Salon.com has made this year’s Oscar-nominated short films available to view on their website. Hurry, go watch now, because you’ve only got until midnight tonight to watch them. If you don’t subscribe to Salon, just watch one of their ads so you can get the day pass, which will give you full access for the day.

I’ve watched two of them so far (“Guard Dog” and “Ryan”), and both are great, definitely worth watching. Go check them out:

http://www.salon.com/ent/feature/2005/02/25/shorts/index.html

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Over a noisy lunch the other day, I overheard Ellen Datlow talking about her experiences in Australia and New Zealand while she was teaching Clarion South. I only caught bits and pieces of the conversation, but I heard someone say “I heard they’re mean,” to which Gordon replied “That’s because they’re all hopped up on eucalyptus.” Naturally, I assumed he was referring to the Clarion students, and I found myself looking forward to seeing the prose churned out by the eucalyptus-fueled rage of the Aussies.

Turns out they were talking about koalas. Needless to say, I was greatly disappointed.

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Locus Online just reprinted my latest Locus audiobook review column. You can read it here.

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In his book COLLAPSE, author Jared Diamond says that in order to effect a change in a large company, one has to determine “which links in the supply chain are sensitive to public pressure.” For instance, when mad cow disease was a potential threat here in the states, the FDA issued some edicts to the meat industry, but the meat industry was slow to enact any changes. However, once McDonalds noticed a distinct decrease in customers and determined that the lack of business was due at least in part to fears over eating meat that could possibly have been infected with mad cow disease, they went to the meat industry and complained…which produced near instant results.

This got me thinking about the current state of science fiction in television and movies. The reason all these crappy SF movies keep getting made is because people keep going to the theater to see them. We allow the lure of special effects and pretty movie making lure us to the theater to see movies that usually don’t turn out to be any good, yet no matter what is said about the movie critically, our money is still going into the production company’s pockets; if enough of our money gets into their pockets, they translate that as a successful movie. So you end up with a director like Paul W. S. Anderson (or a screenwriter like Jeff Vintar, post-I, Robot), becoming, in the eyes of the production companies, authorities on science fiction, when in fact–to quote From Dusk til Dawn–they “don’t know rat shit from Rice Krispies.”

Unfortunately, the way Hollywood works, the failure of any SFnal movie would be bad for all SF movies; while it would be nice to see the genre not be further disparaged by the likes of films (and I use the term loosely) such as Battlefield Earth, the failure of any SF movie would only make it more difficult to get *any* SF movie made, even one with a brilliant script.

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I say witty things on occasion. Sometimes I even write them down, or post them to this blog, or to a newsgroup or a message board. Thus it is my goal this year to say something clever enough for Dave Langford to quote me in Ansible; failing that, I hope to say something stupid enough, or Thog-like enough, that he will be compelled to mock me.

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This month, we bought new stories from: Paolo Bacigalupi, Terry Bisson, Scott Bradfield, Robert Reed, Carter Scholz, Sydney Joyce Van Scyoc, Bruce Sterling, and Steven Utley. We also bought a story from Michaela Roessner, which we believe makes her and her grandfather Elmer the first grandparent/grandchild duo to publish stories in F&SF.

And lest I forget — yet another new slush survivor, by the name of Ef Deal.

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My recent discussion here of the relevance of F&SF’s corporate name of Spilogale, and the subsequent discussion in my Rumor Mill message board, got me thinking about skunks and fiction. You don’t see too much of that. Am I the only one outraged? When’s someone going to do for Mephitidae fiction what has been done for the literature of Muroidea and Leporidae?

I seem to be a fan of such fiction in general; my favorite piece of short fiction is “Flowers for Algernon,” which, while not strickly a Muroidea story, it wouldn’t be the same without its titular rodent character. In addition to that, I grew up reading those Beverly Cleary Ralph the Mouse books (The Mouse and the Motorcycle, et al.). The Secret of NIHM was always one of my favorite animated films. You get the idea. If I’d been exposed to those Brian Jacques books as a kid, I’m sure I would have devoured those too.

On the lagomorph side of the coin, of course, is Watership Down, which is not only a fantastic book, but also a wonderful animated film (so is Plague Dogs, but Canidae are well-represented in fiction, and so are not relevant to this discussion, except in a Richard Adams-tangential sense). I’m not as well-versed in Leporidae lore–in fact, I can’t think of another rabbit story off the top of my head–but it seems equally as appealing.

So, though skunks are actually of the order carnivora, putting them in the same league as the likes of lions and tigers and bears…(don’t say it), it seems like they’d be a natural to follow in the footsteps of the aforementioned creatures.

Plus, with a sinister name like Mephitidae, how can all you fantasy writers resist?

Or am I wrong? Is there some vast treasure trove of skunk fiction out there I’m not aware of?

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Marian, on the Asimov’s Forum, pointed out this handy website: Free Speculative Fiction Online. As the name implies, this is a portal to the various SF stories you can find online for free (all legit, no copyright-pirated stuff). You can sort through the stories by author, awards won, or by magazine. What piqued my interest was the archive of F&SF stories. Looks like most of these are reprinted on SCI FICTION or Infinity Plus, so they’re not all obscure links, but there are a few stories on author websites that you might not otherwise have been aware of. Plus, it’s kind of nice to see all these F&SF stories in one place, so that you can get your friends to read some stories from F&SF, even if they’re too cheap or lazy to go buy a copy. Of course, once we’ve got them hooked, surely they’ll run right out and subscribe so they can get their next fix.

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Entertainment Weekly (Feb. 4, 2005) reviews Old Man’s War by John Scalzi (B+), Cleopatra 7.2 by Elizabeth Ann Scarborough (C-), Hammered by Elizabeth Bear (B-), and Coyote Rising by Allen Steele (A-).

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If any of you can’t wait to get your very own F&SF rejection letters for free, check out eBay: some generous soul is auctioning off an old rejection letter, with the starting bid of just $24.99. Quite a bargain!

Actually, there is a somewhat interesting angle to the item, in that back in the old days, the editors sometimes wrote rejection letters on the back of cover proofs. Upon seeing the item, Gordon remarked “Yeah, instead of using the backs of old cover proofs, I’ve been thinking of using the backs of envelopes, old napkins, discarded review slips.”

In light of our corporate name, Spilogale, I think we should mail dead skunks in lieu of rejection letters. Not only does this reinforce our brand, but it clearly spells out our opinion of the submitted story, namely, that it stinks. In the long run, this would probably be a bit more expensive than reusing random pieces of trash around the office, but it would certainly make quite a statement, and would make for far more interesting eBay auctions in 50 years.

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