The Disquieting Guest — The Sublime Terror of Kaiju
In 1985, I had the chance to see Godzilla on the big screen for the first time since that treasured day in the mid-70s, when my father took me to a matinee of Godzilla vs. the Thing (aka Mothra vs. Godzilla, 1964). On this occasion, the film was Godzilla 1985 (aka The Return of Godzilla, 1984). Like the 1954 original, it had been re-edited by its American distributor, with Raymond Burr shoehorned in. It was also dubbed. I didn’t care. It was Godzilla. When a couple of kids (about eight years old, I’m guessing) called out “Hi, Godzilla!” when he appeared, I barely restrained myself from doing the same. But there was another voice in that theatre. In the row ahead of me, a couple sat with their daughter. She was young enough (four? five?) that it’s possible this was her first movie. Twice during the film, I heard a small voice emerge from the seat in front of me with a quavering, “This scares me.” The first time was early in the film, when a corpse is found on a derelict ship. The second time was when Godzilla’s massive foot comes down on a fleeing crowd.
For Your Hugo Award Consideration: A Very Big, Non-Endorsement List of Things to Love
We’re not going to release a Skiffy and Fanty endorsed set of Hugo Award nomination lists this year (though I might do so on my personal blog in the next month). Yes, we’re eligible for Best Fancast (and technically you can nominate our Sharknado episode for Best Related Work OR “The Great Lake Conspiracy (A Mustache and the Mutt Mystery)” for Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form) if you want to be cute). We do appreciate every vote we’ve received so far. But this post isn’t about us. It’s about all the books, writers, critics, movies, and so on that have been a part of the show throughout 2013. So what follows is a giant list of possibilities. At the very least, it’ll give you something new to check out. Here goes (only eligible works will be listed; Torture Cinema films have been left off, because you shouldn’t vote for them anyway):
My Superpower: Rhiannon Held
My Superpower is a regular guest column on the Skiffy and Fanty blog where authors and creators tell us about one weird skill, neat trick, highly specialized cybernetic upgrade, or other superpower they have, and how it helped (or hindered!) their creative process as they built their project. Today we welcome Rhiannon Held to talk about how the power of Metaphor relates to Reflected. ———————————- I am proud to say that my superpower is the power of METAPHOR. I’ve had it all my life, but never realized it until I started writing and learned to nurture my metaphor in a conscious way to make my novels richer. My newest book, Reflected, has metaphor on a number of different levels, and I’m continually grateful that’s the superpower I received when such things were being handed out. Now, to forestall the few pedants and people eager to prove they were paying attention in junior high English out there, I’m going to talk about metaphor in a large, umbrella sense. When it comes down to sentence structure, there is indeed a terminology difference between saying “My heart is a lump of coal” and “My heart is like a lump of coal.” The former’s a metaphor, and the latter’s a simile.
Mining the Genre Asteroid: The Anubis Gates by Tim Powers
The early 19th century. A plot against King George. Egyptian gods, magicians, gypsies, and other mysterious characters on the streets of London in a struggle for control and dominance. Enter a 20th century professor, Brendan Doyle. By turns, he has not only wound up in the thick of events, he has become trapped in that time. Can Doyle foil the plots, survive in the dangerous 19th century world and underworld, and even prosper? And most of all, like Sam Beckett…can Doyle find the right Time Gate to send him back home?
Book Review: Hang Wire by Adam Christopher
Everyone loves the circus, even a city as already rich in culture and history as San Francisco, city by the bay. Site of famous (infamous) earthquakes. Home to Bob, the shirtless guy who teaches people to dance on the beach in Aquatic Park. There are godlings and beings running around with strange powers, and the circus itself, of course, is not all that it is appears. Its proprietor is a bit of an odd duck, and what’s with that Riverdance-esque acrobat troupe, anyway? And their latest performer, no matter how good, is a man of mystery. Oh, and did I mention there’s a killer running around the city, a serial killer to equal the old Zodiac murder spree? In the end, everything revolves around the so called Hang Wire Killer in Hang Wire, a novel by Adam Christopher.
Adventures in SF Parenting: A SFWA Kerfuffle
Yes, I realize calling the most recent incidence of sexism in SFWA a “kerfuffle” somewhat diminishes the importance of the situation, but I’m going to try to make up for that in body of this post. As you may, or may not, know, I have two daughters. They are 11 (almost 12!) and 13 years of age. They are not considered “normal” by society because they are “geeks;” they are not considered beautiful by society because they don’t look like models; they are not considered equal because they are girls. They are, however, white girls, so they’ll have more opportunities than a lot of people. My challenge is to make them aware that though they are “normal,” “beautiful,” and “equal” in MY eyes, that they are not necessarily any of those things to the broader society in which we live. The further challenge is to teach them that not only do they not HAVE to be the former two (normal & beautiful), but also that they should, nay, NEED, to embrace themselves as amazing human beings regardless of what society tells them. As for the latter (equal), the challenge is to fight EVERY SINGLE INSTANCE of sexism and bigotry that I come across so that they see that it’s one thing to not be equal, but it’s an entirely more awful thing to take that lying down.
