Yet Another Book to Read: Sideways in Crime

I just listened to the audio promo for Sideways in Crime, a collection of short stories about alternate history and crime fiction. All I know I gleaned from the audio promo and the book’s Amazon page, but it sounds good so far. I am a huge fan of short fiction as it gives me a great way to find new authors and to intersperse a story into my busy schedule. I am also a big fan of alternate history and crime fiction, especially when done well.

If I were to rank my favorite sub-genres of science fiction it would go as follows:

1. Post apocalyptic
2. Zombies
3. Space Opera
4. Alternate history
5. undefinable yet awesome

Who Will Lead the Sci Fi Movie Revolution?

Mark Harris of Entertainment Weekly wrote a great (IMHO) article about the State of Science Fiction movies as a genre. He lambasted the genre for being too wrapped up in nostalgia and not taking chances.

Ideally, sci-fi’s next rescuer should be someone whose ideas about the future derive from somewhere — anywhere — other than old sci-fi. It can be done. Just a year ago, no movie genre looked deader than the Western. Then 2007 brought us not only a familiar but lively overhaul of 3:10 to Yuma but also the gorgeously arty mood piece The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford and a handful of extraordinary films — the Coens’ No Country for Old Men, Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood, and even, in its way, Paul Haggis’ In the Valley of Elah — that drew deeply and inventively on different aspects of Western conventions and mythmaking to create something new, often stunning, and not instantly identifiable by genre. Sci-fi desperately needs filmmakers who are interested in bending the form toward their own passions and obsessions as artists. 2001 has come and gone, and right now the future looks too much like something we’ve already seen.

In reading this several authors come to mind but I am pulling a blank for directors at the moment. Do you know who could direct a new science fiction film which would bring the genre out of its nostalgic vegetative state? If so leave their name in the comments.
We need new settings, new plots, new universes, new futures.

I want to see some adaptations or original works from Cory Doctorow, Tobias Buckell, John Scalzi, Scott Sigler, hell not sure Vernor Vinge’s latest is suitable for a movie adaptation but its something different. All these authors bring me to the point that not every future has to be of the “bad guy in the hulking ship with deathstars” universe. We can have all other types of settings, alternate modes of transportation, some steampunk maybe? Can I get a sci fi film with a Dirigible? Alternate futures near and far away, please someone wow me.

I for one will welcome our new Sci Fi Film making overlords…if they don’t muck it up.