Starship Fonzie

The Wachowskis stole the script for The Matrix? At first, the accusation seemed to be a classic case of black oppression from Hollywood. Black Americans and white liberals wanted it to be true. They wanted a black writer to win one over on Hollywood. The headline even seemed to ring true a bit, especially around 2004 and 2005. A black woman allegedly had her story stolen by the Wachowskis who turned it into a multi-million dollar franchise called The Matrix. Internet news feeds went back and forth with the story that this woman had finally won her case against the Wachowskis in court, and that the rights to the franchise were really hers. Except all that just wasn't true. Sophia Stewart, the woman in question, dubs herself "The Mother of The Matrix." According to her, she submitted her story back in 1981 and had it rejected. She then answered a magazine ad in 1986 in which the Wachowskis solicited science fiction stories for a forthcoming comic book. She decided to send i...

Very rarely have I ever encountered a book that makes me say, "I am privileged to have been alive at the time this book was written," but I finished just such a book recently: Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir. Weir, of course, is the man who brought us The Martian, the book that launched his career and became a movie starring Matt Damon. His second novel, Artemis, was good, but not nearly as good as The Martian, and many in the sci fi community felt he had suffered a sophomore slump. Well, not so. Weir's third novel is a whopper! It's so amazing that I'm willing to name it the winner of the Hugo, Locus and Nebula Awards for next year. It's an amazing yarn written in the fine, stylistic tradition of Arthur C. Clarke. And yes, it uses some old, cliche plot structures, but they're put together in a new and brilliant way. One of those cliches is the old, "Main character wakes up with no memory," trope. This happens to Hail Mary's main character, Ry...

Mary Robinette Kowal is a unique talent. She's worn many hats and accomplished many things, but her biggest achievement to date has been her Lady Astronaut series, the latest of which is The Relentless Moon. The Relentless Moon is book #3 in the series, so some background is required. Normally, alternate histories are cheap ways to steal characters from history so that no world-building is required. But Kowal does not rely upon this historical fan-fic approach. Instead, she rewrites history from scratch, starting with a common point, but going completely off-script afterward, making a fresh and new story which delights and informs. The first book in the series, The Calculating Stars, opens up with a literal bang. A meteorite strikes the earth just off the coast of Maryland in 1952, wiping out Washington, D.C., and much of the Eastern Seaboard with it. Gone are Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy and Nixon, along with many other historical figures we associate with the 50's and 60's...

THE CANON of science fiction has been a focus of attention in recent years. Everyone, particularly John Scalzi and Camestros Falton has written about it and criticized it. But what IS it, exactly? We typically use the word "Canon" to describe that which is part of the accepted collection of stories. It comes from the Christian tradition of "Canon" referring to the 66 books of the Protestant Bible as the "Canon" of Scripture. (Catholics list 73 books as Scriptural "Canon.") By the same logic, that which is "official" is "Canon" in other contexts, and that which is non-official is "non-canonical." So, for example, Joss Whedon's continuation of Firefly in comic books would be considered "Canonical," because it was written (at least partially) by Joss Whedon himself. Or the Star Wars Saga would consider The Clone Wars "Canonical," because they're part of the official storyline, even though t...