1) I’m going to find every mother-fucker who tried to convince me I’d like this film and I’m going to punch them in the arm. If they trotted out the “you just have to turn your brain off” logic, I’m going to punch them twice. I turned my brain off, as advised. It was still too stupid for me to actually like it.

2) To be fair, there were some good bits. Many of them recycled from Aliens, the last film James Cameron made that I actually liked. I liked Giovanni Ribbisi’s evil corporate guy far more than I liked Paul Reiser’s evil corporate guy. And Michelle Rodriguez in an ornithopter makes up for a variety of ills.

3) At the end of the first hour, I hoped that this might not be an utter disappointment. The opening is solid, the characters get onstage pretty quickly, the set-up is full of bad naming conventions but otherwise okay. Conflict is established: the marine among the field researchers; the humans against the world; Ripley versus Paul Rieser; that second Avatar pilot getting jealous of Jake’s success with the Navi. Sure, most of that conflict disappears once Sully is inside the Avatar, but maybe it’ll come back.

4) At the end of the second hour, I decided there really should be some Disney song about A Whole New World playing over the top of the long sequences where we learn that the world is magical and interconnected for the ninth or tenth time. Said sequences do a great job of showing of the technology and creating spectacle, but also eliminates every character arc but one. Most of the more interesting arcs are blatantly written out via voice-over.

4b) I’ll be honest here – Avatar is primarily about spectacle. I don’t do spectacle. My first response to the Grand Canyon was “It’s a hole in the ground; lets go do something else.” Couple this with being an SF fan from way back and most of Avatar is really just well-rendered vistas of standard SF/Fantasy landscapes. If they wanted to do that, they should have just made a computer game.

5) At the end of the third hour, the movie had tried to perk me up by saying “Dragon’s versus Ornithopter’s, dude. Come on, this is cool.” For the most part, it was too late – I was bored and irritable and just wanted the fucking film over. Still, it was a cool fight scene. It lured me in. Then things got really stupid. Deus ex Machina stupid. And it tacked on a hand-to-hand fight scene it didn’t need, and tried to play out the character arc I would have been interested in if they’d actually bothered to build it at some point.

5b) The worst line in this film – and there are some contenders among the rather generic dialogue – comes in the finale twenty minutes when the hard-arsed marine captain squares off against our hero Sully and asks “how does it feel to betray your own race?” and you’re left thinking “you know what, it’d be nice if someone actually put some thought into that before this point in the script.”

6) Okay, the turning off my brain thing mentioned in point one? I can do it. Honestly, I can. I own copies of The Chronicles of Riddick. And Desperado. Heck, I own a copy of the Core. And I really, really liked Aliens. The thing is, most films where I turn off my brain basically say “look, if we have subtext it’s primarily accidental. We’re just chasing after the next cool thing.” They know that Subtext is a two-way street – you can’t promise it and walk away just because you have pretty visuals and nice action sequences. Avatar promised subtext and meaning. I paid attention. It decided I wasn’t getting it, despite the fact that the subtext is relatively shallow, and proceeded to beat me around the head with said subtext for the final hour of the film.

7) Seriously, the best thing in this film is Michelle Rodriguez flying a gunship.

Pandora? Sully? Grace? UNOB-FRICKEN-TANIUM? Worst naming conventions since the Chronicles of Riddick. And at least the Chronicles of Riddick knew it was an unrelenting sequence of cheese and action-sequences with all the depth of a wading pool.

9) 3D movies give me a headache.

10) Good things about this movie: Michelle Rodriguez; Sam Worthington; Paul Reiser Giovanni Ribisi; Ripley; the ability to endlessly snark about its failings; ornithopters. If someone would just take these elements and, say, remake Dune or put out a new Alien movie (without Predators), I’d be a happy man. ‘Cause there’s potential there for something awesome, especially now that Avatar’s gotten the obligatory “new film technology’s endlessly wanky film that’s really about how awesome said new film technology is” out of the way.

End Note: All of this leaves off the original objection to the film I posted on facebook a while back – that it’s going to be the same tired replay of white post-colonial guilt we’ve seen in shit like the The Power of One and Dances with Wolves and every other story where a white block from the conquering nation saves the tribe by becoming one of them. Needless to say, that objection remains, but I’m saddened to discover that there’s really no attempt to complicate the the narrative beyond that. Here’s one of those hints to take home – you can write a gritty story about the evils of corporations, or you can write a fairy tale. It’s fucking hard to do both in the same story, and Avatar falls apart about the point that it tries.

Once or twice a year I get out to see a live gig that reminds me why I like going and seeing live music. It happens far less often these days than it did in the past, but as a Dresden Doll’s fan it was kind of inevitable that I’d sell internal organs in order to go see the Amanda-Fucking-Palmer solo tour when it passed through Brisbane.

Short version: Awesome
Long version: totally worth living without a spleen until I can buy mine back from the pawn broker.

Data Point the First: There’s about seven days left of Twelfth Planet Press’s Silly Season Stocking Stuffer Sale, whereby Australians can pick up a copy of my novella Horn with free shipping (and everyone else in the world gets a massively discounted postage). Given Horn’s cover price of $10, that’s a pretty sweet deal.

Data Point the Second: As of about six minutes ago, there were only 9 copies of Horn left in Twelfth Planet’s inventory.

Data Point the Third: The free shipping on Horn is a total “while stocks last” kind of deal (and there are plenty of other awesome books included in the sale.

Now I’m not mentioning this to suggest you should go buy a copy of the book right away. Nope, not at all. This is the silly season after all, and folks are generally watching their budgets in order to ensure maximum goodwill and festive cheer for those they love.

I’m not even saying “get it now or forever lose the chance,” since it sounds like we’ll be doing a reprint at some point in the future.

I’m certainly not say that Horn does make a kinda neat Stocking Stuffer for those friends who might be inclined to like a story about unicorns written specifically for people who hate unicorns. ‘Cause some people just don’t dig unicorn squick, and I’m okay with that.

What I might be saying – just maybe - that it’d be pretty damn neat for yours truly if those last nine copies went to a good home between now and Christmas.

‘Cause there’s not many things you can say to those extended family members you see twice a year when they ask “how’s the writing going” that actually sounds impressive, particularly when you write more short stories than anything else. But maybe, I don’t know, just maybe, “the book sold out a few days ago” will do the trick

I’m just going to snurch this one straight from the Apex blog:

To celebrate the end of our first year of becoming a professional level digital magazine, I’m pleased to announce that we will be presenting an award to the best original fiction published by Apex Magazine. The award will be voted on by the fans, meaning you! Voting starts tonight and will continue through January 30th. The story receiving the most votes will be announced on February 1st.

The author of the Apex Magazine Story of the Year will receive a trophy and the unique distinction of being the best Apex had to offer during 2009.

Presented below are the twenty-two original stories published during 2009:
“59 Beads”(4300) by Rochita Loenen-Ruiz
“Overclocking”(2600) by James L. Sutter
“After the Fire”(2900) by Aliette De Bodard
“Benjamin Schneider’s Little Greys”(2100) by Nir Yaniv
“A Poor Man’s Roses”(2400) by Alethea Kontis
“To Dream of Stars: An Astronomer’s Lament” (5500) by Peter M. Ball
“Fungal Gardens”(6100) by Ekaterina Sedia
“Advertising at the End of the World”(4100) by Keffy R.M. Kehrli
“Kenny 149″(2700) by Brad Becraft
“Pimp My Airship”(6000) by Maurice Broaddus
“She Called Me Sweetie” (4500) by Glenn Lewis Gillette
“…That Has Such People in It”(2300) by Jennifer Pelland
“Hideki and the Gnomes” (500) by Mark Lee Pearson
“Clockwork, Patchwork and Ravens” (7500) by Peter M. Ball
“Waiting for Jakie”(3000) by Barbara Krasnoff
“Hindsight, in Neon” (2400) by Jamie Todd Rubin
“The Mind of a Pig”(3000) by Ekaterina Sedia
“The Puma”(6700) by Theodora Goss
“Dark Planet”(4300) by Lavie Tidhar
“Cai and Her Ten Thousand Husbands”(4500) by Gord Sellar
“On the Shadow Side of the Beast”(3900) by Ruth Nestvold
“Starter House” (5000) by Jason Palmer

Place your vote here

I’m going to throw up my usual disclaimer for this kind of thing: I’m not asking you to vote for me, but I’d really recommend you go check out Apex and encourage them continue what they’re doing by voting. And if you feel like you haven’t read enough of the fiction on this years list, well, its right there in a handy list full of links – go check some out.

Among the many things to be thankful about in 2009 is the fact that it’s been a very good year to a lot of my friends who also toil in the wordmines. There’s nothing quite so awesome as being part of a community full of folks doing cool stuff, and it seems like virtually everyone I know has spent the last twelve months firing on all cylinders. Among the highlights are Ben Francisco’s story Tio Gilberto and the Twenty-Seven Ghosts in Realms of Fantasy, seeing photographs from the set where one of Angela Slatter’s stories being transformed into a short film, and the news that Chris Lynch will be launching his publishing company’s first anthology before the year is out.

Basically, lots of folks have done lot of cool things this year.  And given the time you can bet that I’d loudly and assertively celebrate the awesomeness of every single one of them until you too became a fan of what they’re doing. Sadly, I still have a novella to rewrite, which means I’m going to pick two of the folks who have had a particularly big year and declaim their awesomeness as a kind of representational stand-in for my writer-peeps as a whole.

Jason Fischer (7/15) 

A few months back I got a text message from Jason saying “I just won the WotF.” This was a good thing – Jason’s been chasing the elusive top-spot in WotFfor three years now and had more close shaves than anyone would really care for. It also means the world is either a) doomed; b) about to get its mind blown; or c) both of the above. I say this because Jason Fischer is one of the mad scientists of Australian SF, and now that he’s cracked WotF it’s time for him to direct his deranged fancies in other directions.

Jason’s complete list of publications for the year runs something like this:

After The World: Gravesend, Black House Comics (A zombie novella due to hit Australian newsagents in the next couple of months, featuring many of the Fisch’s trademark craziness).
Busking, Midnight Echo #3
Inventory, Brain Harvest
for want of a jesusman, Aurealis #42
Houndkin, Eclecticism #9
A Rose for Becca, Borderlands #11
The Imogen Effect, Farrago’s Wainscot
The Patchwork Palace, “Masques” edited by CSFG

Better yet, it looks like Jason has finally started writing his novel, which means we should all be both very afraid and, once he’s removed the puns, very thankful.

Chris Green (8/15)Okay, lets start with the list of stuff Chris has achieved this year:

My Rough Cut – The Edge of Propinquity (2009)
Father’s Kill – Beneath Ceaseless Skies (2009)- Shortlisted for Best Fantasy Story (Aurealis Awards)
Reservations – Expanded Horizons (2009)
A Crazy Kind of Love – Nossa Morte (2009)
A Hundredth Name – Abyss & Apex (2009) - Shortlisted for Best Science Fiction Story (Aurealis Awards)
Having Faith – Nossa Morte (2009) - Shortlisted for Best Horror Story (Aurealis Awards)

Secondly, allow me to note that while I’m psyched to be nominated for an Aurealis Award or two myself, I’m way happier to see Chris’s name up there three times because he’s one of those guys who has a tendency to be too damn self-effacing for his own good. I met Chris at Clarion South in 2007 and after a quiet couple of years he hit the ground running in 2009 with a slew of publications and his somewhat hardcore drive to try and achieve 100 rejections before the year was out (the theory being: you can’t control acceptances, but you *can* make sure you keep sending the stories out and the acceptances are things that might happen along the way). So far, I think he’s made it to 75. Given how good Chris is as a writer, and how many stories people said “yes” too along the way, I think we can agree that this is a crazy-awesome kind of number to have reached.

I wrote the following speil about Chris back in July when he published a story in Abyss and Apex, and I think it bears repeating here:

You should go read Chris Green’s story at Abyss and Apex because the man is freakin’ talented and understands things like brevity and leaving empty spaces for the story to breathe. I’ve critted Chris a bunch of times and it’s a bloody hard thing to do, because he crams more story into two thousand words than there should actually be allowed and he fits the damn things together so tight that pulling one segment out causes the whole damn thing to unravel in your hands.

You should read his story because he’s one of the few people I know who manages to give the impression of being genuinely, fearlessly interested in everything and somehow manages to filter that down into his fiction, even though his bailiwick seems to be horror rather than any of the forms of SF where being fearlessly interested in everything would be a useful trait in an author (not a slight on horror authors, but you guys need to understand fear and I’m not sure Chris does). You should read it because he can usually nail one image that makes you cringe, or cry, or wince with pain, and yet there’s still something beautiful in the stories he writes. You should read him because he’s one of my favourite-writers-who-doesn’t-get-published-enough (a distinction he shares with Ben Francisco), primarily because he seems to spend too much time at his day job and not enough time producing fiction. And despite this, he seems to believe that every time he gets published it’s a fluke, despite the fact that it isn’t.

You should also read it because Chris owns cooler footwear than you ever will. Yes, you included, even though I’m sure your shoes are fairly damn cool. I’ve seen Chris step out in boots that’d make a gothic shoe fetishist cry with envy. Come to think of it, his beard is cooler than yours too. And he owns a t-shirt featuring my favourite Buffy quote ever.

To put it simple: one of the great joys of 2009 has been watching Chris kick arase. May he continue the trend next year.

I keep saying it, I know, but write club is awesome (For those wondering what the hell I’m talking about, I recommend this post and this post on Angela Slatter’s blog*). Turns out it’s a remarkably popular idea too – I’ve had a couple of conversations where people wondered how Write Club worked, and it seems Angela gets asked about it as well, so I figured I’d share my** thoughts on why write club works for those who may be curious.

Reason 1) Angela Slatter is Fricken’  Awesome
Granted, I say this quite a bit on this blog as well, but it doesn’t diminish the fact that it’s true. Even if you ignore the fact that she’s a superb writer whose keen critical eye has stopped me from looking like a goose a couple of times this year, and the fact that she’s generous with both her time and connections, she’s one of the people I enjoy catching up with once a week.  If you’re going to hang out and write regularly, I suspect it’s handy to actually like and respect the person you’re hanging around with.

Reason 2) Low Numbers
The more people present, the more likely you are to find someone looking for a distraction at the same time you are. When there’s two of you, you’re only likely to simultaneously hit a break-point in the writing about once or twice in a four-hour period, and even then it’s easier to have a quick chat about the problem you’re pondering and make a fresh cup of coffee before going back to work.

I suspect you could probably get around this with larger numbers where the sheer clatter of hammering keys would become pressure to get working again, but that’s only a theory based on seeing photographs of nanowrimo get-togethers.

Reason 3) Chocolate and Good Food**
Seriously, don’t try write club without the chocolate. 

Reason 4) Long-Term Projects 
It’s telling that both Angela and I were working on novels when the first write-club happened, and that we’re generally better about keeping to a weekly schedule when there’s long-term projects on the cards. Partially this is because there’s two people trying to puzzle out similar problems when you get stuck, and partially because writing individual short stories would have more break-points where you look for distraction due to shorter scenes and quicker finish-times.

I also think Write Club is at its best when it’s keeping me in contact with a long-term project I’d otherwise let laspe when things get hard. There were a few times this year where Friday Nights were the only time I’d work on a draft, but it kept me in contact with the work and saved it from getting burried beneath a mountain of angst and apathy.

Reason 5) Synchronous Goals
Lets not be coy about this one: I want to be a full-time writer. Angela wants to be a full-time writer. Both of us seem to work towards the same kind of milestones in terms of making that happen. For all that the social aspect of Write Club is fun, we’re there to work. We both churn out words away from write-club, every week, and odds are we’d be writing even if write club didn’t ever happen. In no way, shape or form do either of us regard writing as a hobby and we’re generally the type of folks that’ll argue gently prod friends in productive directions if given the opportunity.

Mindset matters, I think, if something like Write Club is going to work. The world spends lots of time telling you that writing is a bad idea, that you can’t possibly make it as a writer, so agreeing that this is bullshit and having similar ideas of what it means to be a professional ensures write club reinforces your process rather than detracts from it.

The other advantage lies in being able to reinforce the habits that work and learn from the skills the other person’s got (Angela is far smarter than I in matters of the writing business, strategy and networking, for example, so there’s always something to be learned from her in these matters. Buggered if I know what I bring to the table, except maybe a dogged belief that neither of us is going to fail. And possibly access to Kim Newman short story collections).

* The short version, for the click-link adverse, is that Write Club is an agreement between two writers to sit in a lounge-room once a week and write. It also involves coffee, chocolate, short bursts of writer-angst, and screaming “write” at the top of your lungs whenever the other person looks like they’re slipping into dangerous levels of procrastination. The process works remarkably well

**Angela, of course, may well disagree with all of the above.

***I’ll admit that I’m probably letting the side down one at the moment. Not that I can’t cook, but I tend to make a lot of stuff Angela can’t eat.

2009 is totally going down as the year that I rediscovered how much I enjoy reading for pleasure. It’s one of those habits that eluded me a while back, which was kind of unfortunate given that my book-buying habit didn’t exactly die off at the same rate. And it’s not that I stopped reading, exactly; I just fell into the trap of rereading old favourites with the occasional new work creeping in. By the end of June I’d made the decision that this should be rectified and promptly started ploughing my way through the seemingly endless array of novels and non-fiction that fill my too-read bookcase.

Since then I’ve managed a fairly steady pace of two books a week. I’ve barely made a dent on the unread book read pile of doom, but it’s still exposed me to a lot of kick-ass fiction. To whit, I give you the fourth and fifth instalment of Awesome Things about 2009:

 The City and the City, China Mieville (4/15)

‘Tis probably not to everyone’s tastes, but for my money The City and the City was a phenomenal novel that utterly blew my minds and reminded me why I enjoy reading fiction in the first place. There’s a part of me that’s a little bit in awe of this book, even as the other half of me is busy rereading chunks and trying tofigure out how Mieville pulled of the neat trick of taking such an absurd idea and making it seem totally fricken’ natural within the context of the novel. It’s the kind of book that makes me wish I still taught undergraduate writing theory classes, because it’d be fricken awesome to spend a semester watching other people process the book and respond to the narrative.

To put it simply: I heart this book. The Spokesbear hearts this book too. It’s one of those things that’s going to plague me for years as I try to figure out how it works, why it works, and whether I can eventually pull of something that’s equally as awesome as a writer (odds are, I can’t, but it’ll be fun to try). And awesome fiction is awesome.

 A Whole Stack of Books by Cherie Priest (5/15)

One of the things that brings me considerable joy as a reader is that rush of reading someone for the first time and realising they’re still at the point in their career where you can both catch up (thus ensuring the immediate gratification of more books *now*) and follow their progression while new work gets released.

2006, for example, is always going to be the year where I picked up Elizabeth Bear’s short story collection and rushed through her first SF trilogy in the aftermath; 2007 is the year where I started picking up anthologies purely on the basis that they contained Kelly Link’s work; 2008 saw me rush through the noir novels of Christa Faust (with Hoodtown immediately earning its spot as one of my favourite novels ever)*.

I’m not entirely sure what separates these writers from other new writers I came across in the same years, but I suspect it’ll come down to some combination of: an interesting web presence where the writer talks about process, having new releases on the horizon just as I finished their first few books, and the release of smaller projects via Indie Presses (I speak here, primarily, of Subterranean; oh, how that company taunts me with the shiny hardcovers and special editions from writer after writer I enjoy reading).

2009 quickly became the year where I read a lot of Cherie Priest. Sure the entire process may have started in 2008 when Tor gave away free copies of Four and Twenty Blackbirds at Conflux, but 2009 was the year that I finally got around to reading the other two books, RSSed Priest’s blog so I wouldn’t miss any new books when they came out, and preordered Boneshakerso there’d be minimal delay between the end of the trilogy and the start of the next fix (because nothing says “fan for life” like the promise of steampunk zombies).

*Intriguingly, I have to retrace my steps back to 2004 (aka the year I read Etgar Keret for the first time) before there’s any testosterone in the list. And 2005 was a bust for fiction, although I followed a bunch of game designers that year instead. It made sense at the time.

Twelfth Planet Press Stocking Stuffer Sale

In celebration of the release of the Aurealis Awards shortlist, Twelfth Planet Press is having a Silly Season Sale! All through December they’re offering Shipping deals on all orders of their books that earned a spot in the short-list (that’d be Horn, the New Ceres Nights anthology, Deborah Biancotti’s Book of Endings collection, and the Sirenbeat/Roadkill double).

Right now, that means you can pick up Horn for $10. And it’s just about the right size to fit into a stocking (if, say, you knew someone who really deserved a noir tale about evil unicorns and snuff films for Christmas).

Shimmer: Clockwork Jungle Book Issue

Shimmer Magazine just released its Clockwork Junglebook theme issue, chock-full of steampunk animal fables for your reading pleasure (including mine – The Clockwork Goat and the Smokestack Magi). The website has short teasers of all the stories, links to author interviews (me included), and order details if funky steampunk is your kind of thing.

‘Course, if it were me, I’d subscribe instead of ordering the single issue. Not only is Shimmerthe magazine with the good sense to publish a whole bunch of Angela Slatter’s work in the past, but I know a bunch of fine writers whose stories they’ve got sitting in inventory for future issues. Trust me when I say you won’t regret it.

The 2009 Aurealis Awards short-list was released over the weekend and it contained a whole mess of good news – Horn secured a berth in the short-list of both the Fantasy and the Horror novel categories, and I made the Science Fiction Short Story list twice with both Clockwork, Pathwork and Ravens and To Dream of Stars: An Astronomer’s Lament. There’s even more good news on the short-lists in the form of nominations for peeps such as Chris Green* (for both SF, Horror & Fantasy short story), Angela Slatter (Fantasy short story) and Twelfth Planet Press (a seemingly unending parade for various projects – I think every book they released this year is up for something).

‘Course, most of the folks who read this blog have already heard this news from other sources (I was having a slack weekend, internet-wise), so I figure I’d just make a note, say “awesome” and off my congratulations to the other finalists – it’s a shiny list of folks to be sharing a short-list with and I’m looking forward to the Awards weekend when Brisvegas gets flooded with writer-folks.

*The best part about this is, of course, the possibility that Chris way actually come to Brisbane for the ceremony and give us a chance to catch up in person – somehow I keep missing him when I pass through Melbourne.

When I started chatting to the spokesbear about putting a list of 15 awesome things about 2009 together, the first stipulation Fudge came up with was “do not treat every individual publication as its own awesome thing, because that will be cheating.”

“What about Horn,” I said. “Surely it deserves a spot on its own?”

And at that the spokesbear pondered and said: “Well, yes, there’s Horn. That was pretty awesome. I suppose that’s okay as an entry on its own.”

Which is just as well, because the overall experience of seeing Horn released has easily been the most Awesome thing that happened this year. Seeing the finished book for the first time was awesome. Seeing it get its first few reviews was awsome, especially given its tendency to pop up in places like the Courier Mail, Locus and Jeff VanderMeer’s blog. Getting the news that “BTW, Horn’s made a profit” was awesome. Getting asked if there were more Miriam Aster stories and if I’d be interested in writing them…well, you get the picture.

Horn turned out to be a much bigger deal than I thought it’d be, and I’m still kinda awed by the fact that people are still buying it and e-mailing me about it (heck, there’s a part of me that a little surprised I haven’t been lynched for doing bad things to unicorns).

And to leave off, since it’s traditional: Copies of Horn are still available at Twelfth Planet Press (or from Smashwords if you’d prefer an electronic version)