Kon's work. In fact, I suspect Kon himself has a cameo!

Secular Winds : Lois Tilton : Sat, 12:15 AM

noreply@irosf.com ( Lois Tilton ) — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 00:15:00 +0000

Ah, now that is one I haven't read. I'll be sure to look for it.

Secular Winds : Bluejack : Fri, 10:53 PM

noreply@irosf.com ( Bluejack ) — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 22:53:51 +0000

McCarthy is no stranger to the fantastic though: in (one of my favorites) Blood Meridian, a central figure in the story is "The Judge" who is incrementally revealed as a supernatural being, although of what source or substance is (of course) never revealed.

Secular Winds : Lois Tilton : Fri, 08:03 PM

noreply@irosf.com ( Lois Tilton ) — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 20:03:34 +0000

This seems to be one of those reading protocol things. We, here, tend to read the novel as SF, which it is - a classical post-apocalypse novel. But it's quite likely that McCarthy didn't intend it to be read as such.

While I'm hardly an expert on McCarthy, I've read a number of his books, which seem to focus on the journey of an innocent through a landscape of moral evil. These works have all been realistic fiction, and the descriptions are notable for an intense realism in depicting the settings, the physical landscape.

Read as a continuation of the author's other novels, The Road seems to be taking the landscape of moral evil to its ultimate conclusion. The physical setting is just as clearly detailed; what is missing is the explanation of how it came about.

But this is what the science fiction reader is trained to look for - how the apocalypse came about, how the setting got to the point at which we find it. Does it make sense in SFnal terms?

And that just isn't the game that McCarthy seems to be playing; the ambiguity is deliberate.

Secular Winds : Lois Tilton : Fri, 04:29 PM

noreply@irosf.com ( Lois Tilton ) — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 16:29:28 +0000

There were firestorms, that's clear. A great burning, all the ash. But nothing to suggest radiation. The father is sick - we don't know why - but not the son.

In a way, the scenario is more compatible with the fantastic - an inexplicable cataclysm from some source supernatural.

Secular Winds : Bluejack : Fri, 02:48 AM

noreply@irosf.com ( Bluejack ) — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 02:48:38 +0000

There were scenes of melted construction, glassy surfaces, humans fused into the asphalt, that strongly support the nuclear scenario.

The Final Issue : Stacey Janssen : Thu, 07:39 PM

noreply@irosf.com ( Stacey Janssen ) — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 19:39:19 +0000

I just want to thank everyone for the kind words and the well-wishes. It's the support we got from all of you that I think I'll miss the most. :)

The Final Issue : LaShawn Wanak : Thu, 02:15 PM

noreply@irosf.com ( LaShawn Wanak ) — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 14:15:36 +0000

Thanks so much. I truly enjoyed the articles here. Best of luck with your future endeavors.

Secular Winds : Michael Andre-Driussi : Thu, 03:18 AM

noreply@irosf.com ( Michael Andre-Driussi ) — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 03:18:41 +0000

Termites: the Other White Meat.

Secular Winds : Lois Tilton : Thu, 01:35 AM

noreply@irosf.com ( Lois Tilton ) — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 01:35:30 +0000

OK: termites.

Yummy termites, all that dead rotting wood around to eat and a lot of them don't even go out in the sun anyway.

Secular Winds : Michael Andre-Driussi : Thu, 01:05 AM

noreply@irosf.com ( Michael Andre-Driussi ) — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 01:05:57 +0000

Post-apocalyptic roaches?

I love "Wall-E," but (IIRC) a History channel show/DVD, "Life After People" (2008), makes an ecological argument that cockroaches really do need humans (their warm cities, their abundance of foodstuffs and garbage) to survive. After the humans vanish, the roaches would eventually have to migrate out of the cold dead cities, regressing to being cricket-like critters of the woods, in much smaller numbers.

So in the near term, roaches might be around (depends on the nature of the apocalypse), but the longer term prospects of post-apocalyptic roaches are not nearly as rosy as we always joked. Sorta ironic that they need cities more than humans do!

Might be more a delicacy, like truffles.

The History of Matter Transmission : Michael Andre-Driussi : Wed, 08:02 PM

noreply@irosf.com ( Michael Andre-Driussi ) — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 20:02:52 +0000

Interesting article.

I believe there were teleport booths in the 1930s serial "Buck Rogers." These are glass booths within the Hidden City, and while they teleport people from booth to booth, they only replace elevators in this regard. Talk about a mundane use! (I don't think these booths made the cut when the serial was re-edited as the motion picture "Planet Outlaws," but maybe I'm wrong.)

I'm a big fan of "Forbidden Planet" (1956), and Rodenberry was clearly influenced by a lot of elements in that movie. But to me, the glass "transition tubes" of the starship are part of the "flying saucer tech" package. They seem to show up in "This Island Earth" (1955), and later on in the UFO/paranoia TV show "The Invaders" (1967-68). The kick of this for "Forbidden Planet" is that Earth obviously built the same sort of "flying saucer tech" on their own, thus raising the "wonder" bar to that high level, only to top it with the mysterious Krell.

Secular Winds : Lois Tilton : Wed, 04:22 PM

noreply@irosf.com ( Lois Tilton ) — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 16:22:33 +0000

I agree that McCarthy was deliberate in not assigning a cause to the calamity, but his descriptions are suggestive, such as the references to ubiquitous ash, the gray sky apparently filled with ash to the point of excluding the sunlight. The 1883 eruption of Krakatoa produced a similar effect.

McCarthy certainly went out of his way to avoid the subject, to treat the setting as a given, but readers, and particularly SF readers, will always speculate, regardless of the author's wishes. SF has always been, after all, a largely apocalyptic literature, and these scenarios are familiar to readers. I'm sure that we are all familiar with the prediction that the cockroaches will inherit the Earth, and I must admit to a difficulty in coming up with a plausible scenario that allows human survival and excludes roaches.

Would the starving humans in McCarthy's landscape eat cockroaches to survive? I'd bet on it.

Secular Winds : Karl Bunker : Wed, 03:31 PM

noreply@irosf.com ( Karl Bunker ) — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 15:31:20 +0000

Even the notion that the climate is undergoing a nuclear winter (whether caused by nuclear war or not) isn't supported by the text of the novel, as far as I know. The closest indication of such a thing I could find is "They were moving south. There'd be no surviving another winter here." which occurs early in the book. It's not clear whether the problem is colder winters, dwindling resources, poorer health, or what.

It's my impression that McCarthy is deliberately vague to the point of opaqueness on the nature of the disaster. This might be because he didn't want to be accused of writing "science fiction", because he wanted to tailor every detail of his bleak landscape without concern as to what the real effects of any real disaster would be, or (most likely, IMO) because he thought this would be an irrelevant distraction from the story he wanted to tell.

That's why I think it's inappropriate to say the story "warns of the folly of nuclear destruction". Doing that is (IMO) inserting an element into the text that McCarthy went out of his way to exclude.

Here We Go Again : Kristine Kathryn Rusch : Tue, 09:07 PM

noreply@irosf.com ( Kristine Kathryn Rusch ) — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 21:07:25 +0000

What's wrong with that paragraph, Sean? Either a magazine does well or it doesn't. Very few magazines, online or in print, last forever. Context. Did you read the entire essay? Aren't you connected to Prime Books? Isn't Prime Books behind Lightspeed Magazine? Wasn't there a compliment for your project in this? Will Prime Books and Lightspeed be around in ten years? I sure hope so. But there are no guarantees. Will they be remembered? Certainly.

Jeez, folks, get a grip.

Secular Winds : Lois Tilton : Tue, 05:33 PM

noreply@irosf.com ( Lois Tilton ) — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 17:33:40 +0000

The landscape portrays a "nuclear winter", but there are several other possible causes for this phenomenon, such as volcanic activity.