Editorial Archive > 2005

Act of faith
01/12/2005. The only thing we can all really contribute positively towards, muses Uncle Geoff, is the reduction in global warming - to show the next generation that there was once a time when global dimming didn't also make the skies darker when cloudy. Don't forget to be ecology conscious as part of your new year's resolutions. Your world needs you.

Are movies better than ever?
01/12/2005. Last month I was at the Toronto International Film Festival. A week or so before the festival we go through a process of choosing the films that we wanted to see. For years I had been picking films by whether the film sounded good or not. Some turned out to be good, and some were stinkers.

The Big Bag Never Opened
01/11/2005. Some time in the 1980s The Guardian, then so notorious for misprints that it was nicknamed The Grauniad, published an article that referred to 'the big bag theory' of the origin of the universe, recalls Scots science fiction author Ken Macleod. A letter pointing out this mistake was sportingly illustrated with a cartoon of the Greek goddess Cornucopia, shaking the stars and galaxies out of a big bag.

My take on Firefly
01/11/2005. A man sits on a sand dune. There appears to be nobody around for many miles of desert in any direction. That may be a good thing because the man is stark naked. There is no sign of his clothing anywhere. The man is apparently reflecting on the events that brought him here. "That went well." You immediately find yourself wondering what has happened and where he would have been and in what state if things had not gone so well. This is the beginning of an episode of the TV series Firefly.

Words without understanding are just gibberish
01/11/2005. Or keeping the wolf from the door by equipping the sheep with teeth. Yes, it's November's editorial from Uncle Geoff.

Investing futures in Science Fiction
01/10/2005. It seems every other of my editorials is being dominated by some world crisis or another these days, says Uncle Geoff. Be it war, natural or unnatural catastrophe or something in between, it doesn't feel right to just glibly go on about some unrelated subject as if nothing has happened. SF might be seen as escapism by outsiders but on many of its levels, it's an examination of our current reality which seems to be on the brink of falling apart bit by bit as I write which oddly enough doesn't quite reflect in our fiction.

Forbidden Power
01/09/2005. Mark considers a recent article which rails against the film industry repeatedly doing versions of the Frankenstein myth in films. Science fiction films in which a mad scientist or a whole scientific community overstep the bounds to knowledge that God has put in placed in His Wisdom. They invent a new life form or drill a hole though the crust of the Earth or clone a dinosaur. In a sense these are all Frankenstein myths reframed.

Freedom is a three-edged sword
01/09/2005. The definition of the term 'freedom' is rather diverse, especially dependent on how you pre-fix it, says Uncle Geoff. There's my freedom, your freedom and country freedom. Often as not, at least in the western world, they might even mean the same thing as long as your personal freedom does not infringe on the freedom of other people.

Is serious the new fannish?
01/09/2005. A few weekends ago SF author Ken Macleod was at Interaction, the 63rd World Science Fiction Convention (the Worldcon) in Glasgow. The venue was the Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre with its associated hotels. Constructed on a formerly derelict stretch of Clyde shore, the SEC and the Science Park across the water from it look like some spaceport of the future.

Free will and peace are the aims of the individual
01/08/2005. Now this is a rare occurrence for Uncle Geoff. Having to re-write his editorial based on rapidly updating news and then hoping the relevance won't be out of date too soon. He would also point out that the material he is leaving out is probably worthy of detailed editorials somewhere down the line. Yes, let's talk religion, SFF fans.

From Merlot to Cockfosters
01/08/2005. There is a law called The Law of Unintended Consequences, says Mark. According to this law almost all human actions have at least one unintended consequence. What ever you do, it will have additional side effects that you did not intend. Sociologist Robert K. Merton's name is associated with this rule, though Mark remembers musing about it back when he was in high school and before it was ever spelled out for him.

The Lucas Loophole
01/07/2005. I read a review of the "Star Wars" series that complained about the absurdity of the whole thing. The author had a number of complaints about characters and motivations, all very much matters of taste. Only one complaint had real substance. The writer complained that the whole idea of a galactic civilization is absurd. The distances are too great. People seem to flit around between star systems as if they were states in the United States. That seems on the face of it absurd.

Born-Again Cynic
01/07/2005. Whether it's the 1933 Loch Ness Monster Surgeon's photograph actually being a model or the 60s Big Foot film footage actually a woman in a gorilla suit from a relative who couldn't hold a camera on horseback but made it more spontaneous by the effect, one thing that comes out of it is that even experts can be taken in by fakes. Is it any wonder that it's harder to convince people of anything out of the ordinary these days might be the real thing?

Chekhov's Gun
01/06/2005. Chekhov's gun is a literary weapon, says science fiction author Charles Stross; "If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired. Otherwise don't put it there."

The scientist's apprentice
01/06/2005. The Jurassic marine crocodile Metriorhynchus was a lithe and elegant beast, says Scottish science fiction author Ken Macleod. We know a fair bit about it, including that it sometimes suffered from arthritis.

Do the Math
01/06/2005. A phrase you hear frequently is "do the math." The sort of thing is "One man. Three women. Do the math." Wow. Sounds impressive, huh? Usually when you hear or read that there is no mathematics whatsoever to do. Or if there is mathematics to do, it is second grade arithmetic. There is a one third of a man per woman. So what does that mean? They aren't going to divide him up.

Would we be happy with utopia?
01/06/2005. This month, Geoff proves utopia ain’t a nice place to be. Neither is a distopia come to that.

Space Station Hinckley
01/05/2005. Author Ken Macleod spent the Easter weekend at the Hinckley Island Hotel, as one of the Guests of Honour at Paragon 2, this year's Eastercon or British National Science Fiction Convention.

Not a good word to say
01/05/2005. A fixture of SF conventions is the Dealers' Room, says author Ken Macleod. It's mostly books, of course, and these mostly second-hand, but you can also find craftwork, from real deadly daggers to dragon-patterned hairclips; jewellery and embroidery, T-shirts and tiaras. But it's mostly books.

This Year's Nebula Award Nominees
01/05/2005. Some of this may be old new to most of our readers, but we have a lot of new readers who are not aware of the basic lore of science fiction, says Mark. The Science Fiction Writers Of America will award the Nebula Awards the last weekend of this month. Like the Hugos the Nebulas are awarded annually but unlike the Hugos, an item is eligible for two years, not one.

Why do I love Science Fiction? Why do you love Science Fiction?
01/05/2005. Uncle Geoff looks at why we are transient SF viewers/readers and it all goes back to how we all started our science fiction interest in the first place.

In love with the Meq
01/04/2005. As editor-in-chief at Del Rey, Betsy Mitchell says she approaches submissions of first novels as the porcupine approaches its mate: gingerly, very gingerly.

Interesting Thoughts
01/04/2005. The Internet is more like a brain, and the Web more like a mind, than anything so far implemented on a single computer, says Scots science fiction author Ken Macleod. This far-from-original idea suggests some interesting thoughts, about, well, interesting thoughts.

What difference does make? [And no, that is not grammatically incorrect.]
01/04/2005. Of all the species on this planet, humans could probably be considered the most diverse within a single species without actually saying there are sub-species. A zebra is still a striped horse. All giraffes have similar patterns - even if it takes an expert to tell individuals apart. There's two main sub-species of elephants and rhinos but they follow the same identical pattern on each side of the divide. Then, amongst all these and more examples, we have humans.

Those Eyes That Follow You Around
01/03/2005. I was reading an article recently and somebody talked about seeing a photograph of somebody who had died many years before. The author used a phrase that I often find applied to paintings and to photographs that always gets my goat a little. What the author said was that the woman in the photograph had an ethereal quality with a strange smile and eyes that looked at the viewer and mysteriously seemed to follow the viewer around the room. It is that last part that I want to comment on.

Putting the science into Science Fiction
26/02/2005. A couple editorials ago, I was discussing the use of allegory in Science Fiction. This time, we're going to look at the application of science in SF. In various forms, over the years, there has been varied discussions about the use of science in SF. Writers who are self-admittedly not scientists or with no inclination that way, have tended to veer towards the soft sciences or focused on characters or plot more than what makes the backdrop work.

Nature is Earth’s biggest terrorist after man - and only just! But we’re ready to show our worse.
01/02/2005. Disaster movies are part of Science Fiction fodder. We can show alternative endings for the fate of the other inhabitants of this planet Earth, confident that we can sleep happily at night that such disasters will never happen in our reality. Such films might even have a happy ending. After all, we welcome the stars’ survival even if the rest of the world didn’t make it. The events in Southern Asia on 26th December 2004 will testify that it doesn’t and is a strong reminder just how precious the planet we live on is and a wake-up call not just to help the survivors there but to work towards looking after our planet.

Catching Up
01/02/2005. Science fiction author Ken Macleod had recently finished his latest SF novel, provisionally titled Learning the World. Having recklessly agreed to write short stories for no less than four anthologies, three of them deadlined for next year, he now feels as if he is climbing the lower slopes of Mount Stross.

Like a Death; or, Altogether Elsewhere, Vast
01/01/2005. The Conservative and the Communist sometimes find they have more in common than either might have expected; at least that they understand each other, and agree on what is important; likewise the Freethinker and the Fundamentalist. In politics as in religion, both poles are perplexed by the Liberal; from opposite sides of the case they scratch their heads, like Victorian biologists looking at a platypus and wondering if they aren't being made a monkey of.

High energy on the cheap: and a little shrimp shall lead them
01/01/2005. There is a growing excitement in parts of the physics community these days, says by Mark R. Leeper. And you may have read about it here first. Back on September of 2002, Mark published the following article on Snapping Shrimp in his zine the MT Void.