Galactic Sububria 33!
In which we wax lyrical about awards, short stories and the love of reading. Because it’s that time of year! You can download us from iTunes, or get us at Galactic Suburbia.
News
Aurealis Awards and Ceremony!
Aqueduct links to 25 commemorations of Joanna Russ
New podcast – How I got my Boyfriend to Read Comics
Last Short Story is on Twitter @lastshortstory
New Galactic Chat: Kirstyn McDermott
What Culture Have we Consumed?
Tansy: The Shattering, Karen Healey
Alex: The Wise Man’s Fear, Patrick Rothfuss; How to Suppress Women’s Writing, Joanna Russ; Welcome to Bordertown, Ellen Kushner and Terri Windling; finished Stargate SG1 for the second time.
Alisa: Ken Liu’s Paper Menagerie (F&SF March/April), Joanna Russ’s We Who Are About To
Pet Subject: Last Short Story 2011
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Sanctuary: we give up
We’ve given Sanctuary the pilot and the first ep aaand… I think we give up.
I liked Amanda Tapping as Sam Carter in SG-1, so I didn’t think it unreasonable to chase up her next project (well, after Atlantis). But… this is not Stargate. For a start, Tapping has a ridiculous English accent which I just can’t take seriously. For seconds, even if the action in Stargate was sometimes a bit tacky – and I love it but I’ll grant that – at least they mostly built the sets. Here? It looks like every second shot is done against a blue screen and then the set added in later, because the production company was too cheap to figure out how to do a big-ass gothic pile other than via computer.
I didn’t mind the first episode; the getting-the-team-together thing is often quite interesting too me, and Tapping’s mysterious Dr Magnus clearly had A Past. The slightly-haunted-but-mostly-down-to-earth forensic pysch she recruits had some potential as the audience’s Everyman; I didn’t mind him. And Magnus’ daughter Ashley – Buffy crossed with Whistler from Blade 3, the one played by the Jessica – was humorous in a ham-kinda way. In fact, the best bit of the whole show has been the silly repartee between mother and daughter, where mother worries but only because she’s the one asking daughter to deliberately put herself in harm’s way. So I was willing to watch a few more… but then we watched the first proper ep. And it got my goat. Badly.
How badly? Well, apparently the last recorded mention of bubonic plague was in Scotland in the 800s (wah?). And the Morrigan are an ‘ancient’ myth first recorded in ‘medieval times’ – specifically in Arthur’s day. Yeh. From that point on I was just cranky and unwilling to give it any slack.
If you can tell me that halfway through the season it got better I will reconsider, but at the moment I am considering me and Sanctuary as officially Not Going To Happen.
Galactic Suburbia #19: the Greco-Roman issue
You can get us from iTunes or download us here!
While Alisa is away, Alex & Tansy play… in ANCIENT GREECE! We talk awards, the end of publishing as we know it, stressful feminist debates, Vonda McIntyre, Twitter fiction, Stargate, and whether there’s enough Greek & Roman mythology in modern fantasy.
News
Tansy wins WSFA Small Press Award for Siren Beat;
Last Drink Bird Head Award Winners;
John Joseph Adams takes over from Cat Rambo & Sean Wallace as editor of Fantasy Magazine;
Realms of Fantasy dies: from Shawna McCarthy, and the publisher;
Wiscon committee disappoints through inaction (also here); and then finally moves to disinvite Elizabeth Moon as GoH (warning, many of the comments on that one are pretty awful to wade through); also here and here;
Paul Collins on how the ebook revolution isn’t working so well ;
Cat Valente on tedium, evil, and why the term ‘PC’ is only used these days to hurt and silence people;
Peter M Ball explaining how white male privilege uses requests for civility to silence the legitimate anger of others;
on Vonda McIntyre’s “Dreamsnake”, a controversial Hugo winning novel from 1979 which has been out of print for 10 years; and an interview with Vonda McIntyre about the book.
What have we been reading/listening to?
Tansy: Death Most Definite, Trent Jamieson; Blameless, Gail Carriger, Bleed by Peter M Ball, “Twittering the Universe” by Mari Ness, Shine & “Clockwork Fairies” by Cat Rambo, Tor.com.
Alex: Silver Screen, Justina Robson; Sprawl; Deep Navigation, Alastair Reynolds; The Beginning Place, Ursula le Guin; abandoned Gwyneth Jones’ Escape Plans; listening to The 5th Race, ep 1 (Stargate SG1 fan podcast).
Pet Subject
Classical mythology in modern fantasy. Can it still work? Do you have to get it ‘right’?
Book mentioned:
The Firebrand, Marion Zimmer Bradley
Medea, Cassandra, Electra by Kerry Greenwood
Olympic Games, Leslie What
Dan Simmons’ Ilium and Olympos
Gods Behaving Badly, Marie Phillips
Troy, Simon Brown
Margaret Atwood’s Penelopiad and Jeanette Winterson’s Weight, also David Malouf’s Ransom – along the same lines as Lavinia by Ursula Le Guin
Robert Holdstock’s Celtika, Iron Grail, Broken Kings
too much Stargate? Never!
I am lucky enough at the moment to have little bit of what I choose to call play money. My natural Scrooge tendencies are too painful to go into here, but suffice to say that splurging – even on thins that I really want and will get a lot of joy out of – is something I struggle with. So I thought long and hard, and eventually decided it would be worth it: I bought the 59 DVD box of Stargate: SG-1. This is a crazy extravagance; I know someone with them already – although theirs are pirated, and of course I don’t have easy access to them. Plus, this comes in a lovely big box, complete with tacky raised circle (aka stargate) on the front.
Anyway, it arrived on Thursday. We watched the entire first season on the weekend – my love didn’t get into show until about season 2 or 3 when we watched it the first time (oh, did I mention that I’ve already seen the whole lot?), so he enjoyed watching that; I also discovered that first time through I missed a disc – three or four episodes, including the wonderful Antarctic episode. We’re now into the second season, and we’re trying to limit ourselves to only two… or so… episodes a night. Hard, though…
Couple of things of note:
* Samantha is cringingly nerdy in the first couple of episodes. I am so glad they sophisticated her.
* Teal’c is fairly painful in these first few seasons; his facial expressions are just ridiculous. And not always convincing.
* Michael Shanks. Daniel Jackson. *sigh* Wonderful!
* Richard Dean Anderson. Jack O’Neill. As above!
I said something to my love as we watched an episode – something about enjoying the interaction between Jack and Samantha – and he turned to me, in ridicule, and asked whether I had bought 59 DVDs just for the sake of a few, frustratingly brief, interactions between the two.
Well, duh.
Stargate – the movie
We watched the original Stargate movie for the first time in a long time the other night. I must admit to a little fangirl flutter of the heart when the theme music started: I had either not realised, or forgotten, that the theme music is the same in the show as it was in the movie. Not surprising, of course. It did give me the giggles to realise just how much I loved SG-1 – we finished it ages ago, and I miss having more episodes to watch. More than I miss FarScape; perhaps not quite as much as West Wing.*
A couple of things I noticed, post-viewing of SG-1:
# Michael Shanks and James Spader – very cool, very similar, at least in playing Daniel. sigh.
# Richard Dean Anderson kicks Kurt Russell as Jack. Completely.
# I had never thought about the fact that they must store sets – in the hopes of re-using them at some stage. Either that or they worked really, really hard at being true to the movie for the show, and I just doubt it.
# There was a three year gap between movie and show. Is that a long time? It seems like a long time.
# The movie was a bit… well… boring. Especially compared with the show. Am I getting old and jaded?
# I cannot wait for the SG-1 movie to be made. There’s nothing on IMdB about it, but seriously… it has to happen.
*Of which we must retrieve seasons 2 and 3 from the in-laws. I love the first season, but there’s only so many times you can watch it with only season 7 as your other option. Oh, and season 5, but that gets a bit depressing.
StarGate
I have, in the past, mentioned how uncomfortable I am about being the over-enthusiastic fan. Nonetheless, having just finished Stargate SG-1 season 10…
The last season was mostly brilliant. The 200th episode was hilarious: a revisit to Wormhole Xtreme!, which makes a lot of sense – the team being asked for their input into a telemovie. This enitre episode was an homage to the rest of the show, as well as a few others. There’s a comment about how weird it is to make a movie from a show that only lasted a few episodes, and T’ealc says there was a lot of interest on DVD… hello, Firefly! But my absolutely favouritest reference, which nearly made me cry with laughter, was Vala trying to convince the producer to create a new show – basically FarScape. Claudia Black was her own character, but Michael Shanks was Crichton and and Ben Browder was Stark. And the producer makes a quip about how he’s never heard of anything like it… Marvellous.
See what I mean about being a fan?
Anyway, the last episode was pretty cool, too, And my theory is that they knew the show was canned (so sad!!) when they were filming the last one, at least – the very last line is something of a reassurance to fans, I think, that there will be more Stargate, eventually.
I do hope so.
Stargate and Doctor Who
I think it’s only just occurred to me that Stargate is a lot like Doctor Who. Everybody speaks English.
Even the Russians.
Colonel Jack
“You ended that sentence with a preposition… you _bastard_!”
As with Carter – I _knew_ there was a reason I liked Jack…
Samantha Carter
“Wormhole theory, motorcycle riding, and lock-picking.”
I knew there was a reason why I liked Major Sam, on SG-1.
SG-1
I’m really getting into Jonas Quinn – the character is very entertaining. I still want Daniel back, though.
Jack as a snake-head, though?? Weird. Must have really wanted a holiday….
Randomly Yours, Alex 