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Event Horizon is the SFAS's (semi-)regular newsletter.
Editor: Soh Kam Yung
MITA (P) 069/06/2000
Hello all. This is your (apparently permanent) editor of Event Horizon, the newsletter of the SFAS, back again after a long absence to unleash yet more words on to the world.
The absence has been a long one, and was mainly forced by the lack of time to do anything other than work. I'm still working hard, but now I'm trying to give more of (what little) free time I have to write some words to revive EH.
So, what has been happening since the last issue of EH was sent out? Plenty. The physical number of SFAS members have shrunk while the on-line membership of the SFAS appears to be stable which leads me to wonder whether AI has been invented and they're hiding their presence by being physically absent when necessary (i.e., during meetings).
The book and movie SF market itself has continue to grow. There are, again, more books that I want to read that I can actually read. It has been years since I've read at least two books that are on the Hugo or Nebula Awards list for a particular year. This situation doesn't look like it will change soon.
As for movies, well I think the less said the better. Other than The Matrix and perhaps Pitch Black, there haven't been many good SF movies. Bicentennial Man was a good try but doesn't quite succeed. Galaxy Quest was fun but mainly because it doesn't take itself seriously. The less said about Mission to Mars and Battlefield Earth the better.
The future looks bright, though. Card's Ender's Game movie may be successful (if made) and there is a lot of expectation for the new The Lord of the Rings movies (which reminds me: I have to re-read the books).
On the books side, the opening of yet more bookstores (Australia's Dymocks) plus the launch of mphonline.com shows that competition in the local megabook store market is heating up, giving consumers more choice although this may squeeze the smaller bookstores.
On the electronic side, e-books aren't quite here yet, but it is getting there. Peanutpress appears to be surviving on electronic book sales and others are slowly moving into this market. An interesting entry into this field is Fictionwise which offers individual short stories for sale for less than a (US) dollar each. For those who prefer to read SF stories for free, Sci-Fiction gives you a choice of stories, both old and original.
PDAs (Palm devices and the new Microsoft Pocket PCs) are also slowly becoming viable ways to read text electronically while on the move. Of course, there was that 'blip' made by Stephen King's on-line story. The problem still remains the difficulty of reading complete books on such devices, as cross-referencing and quick flipping is still not possible. The problem is less acute with short stories. Since they are shorter, cross-referencing isn't much of a problem.
To make things short (and to stop me sounding like a cut-down version of Dozois's book round-ups), the future looks bright for books in general, and for SF in particular, in both the traditional print form and the new electronic form. Hopefully, things will look bright for Event Horizon and the SFAS too.
When I heard that a movie of Asimov's story, The Bicentennial Man was going to be made, I was both glad and anxious. Would Asimov's story make a successful transition from print to screen? Would the movie preserve the main features of the story?
Well, it does, partially. Bicentennial Man isn't a bad movie, but it isn't a very good movie either. It was more sentimental than I expected and had fewer Asimovian elements in it than I had liked.
The story tells the tale of a NDR series robot, soon known as Andrew, who is in the service of the Martin family. Starting out as a usual robot servant, it develops an artistic talent. That talent starts with a simple wood carving for the youngest daughter (called 'Little Miss' by Andrew) but soon develops into actual furniture making.
Later on, Andrew learns about (human) freedom from reading books and, in his way, gets his own freedom from being a servant. Thus begins Andrew's next and longer journey that is to span two hundred years (thus the word Bicentennial). This journey would transform Andrew into a more human form and require him to make sacrifices to achieve his ultimate goal.
Surprisingly, the movie generally follows the main storyline of the original story. However, several supporting structures of the original story were de-emphasised in the movie, especially at the end.
The major example of this is Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics which make a brief and explosive appearance only at the start of the movie. Throughout the rest of the movie, little is said or shown about the Three Laws, making Andrew similar to other 'Hollywood' robots.
I initially didn't like Robin Williams acting as Andrew. At times, his comedy side shows, jarring my perception of Andrew. But towards the end of the movie, as Andrew becomes more human, I found him more acceptable until near the end, I did think of him as Andrew.
Probably the biggest problem in the film is showing the passage of time. Although two hundred years pass, not much is shown to the audience about this change, except at one or two places. Most of the time, a subtitle stating how many years passed was put in. Apparently, technology and fashion don't change much in that period of time. This makes it hard for me to imagine Andrew as actually functioning for two hundred years.
Overall, this is a reasonable adaptation of Asimov's story. As usual, the original story contains much more information than the movie but even so, this is one of the better SF movies and could be watch to see the other side of SF movies (the 'non-action' side). This is a reasonable effort that could have been better.
Maybe someday, Harlan Ellison's screenplay version of Asimov's I, Robot stories will be produced and we shall see a better translation of Asimov's robot story to screen.
When an author revisits a world he has created in the past, the results are usually not good. Fortunately, Card's attempt at revisiting the world he created in Ender's Game is better than usual.
Ender's Shadow covers much the same events as in Ender's Game but from the perspective of another person: Bean, the small child general who would prove to be one of Ender's most intelligent commanders and who would help Ender defeat the enemy, commonly known as the 'Buggers'.
Here is a brief recap of both books for those who haven't read them. Ender's Game tells the childhood of Andrew 'Ender' Wiggin in the orbital military school known as 'Battle School'. There, children with potential are trained to become leaders by pitting their armies of children against each other.
The hope is to train enough children to command the ships sent against the alien 'Buggers' before they invade Earth again and succeed in conquering it. They also hope to find a military genius who can out-think the buggers. It is obvious from the start that their hopes depend on Ender Wiggin; but will the accelerated program break him before he can learn to command and lead?
In Ender's Shadow, the life of Bean is told. Starting as a starving child barely surviving on the streets of Rotterdam among child gangs, Bean manages to survive and change the life on the streets for the children. This gets him noticed by a nun, who is also on the lookout for potential Battle School candidates. She finds Bean to be an extremely intelligent boy.
Perhaps too intelligent. The nun's suspicions behind the reason for his intelligence leads her on a search for Bean's origins even as he is trained at Battle School, hears about Ender and, finally, meets him and joins his army.
Should you read Ender's Game before this one? Card's opinion, in his foreword, is no. Personally, it would be better to read Ender's Game first before this one to get a proper perspective on events and to get the most out of the both books.
Ender's Shadow is an interesting mix of the known and the unknown. If you've read Ender's Game, you'll know what happens on Battle School and in most of the events that involve Bean and Ender together.
However, intrigue and excitement are introduced in the search for Bean's origins and in scenes involving Bean alone, both on Earth and in Battle School. There is enough new material to keep those who have read the earlier book interested in this one.
This is one of those rare books where the author has managed to revisit the world in his earlier novel and still manages to tell something new. Some events appear to have been introduced just for effect (like Bean's final confrontation with his nemesis, Achilles) but the parts where both books intersects appear to be correct: I won't be able to tell without carefully reading both books together.
So, enjoy yourself reading this book. But, like in Ender's Game be warned: there are scenes of kids bullying and beating one another so you should be prepared for such scenes when you read either this book or Ender's Game.
As usual, a request (or plea?) for contributions for material to the next and future editions of EH. This edition was a one-man show because I wanted to get something out. Future editions should contain your contributions.
If you have something to say about SF, whether it is the current state of SF, speculative pieces on whatever you've seen or wondered about lately, or announcements of interest to the SFAS in general, send them in and you should see them in print here. Contributions should be in plain ASCII text as I'm using a home-brewed document generating system to produce EH so any formatting hints that come with your contributions will be stripped out by me.
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