National Novel Writing Month 2010 is underway.

National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), the annual November challenge to crank out 50,000 words in 30 days, began at midnight last night. It's a huge event -- last year, over 167,000 people entered, logged 2.4 billion words, and over 32,000 won, where the sole criterion for "winning" is having enough words on the page before midnight on November 30.

Long-time readers will recall that I participated last year and successfully finished a first draft just under the wire. This year, I'm going after the prize again, although I will admit, I'll be a bit distracted until we get past Election Day.

But I have an outline: two years ago, during my summer writing workshop (Hi, Gibraltar Point peeps!) I produced an outline for a Young Adult (YA) science fiction novel about a school for super-genius children hidden in a fold of time during World War II.

So this year, I'm writing "Across the Fourth World"...

"Concepts of 'time' and 'matter' are not given in substantially the same form by experience to all...but depend upon the language or languages through the use of which they have been developed."
    —Benjamin Lee Whorf
    Language, Thought, and Reality

Chapter One: A simple one-room schoolhouse

 "Usually, it happens right about here."
 Twelve-year-old J.D. Elegbe turned back from the railing of the antique ferry to see who had spoken.
 "What?" he said, then caught himself. "Excuse me?"
 The girl, who looked like she might be a year or two older, was absorbed in an iPhone game and hadn't even taken her headphones off. She glanced up briefly and nodded for him to look.
Out ahead of the boat was a choppy expanse of Narragansett Bay and the outline of Phoenix Island dimly visible though the fog of an already-warm October morning. J.D. staggered as the boat appeared to hit an big wave, lurched, and dropped about a foot.
 "You might want to stand back a bit."
 "Thanks," he said. Without taking his eyes off the water, he retreated a few steps. "My name's J.D."
 "Hilary Chen," said the girl. She was an inch or two taller and had long, straight black hair. She sized him up with a calm, measured glance. "You're one of the two new kids."
 "I guess the uniform sort of gives us away," said J.D. They were both wearing white shirts and maroon blazers, she with a plaid skirt rather than his dark slacks.
 "There they are," she said. Out of the fog came the rising rip of a big diesel engine and the slap of a hull skipping across waves, and a long gray boat bounced into view, cutting right across their path. From the pilothouse just above them, J.D. could hear the ferry captain shout something unrepeatable, followed by a blast of the whistle.
 If the crew of the gray boat heard, they paid no attention, for it turned and began an orbit around the lumbering ferry. It was clearly Navy, J.D. thought, with a machine gun mounted forward and what looked like depth charges from some old World War II movie arrayed along the sides. And were those things torpedoes?
  A few of the sailors waved as the boat finished its loop, cutting so close that the bow sent a spray of water just where J.D. had been standing. He could see the captain, a tanned young man, shirtless, wearing dark sunglasses, throw a salute from his position at the wheel, then the boat broke off and skipped away, back into the fog.

Yeah, it's set in a one-room schoolhouse, on an island off a small town in Rhode Island, near the PT boat school in Melville in 1942.

Visit the NaNoWriMo web site to learn more.

The Hugo Awards, science fiction's yearly fan-voted accolades, were announced this morning from the World Science Fiction Convention in Melbourne, Australia, and the talent displayed by the winners is an indication of the strength of the field, with a tie for best novel between China Miéville's The City & The City and Paolo Bacigalupi's The Windup Girl.

I will confess a special delight in seeing my workshop buddy Peter Watts win Best Novelette for "The Island." Yay, Peter!

Congratulations to all the winners, and to all the nominees.

Check out the Hugo site for the full list.

The awesome science fiction web site io9 posted a list of "strange" sf, and I'm chuffed that my 1995 story "Jigoku no mokushiroku (The Symbolic Revelation of the Apocalypse) made the cut. You can, of course, read it here.

Why is this story strange? Well, possibly because the point-of-view character is a sentient elevator? Maybe this would be a good time to mention that I'm working on a sequel, called "Jigoku de hotoke."

This was a pleasant surprise. I've been so swamped with work and campaign stuff these past few weeks that I didn't even catch the mention (I have io9 set in my newsreader, and truth to tell, often have to make do with scanning headlines). Didn't spot it until it showed up in my referer logs.

Thanks to Jason Sanford for the list, and to Annalee Newitz for the pickup.

Science fiction writer and digital rights activist Cory Doctorow's new young adult sf novel, For The Win, just hit shelves today. And with Doctorow, when you say "shelves," of course that means you can find it in physical bookstores, but you can also download it for free from his web site licensed under Creative Commons.

FTW picks up themes Doctorow touched in his short story "Anda's Game," about the shadow economy of developing-nation computer gamers playing for virtual gold to be sold for real money, in a parable of exploitation versus organization which comes uncomfortably close to fact rather than fiction. From the blurb:

Mala is a brilliant 15-year-old from rural India whose leadership skills in virtual combat have earned her the title of “General Robotwalla.” In Shenzen, heart of China’s industrial boom, Matthew is defying his former bosses to build his own successful gold-farming team. Leonard, who calls himself Wei-Dong, lives in Southern California, but spends his nights fighting virtual battles alongside his buddies in Asia, a world away. All of these young people, and more, will become entangled with the mysterious young woman called Big Sister Nor, who will use her experience, her knowledge of history, and her connections with real-world organizers to build them into a movement that can challenge the status quo.

Only just started reading it, and hope you'll do the same. And if you download it for free, hope you'll consider Cory's "pay it forward" approach — if you enjoy the book, you can donate physical copies to libraries and classrooms at a matchmaking page on his site, craphound.com.

FTC disclosure: I know Cory; free copies distributed on the Web in no way influence my opinion. Splah.

Canadian marine biologist and science fiction writer Peter Watts received a suspended sentence in Michigan on Monday on charges stemming from a December incident where he failed to comply quickly enough with commands of border guards conducting a search of his vehicle.

Read Peter's take, read fellow writer and Toronto journalist David Nickle, and please take a few minutes for sf writer Madeline Ashby's post at Tor.com.

I have been workshopping with Peter for years, and I am relieved beyond words at this outcome. As Ashby has it, "Sometimes, we win."

Canadian sf writer Peter Watts was convicted Friday on a felony for failing to comply with customs officials when he was stopped leaving the US in December.

Now if you read about it in The Port Huron TimesHerald, you'd think Watts was guilty of "assault," which according to both Watts — and one of the jurors who has spoken out — was factually incorrect. I'm ashamed of a professional reporter getting something like that wrong. And the comment threads on the TimesHerald made me want to vomit, so visit at your own risk.

If you want to get the story from the principal (the future of news; as Dave Winer and Jay Rosen call it, "sources go direct") read today's post from Watts, "DVD Extras and Director Commentary," and the initial post, "Guilty."

Watts's "crime," as near as I can determine, was not dropping to the ground fast enough when ordered. Now I understand the difficult and risky job law enforcement officers have on the highways every day. Believe me. I do appreciate that. Nonetheless, I think we should find it a little frightening that, as a society, we are only one moment's hesitation away from a felony rap.

Understandably, there's been a lot of noise about this in the blogosphere. To really zoom in and get a human-scaled response, take a look at the heartfelt and personal post by sf writer Madeline Ashby.

Previous coverage here, here, and here.

Full disclosure: Peter Watts is a colleague with whom I have been workshopping every summer for years.

The Great White Ebook Shark, a new online review site, just ran an excerpt and analysis of my short story (Nothing But) Flowers. I was thrilled to be in the company of folks like Peter Watts, Kelly Link, and David Nickle (not to mention Joseph Conrad) and the reviewer finds much to like in the story, calling the author "a craftsman of no small talent."

Not familiar with the inspiration for the story? It's a Talking Heads song, and you can watch David Byrne performing it live. You can read the story here on the site, or download in various formats from ManyBooks.net.

As of today, (Nothing But) Flowers has been viewed at least 9,000 times, which says something very powerful about Creative Commons licensing.

Full disclosure: The reviewer sent a draft before publication as a courtesy. I did not comment on anything they wrote.

The Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) just posted the final list for this year's Nebula® Award, and it's a fantastic field. Check it out on the SFWA site.

If you're looking for good sf to read, look no further (there are handy links to some great online stories!). Congrats to all the finalists!

Editorial note: SFWA is the organization of science fiction and fantasy writers, artists, and related professionals. The Nebula® is a yearly award voted on by members.

Science fiction author William Tenn (real name Philip Klass) died today at the age of 89, according to a note posted on his Web page. While not widely known outside the field, within sf he was highly respected for his dark, penetrating satire, much of it written in the Golden Age of 1940-60. In 1999, the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) named him an Author Emeritus.

I have always liked Tenn's stories — my curiosity was first hooked by "Down Among the Dead Men," a grim little tale about reanimated corpses used as soldiers in a space war. I was very much looking forward to seeing him at the 2004 Worldcon in Boston, but that was the weekend my mother passed away.

Scott Edelman has a remembrance and link to a radio interview on WNYC. Tangent Online has an interview. Blogger Matthew Cheney has a nice piece on Tenn's fiction.

You can read about Tenn on Wikipedia. Tenn's collected fiction and nonfiction has been reprinted by the New England Science Fiction Association (NESFA) Press. Here's a link to Amazon.

My thoughts are with his family and friends.

This is not a review of James Cameron's Avatar. Rather, it is an acknowledgement that "Workers Leaving a Factory" is now showing at your local multiplex: the sticks have been moved, the torch has been passed, pick your metaphor, this is a game-changer for science fiction film. I saw it last night with my 10-year-old, and we were both totally engrossed for the entire 2:30 runtime.

The major tropes will be familiar to any Cameron fan: nature vs. technology, machines amplifying humans, love and death, big friendly weapons, image and reality, corporate greed, powerful women, re-inventing the "car" chase, exploring alien ecosystems, foregrounding bizarre mores (think of the Terminator learning to talk SoCal slang or Jack navigating the social world of the Titanic).

But at the same time, the approach is so audacious — if you see it in 3D, you will believe you are on another planet — that every other sf film will now feel like a 1960s Star Trek episode with a cyclorama and styrofoam rocks. The wholly CGI world of the fictional planet Pandora is immersive, persuasive, and so deeply actualized that the historical advantage of print sf writers (imagination is better than you can afford to make it look onscreen) is dead.

Most importantly, Avatar has a deep moral center. Anyone repulsed by the glib situational handiness of Aliens 3 or Terminator Salvation will recognize the genuine article here. The surface may be simple — it almost has to be, doesn't it, as a popular film — but the tendrils lead directly, insistently to the roots of the perpetual philosophy. While recognizing the ambiguity and conflictedness of human choice — sipping coffee while delivering death from above — Cameron pushes past to find a ground for ethical action in a post-mystical monism rooted in biochemistry (and not the half-assed handwave given to the Force). What if we truly behaved as if everything was connected?

Those who want to read the film as an allegory about America and Middle East (or the Cherokee nation) will not have to strain. But there are deft moves that subvert and add complexity. The Pandorans are not simply "the natives" up against the military-industrial complex; they are deeply us, America, situated where and when we are at this moment in our history. Without spoilers, this can clearly be read as a film about 9/11.

Also, without spoilers, I will say that those frame-by-framers who are familiar with the playground horses of the Apocalypse from T-2 will have a dark, dark chuckle.

Full disclosure: Anyone who thinks that was a Russian water tentacle, raise your hand.