Camera Obscura: Jericho

Intergalactic Medicine Show just published the latest installment of “Camera Obscura,” in which I review the new CBS post-apocalyptic drama Jericho.

[Excerpt:] CBS is positioning the show as a family drama, not as science fiction. Or as a publicist pointed out to me, it is post-apocalyptic, but “based on events that could actually happen,” so not really science fiction. While that phraseology is mildly insulting to the science fiction fan, I think I know what CBS is trying to say. Jericho is attempting to be Alas, Babylon, not A Canticle for Leibowitz. What it might also be trying to say is: there’s nothing original here that hasn’t already been done in SF, but it might seem new and fresh to a mainstream audience.

Go read the whole review and tell me what you think!

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Interview with Cory Doctorow

Science Fiction Weekly published my interview with Cory Doctorow today.

[Excerpt:] We’d been briefed, at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, on trusted computing by Microsoft, under an arrangement where they would give us a prepublication briefing and we would agree to a moratorium on commenting on it until they went live. But we would tell them what we thought of it so that when they went live they could have their responses ready, but we could have our critique ready. It was a little bit of nice detente. So after the moratorium ran out I published a story on called “0wnz0red” on Salon. It was up for the Nebula and so on. That story was a critique of trusted computing and was really well received. And I got an email from one of the of trusted computing people at Microsoft saying “How can I rebut a short story?” And I thought, “I found an avenue of attack for which they have no defense. I think I’ve got to pursue it.”

Go read it and tell me what you think!

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eBay Bans Black Metal?

Blabbermouth.net is reporting that eBay is allegedly banning the sale of black/extreme metal on their site, claiming that it “promote[s] or glorif[ies] hatred, violence, or racial intolerance.”

It appears (again allegedly) to be due to complaints filed by some Christian groups. The funny thing about that is that though there are Satanic extreme metal bands (black metal), there are also Christian extreme metal bands (formed no doubt to oppose the evil black metalers and to battle for the souls of headbangers). And of course plenty of extreme metal has nothing to do with Satan or Christianity, so this is bullshit. Extreme metal doesn’t “promote or glorify hatred, violence, or racial intolerance” any more than any other genre of media–there’s angry lyrics, sure, but there’s plenty of violent movies out there; do they “promote or glorify” violence? Will those be banned too?

[Update: There’s an online petition here that you can sign to protest the banning.]

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Anders’s Laws of Editing

Check out Lou Anders’s excellent “Three Laws of Editing” (modeled on Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics). As someone in the comment thread points out, it might be better to call it the “Three Laws of Publishing,” since it has to do with acquisitions, not actual editing, but still, check it out. Be sure to check out the comments for Paul Cornell’s comment, which is pretty damn funny.

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Slush Trends: Post-Apocalyptic SF

If you’re thinking of writing a post-apocalyptic story right now, you might want to hold off for a bit and work on other things. At the moment, it seems like at least 75% of the SF we’re seeing is, if not strictly about post-apocalyptic life, is set in a post-apocalyptic future–so much so that we’ve got good stories we might need to pass on just because we’ve got too much similar in inventory.

Don’t get me wrong; I love me some post-apocalyptic “wandering in a depopulated world, scrounging cans of Campbell’s pork and beans, defending one’s family from marauders”* as much as the next guy, but unless we’re going to change the name of the magazine to Mutants and Marauders Monthly, we’ve got to draw the line somewhere.

*From John Varley’s “The Manhattan Phone Book (Abridged).”

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