Lem dead at 84

Between yesterday and today, at least eight major news sources have reported on the death of Polish science-fiction writer Stanislaw Lem. Lem, best known for the novels His Master’s Voice and Solaris, which was turned into a film in 1972 by Andrei Tarkovsky and again in 2002 by Steven Soderbergh, died yesterday of heart failure at the age of 84. Often considered a sci-fi writer for those who don’t like sci-fi, Lem showed a public disdain for many of the genre’s exemplars, which led to his honourary membership to the Science Fiction Writers of America being revoked in 1976. And although, according to Ben Sisario’s obituary for Lem in The New York Times, “his books have been translated into at least 35 languages and have sold 27 million copies,” many of his fans, among them bloggers at Bookninja.com and The Literary Saloon, say that his books are woefully undertranslated.

Related links:
Click here for Lem’s obituary in The Guardian
Click here for Lem’s obituary in The New York Times
Click here for a Lem-related posting on The Literary Saloon
Click here to access Lem’s official website

In Other Media gets emotional about climate change

Still riding high on a stellar talk delivered last night in Toronto by David Suzuki in which he both predicted imminent environmental collapse unless people change their ways right now and condemned the mainstream media’s failure to deem scientific evidence of this collapse as newsworthy, In Other Media was disconcerted to find that petroleum associations can indeed give prizes for journalism. The donor, in this case, is the American Association of Petroleum Geologists; the recipient is science fiction author Michael Crichton for his book State of Fear, a book that, according to The New York Times, “dismisses global warming as a largely imaginary threat embraced by malignant scientists for their own ends.”

The world’s leading scientists have been sounding climate change alarms for quite some time. In 1992, some 1,700 scientists, including the majority of Nobel laureates in the sciences, issued a document entitled World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity, which predicted disasters on many fronts, many caused by climate change. Malignant Nobel Prize-winners? Well, I guess it could happen.

Here’s what some malignant scientists had to say about Crichton’s award in the Times: “When the book was published in 2004, climate experts condemned it as dangerously divorced from reality…. The book is ‘demonstrably garbage,’ Stephen H. Schneider, a Stanford climatologist, said in an interview yesterday. Petroleum geologists may like it, he said, but only because ‘they are ideologically connected to their product, which fills the gas tanks of Hummers.

“Daniel P. Schrag, a geochemist who directs the Harvard University Center for the Environment, called the award ‘a total embarrassment’ that he said ‘reflects the politics of the oil industry and a lack of professionalism’ on the association’s part.

“As for the book, he added, ‘I think it is unfortunate when somebody who has the audience that Crichton has shows such profound ignorance.”

For his part, Larry Nation of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, is actually quoted to have said of Crichton’s book, “It is fiction…. But it has the absolute ring of truth.”

Related links:
Click here for the full story from The New York Times
Click here for the World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity

The 22-cent solution

Bert Archer reports on an author who has found a way of bypassing traditional publishing methods — and receiving an infusion of much-needed cash — by setting up a subscription service for his short fiction. Primarily a science fiction author, Bruce Holland Rogers e-mails three stories a month to subscribers for the low cost of $8 per year, which works out to 22 cents a story. The stories range from 200 to 2,000 words, and though most contain elements of the fantastic, their appeal extends far beyond hardcore sci-fi fans. So far, Rogers is earning almost $250 a month for his subscriber-only fiction.

Related links:
Read the article in the Toronto Star
Read samples of Roger’s work

Salon serializes Doctorow novella

Today, Salon.com unveiled the first of 10 installments of Cory Doctorow’s new novella, Themepunks. Born and raised in Toronto, Doctorow, an acclaimed science fiction writer, has made all of his books available for free download, saying on his website that “the increased scope and duration of copyright are strangling free expression, privacy and innovation, and … that enabling my fans to trade my words makes me more money.”

Related links:
Click here to read the first installment of Themepunks
Click here to visit Doctorow’s website
Click here for a Q&Q article on Doctorow from June 2003

Basilières vs. science fiction fans, round two

It began when Black Bird author Michel Basilières posted an online essay at the Maisonneuve site discussing both the merits and faults of legendary science fiction author Philip K. Dick. The piece also included some sharp words about the genre overall, and it launched a firestorm of furious recriminations from sci-fi fans, which in turn has prompted a follow-up column from Basilières. “For the record,” he begins, “in my remarks about Philip K. Dick, I did not intend to be understood as saying all science fiction is garbage. It was my error that what in my mind was the voice of the devil’s advocate came out on the page as a flat statement.” He concludes, though, that “no one’s reputation is served by indiscriminate praise, whether from a literary novelist or from an adolescent geek. We must be as hard on the genre writers as we are on anyone else. If they are to be considered of literary value, they must meet literary standards.” Hear, hear.

Related links:
Basilières’ latest essay on science fiction
Basilières’ original essay on Philip K. Dick, with reader comments
Related links:
Basilières’ latest essay on science fiction
Basilières’ original essay on Philip K. Dick, with reader comments

On reading Dick

In a piece for the Maisonneuve website, Toronto novelist Michel Basilières considers the legacy of science fiction legend Philip K. Dick. For mainstream audiences, Dick is best known as the writer whose work inspired films like Blade Runner and Minority Report, but to sci-fi readers he’s a giant in the field.

Basilières admires some aspects of Dick’s work, noting that “as is true of all really great writers, he had an individual vision of reality that informed everything he wrote.” But he’s also quick to point out Dick’s flaws. “Real writing takes real time, and Dick wrote everything on fast-forward. Even the unpublished (in his lifetime) mainstream novels — the ones he wanted to be remembered for, that he considered his real work — were pretty much slapped out as fast as he could type.”

Basilières is skeptical, too, about Dick’s chosen genre. Science fiction, he argues, “is obviously low-grade escapism written for simpleminded adults or, at best, clever kids.” The exception? In Basilières’ opinion, it’s Stanislaw Lem, “my candidate for the one science fiction author indisputably worthy of literary canonization.”

Related links:
Michel Basilières on Philip K. Dick