Just The Caffeine Talking

Congratulations Nebula Nominees!

Congratulations to this year's Nebula Award nominees. The final winners will be announced June 6 in Chicago, after a series of bloody, last-man-standing battles with knives and bricks. Or maybe voting. Anyway, congratulations to:

Novel

• The Goblin Emperor, Katherine Addison (Tor)
• Trial by Fire, Charles E. Gannon (Baen)
• Ancillary Sword, Ann Leckie (Orbit US; Orbit UK)
• The Three-Body Problem, Cixin Liu (), translated by Ken Liu (Tor)
• Coming Home, Jack McDevitt (Ace)
• Annihilation, Jeff VanderMeer (FSG Originals; Fourth Estate; HarperCollins Canada)

Novella

• We Are All Completely Fine, Daryl Gregory (Tachyon)
• Yesterday's Kin, Nancy Kress (Tachyon)
• "The Regular," Ken Liu (Upgraded)
• "The Mothers of Voorhisville," Mary Rickert (Tor.com 4/30/14)
• Calendrical Regression, Lawrence Schoen (NobleFusion)
• "Grand Jeté (The Great Leap)," Rachel Swirsky (Subterranean Summer '14) 

Novelette

• "Sleep Walking Now and Then," Richard Bowes (Tor.com 7/9/14)
• "The Magician and Laplace's Demon," Tom Crosshill (Clarkesworld 12/14)
• "A Guide to the Fruits of Hawai'i," Alaya Dawn Johnson (F&SF 7-8/14)
• "The Husband Stitch," Carmen Maria Machado (Granta #129)
• "We Are the Cloud," Sam J. Miller (Lightspeed 9/14)
• "The Devil in America," Kai Ashante Wilson (Tor.com 4/2/14)

Short Story

• "The Breath of War," Aliette de Bodard (Beneath Ceaseless Skies 3/6/14)
• "When It Ends, He Catches Her," Eugie Foster (Daily Science Fiction 9/26/14)
• "The Meeker and the All-Seeing Eye," Matthew Kressel (Clarkesworld 5/14)
• "The Vaporization Enthalpy of a Peculiar Pakistani Family," Usman T. Malik (Qualia Nous)
• "A Stretch of Highway Two Lanes Wide," Sarah Pinsker (F&SF 3-4/14)
• "Jackalope Wives," Ursula Vernon (Apex 1/7/14)
• "The Fisher Queen," Alyssa Wong (F&SF 5/14) 

Ray Bradbury Award for Outstanding Dramatic Presentation

• Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance), Written by Alejandro G. Iñárritu, Nicolás Giacobone, Alexander Dinelaris, Jr. & Armando Bo (Fox Searchlight Pictures)
• Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Screenplay by Christopher Markus & Stephen McFeely (Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures)
• Edge of Tomorrow, Screenplay by Christopher McQuarrie and Jez Butterworth and John-Henry Butterworth (Warner Bros. Pictures)
• Guardians of the Galaxy, Written by James Gunn and Nicole Perlman (Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures)
• Interstellar, Written by Jonathan Nolan and Christopher Nolan (Paramount Pictures)
• The Lego Movie, Screenplay by Phil Lord & Christopher Miller  (Warner Bros. Pictures)

Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy

• Unmade, Sarah Rees Brennan (Random House)
• Salvage, Alexandra Duncan (Greenwillow)
• Love Is the Drug, Alaya Dawn Johnson (Levine)
• Glory O'Brien's History of the Future, A.S. King (Little, Brown)
• Dirty Wings, Sarah McCarry (St. Martin's Griffin)
• Greenglass House, Kate Milford (Clarion)
• The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender, Leslye Walton (Candlewick)

High Stakes Boredom

One thing which has begun to bother me about a lot of recent science fiction and action films is that they always go straight to putting the whole world in peril. In Guardians of the Galaxy the climax is an attempt by the villain to destroy the Good Guy Planet. In Interstellar the hero is looking for a new home for humanity because Earth is doomed. In The Fifth Element a giant cloud of Evil is coming to consume the Earth unless the heroes can find the MacGuffin to stop it.

I think this is a mistake.

In screenwriting guides like Robert McKee's Story, the advice for writers is "GSU" — give the characters a Goal, keep raising the Stakes, and generate Urgency. Now certainly this is good advice if you want to make an exciting film (or novel, or whatever). You don't want characters wandering around with no purpose, you don't want the audience to stop caring, and you don't want anyone to get bored.

But! There's a paradox. If you raise the stakes too high, you destroy all the suspense. Unless the film is a black comedy like Doctor Strangelove, the audience is pretty sure that the world won't be destroyed. Which means all the hero's heroics are not that suspenseful because they are destined to succeed.

There are ways around that: if the "hero" is a group of people, the writer can kill off some of them along the way, creating uncertainty and suspense about who will make it to the ending. Or in a movie, the director can simply dazzle the audience with footwork: in Raiders of the Lost Ark we're pretty sure Indiana Jones will accomplish his goal, but we never know how he's going to manage it and are always entertained to see what's coming next.

And, of course, there's the heavy-lifting method: keep the stakes small but make them important to the characters, then make the audience care about the characters. In Casablanca even the noble Resistance leader Victor Laszlo won't affect the outcome of World War II very much, but the audience nevertheless cares very much about how the love triangle between Victor, Rick, and Ilsa plays out.

Of course, this method takes a bit more work, but I think the payoff is ultimately worth it. 

A Darkling Audiobook

If moving your eyes from side to side is too much work, now you can enjoy A Darkling Sea while lying completely immobile! It's now available as an audiobook from Audible.com. 

Boskone: Realm of the Ice Demons!

Later this week I will make the epic journey through the snow-cursed wilderness of Massachusetts to attend this year's Boskone convention. I may have to eat the sled dogs and my faithful Sherpa guide, but the lure of the exotic Westin pleasure-dome draws me onward, and the Ice Demons will learn to fear my axe.

Here's what I'll be up to:

Friday, February 13, 3:00 P.M.: Food In Fiction

"Join our panelists as they dish on the culinary delights that tantalize us in fiction, from regional teas to kingly feasts."

Carrie Cuinn (moderator), Steven Brust, James Cambias, Fran Wilde, Lawrence M. Schoen

Friday, 4:00 P.M.: Losing True Dark

"With the growth of modern cities, the star-swept sky is vanishing, hidden behind the ever-spreading glare of nighttime light pollution. Has the absence of true dark skewed the impact of the nighttime skies?"

David L. Clements (moderator), James Cambias, James Patrick Kelly, Donna L. Young, Guy Consolmagno

Saturday, February 14, 11:00 A.M.: Autographing

Bring anything and I'll sign it.

Saturday, 5:00 P.M.: Authorship, RPGs, and the Legacy of D&D

"Panelists explore the many facets of RPGs — from developing challenging and believable frameworks for cooperative story construction to taking the story beyond the game."

Chris Jackson (moderator), James Cambias, Mur Lafferty, Lauren Roy

Saturday, 6:00 P.M.: Cambridge Science Fiction Writers Group Reading

The mighty CSFW returns for a group reading!

James Cambias, Brett Cox, Alex Jablokov, James Patrick Kelly, Steven Popkes, Kenneth Schneyer, and Sarah Smith.

Sunday, February 15, 10:00 A.M.: Reading

I'll be reading from my forthcoming novel Corsair.

Sunday, 12:00 Noon: Swashbuckling

"Who today is writing adventure stories that tap this rich vein? How are they adapted for fantasy and science fiction?"

James Cambias (moderator), Steven Brust, Chris Jackson, Darlene Marshall

Sunday, 2:00 P.M.: The Great Game in Space: SF Retellings of Kim

"Join us and hear about Poul Anderson's homage to Kim featuring Dominic Flandry, S. M. Stirling's Great Game in a devastated world, and other stories which play in a fascinating milieu."

James Cambias (moderator), Gregory Feeley, Fred Lerner